Your podcast needs community

Building a community around your podcast is more important than ever.

Year after year, it seems like something new is squeezing the podcasting industry. Even as podcasts become more popular, creators continue to face a growing number of external challenges. The human connection that makes this medium so compelling is now being threatened by AI and other forces outside the traditional podcasting world.

Connect with more people. Build genuine relationships. It’s the only path to sustainable growth that I see moving forward.

00:00 Show Intro and Where to Listen

00:21 Why Community Matters Now

01:04 Beyond Downloads and Analytics

03:09 Tools Are Not Community

04:35 Keeping the Campfire Burning

05:10 Content Fatigue and Real Connection

08:12 Small Curated Community Funnel

10:43 Start Simple and Build Momentum

13:10 Podcast Ownership and Community Scale

15:40 Community Platform Options

18:08 Slack Tactics and Engagement Ideas

19:36 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Software and platforms mentioned in the transcript:

• Apple Podcasts
• Buzzsprout
• Circle
• Discord
• Patreon
• Slack
• Telegram
• WhatsApp
• The WP Minute (The WP Minute)

Transcript

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Show Intro and Where to Listen

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, we're back with another episode of Matt Has a Podcast about podcasting. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. In fact, it's not on YouTube yet. Uh it is on Apple. It is on Spotify. It's wherever else you can throw an RSS feed or search RSS feeds to uh follow a podcast. Not on YouTube yet. Still holding off. We'll see how long I can do that for.

Why Community Matters Now

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Today's episode, I want to talk about community and why community is so important to the success of a podcast, especially now. It almost seems like every year in podcasting, we're always saying, like, especially now, uh, as more podcasts came online, we were saying things like, especially now that there's more podcasts. Um, as people started getting into video, we started saying, well, as as important as video is uh to be involved in podcasts now. And now with like AI and just so much content, we're saying how important it is for community uh these days. Everyone sort of talks about wanting the views, the

Beyond Downloads and Analytics

SPEAKER_00 1:04

downloads. I worked in uh podcasting with a capital P at a podcast hosting company for three years, and that was like the number one thing that people were looking for. How do I get more downloads? How do I quote unquote grow the show? And these platforms, these algorithms train us to obsess over the subscriber count, the download count. And podcast hosting companies, bless their hearts. Um, they put those analytics right in front of you. It's like actually one of the differentiators that a lot of podcast hosting companies hang their hats on because it's like one of the things that they can really drill down on, and that is statistics, right? Where are these downloads coming from? Who's listening? And I'm not saying that you don't have to pay attention to those podcasts and downloads. I'm not saying that they are unimportant to the success of your show. Um, they are important, but what's even more important is that tight-knit community and the energy that the audience brings. Whether it's two people or 20,000 people, what does that look like for your specific show? It might be too early on in your podcast uh journey to really measure that yet. And today's episode, I just want to talk about that. I want to hopefully de-stress that uh that theory and just like share some of the things that I do on the community front for another podcast. Um it's actually a publishing business uh that started as a podcast and and grew thanks to the podcast, but it grew in in many different areas, including community. Um, but we're talking about publishing to YouTube, newsletter, multiple podcasts, the blog, um, live online events, stuff like that. And I'll save that for a future episode of like how I I've grown that sort of side gig publishing business. Um, it's around the topic of WordPress, if if you don't know and don't follow me on that side of my career.

Tools Are Not Community

SPEAKER_00 3:09

But it's important to know that a community, like when you sit down and if you start chat GPTing things, is it a verb yet? Can I say that? Is it a Google? Is it a chat GPT? You start looking at how do I start a community for a podcast, you're often going to get advice on the technical side. Like, you need a Slack workspace, which is what I use for uh my other publication, or a Discord server, or a WhatsApp group, or a Telegram. I want to talk, I'll I mean I'll reference what those tools are. But that is exactly that. It is just a tool. Like I have a Slack community for the WP Minute. It is free to join. At one point it was paid. Uh, and it actually still is paid to support, but you can still join for free because it's important to me now more than ever to get people in a room together. But it's about gathering around a shared purpose. So the community side of it, when you think about it, when you think about it in the context of your podcast, you should be thinking, okay, here's what my show is about. Again, my other show is about WordPress. How do I get people who use WordPress, largely freelancers and agencies, to get in a room to chat with each other? For me, that that campfire is like, how's your business doing? Like, how's business trying to sell and consult on WordPress websites in the age of AI and with so much other competition to WordPress? And how do we keep that on repeat,

