Whenever I read anything about the benefits of podcasting I will inevitably hear some variation of the phrase 'direct communication with the listeners'. That's nice, but what does it mean?
I fully understand the concept in blogging. When I write something on my blog, I get almost instant feedback on whether I'm a God or a dork for writing what I did. My podcast, however, is nothing like that.
I do get feedback, for sure, but only about 5-10 regular commenters ever share their thoughts with me. We have upwards of 800 listeners per week and I only ever hear from a handful of them.
I freely admit that since there is an avenue for listeners to talk to me that podcasting is miles away from main stream media in this respect, but I don't see a large segment of the listener community taking advantage of it.
This is just another example of "if you build it, they won't necessarily come". Maybe your listeners don't want to talk to you, or perhaps you need to make it more interesting for them so they'll want to do so. A Frappr map, for example, is a great way to get people to at least acknowledge in some way that they listen to your show. We have more individual people on our Frappr map than have ever commented on the show.
If you're sitting back and wondering where all the 'immediate listener feedback' is, expand your horizons and find ways to get it.
Tags: podcast audience, feedback