Keeping the Campfire Burning

SPEAKER_00 4:35

right? This is one of the hardest things to do. Things that I've failed at multiple times and is still with a lot of met with a lot of turbulence in my existing business. Is how do you keep this going week after week, month after month, and keeping people interested? What does that community timeline look like? Uh because again, like this stuff matters more than ever. We want to get people in the room, and it sounds good on paper, yeah, get people in the room, get like-minded individuals to have this conversation.

Content Fatigue and Real Connection

SPEAKER_00 5:10

But what's happening in the content world, uh, if if you do follow your stats, especially if you follow your website stats or your social stats or your downloads to your podcast, everybody and everyone is going down. I would say that even Netflix is going down with the rise of people consuming content on other streaming platforms. Um everyone is going for the eyeballs and the earlobes for listening to podcasts and consuming podcasts. And you are at competition with the Netflix's and the other streaming platforms and somebody else's podcasts, somebody else's uh newsletter posts and the Facebook feed. And what I think a lot of people are facing now is just overall fatigue from all of it, from all of it, not even like podcast fatigue or video fatigue. It's like, man, what do I do outside of this digital world? And this is where community comes into play. Because if you have engagements or other um in-person opportunities for your community, it's going to be a big win. But let's just stick that in our uh cap for a second and we'll move on to that in a second. But what the community does is it gives you another platform to really promote the um you know, the hero's journey of your show. Like what like this is why we're all here. This is what my show means to me, and hopefully what it means to you. And how do we all get value out of this, right? You as the podcast host, you know, you've got an extra set of dedicated eyeballs and earlobes onto your podcast. Like, I got a new episode out, get this great guest. What do you think? Who do you who do you think I should interview next? What do you think the next show topic should be? People in your community get value from connecting with each other, from connecting to you as the host. So there's that value for value exchange, which we often talk about um in podcasting 2.0. And this is the stuff that doesn't happen. You could make the argument for YouTube comments, but those are never fun. And those don't really cultivate like a connection other than just somebody broadcasting a message, really. Maybe you can reply, big deal. But this community creates that loyalty, that retention. It's just a better conversation that can happen, stronger word of mouth. Like people are sharing this. Like, hey, you know what? I I talked to this person in this community the other day. You know what they recommend? They recommend I go look at this tool or find this person. It's just way better. And I don't think I really need to push that. And I see that day to day with, again, the stuff that I do at the WP Minute and the Slack. People are referring each other to um different companies, uh, people are hiring other people in the community. Uh we're all sharing in the news, people are getting tips and tricks from other people. Like, it's just good.

Small Curated Community Funnel

SPEAKER_00 8:12

And the real big takeaway from this, because I said before, I want to de-stress the situation, is that it's small and curated. Like again, I think a lot of people are start to think, especially if you're early on, you're like, okay, I want to start a podcast. Maybe you had the idea about the community. You've seen it, you've seen community happen with other podcasters, other favorite podcasters that you follow, and you are stuck on the number of the community as well. And I won't deny this. Like in the early days, you could hear a pin drop in our Slack group. And sometimes you you cancel it. I mean, there's over 200 people in there. Um, but it's like everything else. It's that engagement that happens at smaller percentages. It's a numbers game. So if you looked at your website and you had 10,000 visits a month, and then a thousand subscribers on your newsletter, and then a hundred listeners in your on your podcast, and then 10 engaged individuals, this is that sort of like narrowing funnel that happens of, you know, big funnel at the top. Yeah, I know about your show. I know about your website. I don't really want to tune into your, I don't want to really subscribe to your newsletter, but then as soon as they subscribe to your newsletter, they're more engaged. And then you go, hey, by the way, I've got this podcast. And then a certain percentage of those people go, yeah, I like this brand enough, or I like you enough to also want to listen to you every week. And then once you've got them on the podcast, it's like, hey, we got this community that you can join. And there, and even a percentage of those people are like, okay, I don't know if I have the time for this, I don't know if the value is there. And then finally, like another percentage comes into your community. And that's what's happening in this new age of so much content and so much digital stuff. Um, that these numbers won't be massive, and that's okay. Uh that's okay. You know, I've been doing my podcast stuff in the WordPress world for like 18 years. Uh, and I I switched from one brand to a next, so I know there's a dip there. I took a little time off. Um, and I've actually removed myself as like the complete face for that publication because I am trying to scale it beyond me. I don't want people to be just me at this um at this publication because that has its own challenges, right? Um it's tough, it's a it's a difficult balance. But I just want to let you know that when we're chasing big numbers in the days of community and what we're getting these days, 100 downloads a month. Great. Let's build from that. How many people can you have a conversation with in a month?

Start Simple and Build Momentum

SPEAKER_00 10:44

And this is where the technical stuff comes in too. Oftentimes I've seen people go to things like Circle, which is another community-driven uh or community uh focused uh technology platform at this point. Like it does message boards, forums, live chat, streaming. They do courses, uh, you know, I'm sure they do a whole bunch of other things I don't even know about. And those are big platforms and they cost money. Uh, number one, they cost money. And a lot of people come in and say, let me start with a circle group and let's get this thing going. And then pin drop, like I said before, and you're paying for this thing, and it's it really decelerates the uh momentum that you might have had, it takes the wind out of you a bit, and you just feel like this isn't for me. Um what I want you to take away with knowing that some of this, I mean, of course, if you have hundreds of thousands of downloads a month, you've got a big audience, then you probably won't have this issue. But if you're like the rest of us who are trying to grow this thing, and we have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of downloads a month or per episode, we need to take things a little bit slower and not be so um deflated when we don't think it's accelerating fast enough. It's the persistence that will pay off. So think about that technically. Like if you know you're gonna start with a smaller audience, maybe a WhatsApp group or a telegram. I don't really use those often, but I know people use them. Um I am in a couple telegram groups and a couple WhatsApp groups, and I, you know, I pop in in and out. But start there. Like you don't have to get the Discord, the Slack, the circle, and build courses and a library of stuff. Because the worst thing that happens is when somebody walks into that big empty space and like nothing is happening, that's worse for the person coming in because now they're looking around going, wait a minute, I thought we had a community here. So start much smaller. Start one-on-one. Start with Google Meets every month, start with a one-on-one call. Just asking your community to chat with you one-on-one every month. 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Get to know them and then connect them together. Um because I think what we want is we want that meeting, meaningful conversation with you and with others, and and that's the snowball effect that gets the community side of things going.

Podcast Ownership and Community Scale

SPEAKER_00 13:10

You know, in the first episode of Matt Has a Podcast About Podcasting, I talked about, well, I made had my def shared my definition of what is a podcast. And for me, it's something that is that I own that I can move around, um, which is for me an RSS feed and a traditional audio podcast. It's not video, it's not Spotify, it's not YouTube. It is, you know, audio, RSS, I own it and move it around. And you don't have to prescribe to that. Um, content could be shared elsewhere on some kind of API platform that you're you're building. As long as you can take it and move it around easily, air quotes, then to me, like, okay, you you've got yourself this portable podcast. And community is right there with it. Community is right there with it. If you can't build that community around the content, I think you have something that is much harder to scale long term. I think about like branded shows or shows that you know brands are just putting out there to highlight their products and talk industry news. That's totally fine. Uh, it works as a mechanism of, let's say, marketing and communication. And sure, like you can have community around that. It could be customers, people who are super interested in whatever product that you offer. But I often wonder, as somebody who does that for a living, uh for Rocket Genius, uh, I often wonder like, how far can that community go? I mean, really, you know, cards on the table, how far should that community go? It's for the product. But when you're doing it on your own for your own thing that you're super passionate about, um, that that community then leads elsewhere, right? It evolves with the show. Your show will probably inevitably evolve into something else or at least mature in its standings, right? Like you come up with new segments, you come up with new seasons, new topics, you change maybe the format of the show. And I think the community can move with you, if that makes sense. Just like you can move the podcast, I feel like the community can, you know, move with you along the way. Uh and that's what is important to me, like a long term of the definition of you know what is a podcast.

Community Platform Options

SPEAKER_00 15:40

I do want to just like quickly go over some technical platforms that you could use for uh running a community on like the software side, like on the technical side. I've mentioned a bunch so far. I have a list in front of me. So um those of you watching on Apple HLS video, brought to you by Buzz Brown, you can uh you see me looking over at my monitor. Uh so WhatsApp, Telegram, those are two like super lightweight messaging platforms. Many of you are probably already familiar with those. I would look at that as a starting point to say, hey, look, I got this thing. Uh, and maybe we should join to have a conversation over there. Uh Slack and Discord, these are chat platforms that a lot of people are already familiar with. So Slack, especially if you're in the space that I'm in, which is like software and WordPress, web design, um, maybe nonprofit stuff. Slack is really uh prevalent in that space. Discord, much more on the techie side, uh, especially if you come from the gaming industry or uh the crypto industry or the you know bitcoin industry. Uh, but a lot of people that are in, let's say, um pop culture podcasts are going to use Discord a lot. Uh, so that's obviously an option. It's, I mean, I like it, but it is heavy, and a lot of people are afraid to use it. Uh, it's on it's unfortunate because if there was like a dumbed-down version of Discord side note that was more lightweight, but you had all the free controls that Discord does give you as an owner, it would be a killer app, in my opinion. Um Circle, as I mentioned before, that's a paid platform. There's a bunch of different like paid platforms. I'm sure even Patreon has some of the features that Circle has. If you want to go into that more closed source paid territory, which I'm not a huge fan of, um, but it is an option, especially if those of you who have like really big communities and courses and you just have that higher level of engagement, those are platforms that you take a look at. And then at the end of the day, there's always things like Facebook groups, if you can stand that. Uh again, I know a lot of successful Facebook groups, I know a lot of people who engage in Facebook groups. It just happens to be just like if you're browsing on Facebook and you're doing that thing, doing the doom scrolling, doing the time killing thing, uh, and you stumble upon conversation happening in a Facebook group. It's just very easy to be there already and then have that conversation. Um so anyway, like those are some of the technical choices that I might lean

Slack Tactics and Engagement Ideas

SPEAKER_00 18:08

to. Again, I'm using Slack for my stuff. And, you know, some of the things that I do are obviously weekly discussion topics. Um, since we cover a lot of WordPress stuff, we're always covering like the WordPress news. So there's always like stuff in the news that we're talking about. We do a monthly office hours call with our community. So it's uh either a featured guest or just like a come talk about your business thing. Like it's just everyone's sitting around. It's a air quote safe space to talk about business with other people. And um, yeah, we love to do stuff like that. And sometimes we'll do like a live uh AMA, ask me anything in the Slack, right? Where we bring a guest in and they chat about some of that stuff. So um, yeah, there's some definitely some ways to format around that. I mean, I'm not a membership uh community expert other than cultivating community and getting people in a room. I would love to uh you know optimize that a bit more and making sure that I am providing value, but at least it's always in the back of my head. If I'm going to have community, how do I deliver that value to the community, right? Because it's the same challenge. Like the same challenge you go through to get people to listen to the show, where to how do I follow you? How do I get the word out about the podcast? You're going to have that same challenge, getting people to engage in the community. Uh but again, like I said, starting early uh and often and one-on-one with people in the audience is a great, is

Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

SPEAKER_00 19:36

a great place. So one of the closing thoughts here that I have is if you're thinking community, if you're thinking podcast, if you're thinking how do I grow my show, community is right in line with a podcast. Think about what that value proposition is for your community, not to make it so commercial, but think about what that value proposition is. Think about what makes you passionate, think about what forms that campfire that people are going to want to show up to in your Slack, in your Telegram, in your Discord to have that conversation and build on top of that. And you're constantly listening and reiterating what you can do uh for that community. So hopefully you find that valuable today. It's Matt Has a Podcast About Podcasting, community. So important to podcasting. Find, find us, find me, wherever you get your podcast. Matt has a podcast about podcasting. Search for us, share it on social media if you have a podcaster in your life. See you in the next episode.