Letting your audience participate in your podcast is one of the most effective ways to grow your following, engage your listeners and diversify your content. 

After all, your audience love sharing their stories, questions and opinions with you. According to Scientific American, people love to talk about themselves and share their experiences as it gives them ‘a neurological buzz’!

And audience participation doesn’t just keep your listeners happy - it makes life easier for you too! Receiving voice submissions helps you easily generate unique content for your podcast, get to know your audience better and give each of your broadcasts a more personal touch.

The problem is that often, it can feel like too much work to organise a session of live calls with your audience - or to sort through all the questions and stories your listeners have sent in by email, text and post. 

If you can relate to either of these struggles, we’ve got great news for you! The latest voice recording and messaging technologies are making it quick, easy and straightforward to receive high-quality audio content from your audience - all in one place - that you can easily feature on your next episode. 

Today, we’ll be taking a close look at how you can use voice technology to hear from your listeners directly, and explore the incredible benefits this can have for both you and your audience.

How to use voice technology to hear from your audience‍

We built our voice recording and messaging platform Vox to give online brands and podcasters a way to hear from their audience quickly and easily. 

When you ask your listeners to submit their stories, questions or thoughts, they can simply click on a link, hit the record button and let you know what’s on their mind. 

You'll then receive all of your listeners’ submissions in a voice inbox, where you can save their submissions as MP3 files, see them transcribed as text and either reply directly to their messages by voice or save them to share live during your next episode! 

As well as customising your Vox button with your podcast’s own branding, you’ll also be able to choose whether your listeners are asked for their personal details - such as their name and contact information. 

This allows you to protect your audience’s anonymity in cases where you’re asking them to share personal stories, or to personally get back in touch with those who leave you their details and send you an especially valuable submission. 

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Now that you know how voice messaging for podcasting works, let’s break down the top six benefits of voice technology for podcasting: 
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Six major benefits of voice technology for podcasting 

#1 Speaking communicates far more than writing ever could‍

There’s no doubt that talking is far more human than typing. So much emotion gets lost in writing, and all the subtleties of intonation, speed, tone and nuance disappear completely when we write things down. 

We’re sure you’d agree with us that a story becomes more touching, a question becomes more pressing and a joke becomes funnier when you hear it spoken aloud. After all, voice has been humans’ most powerful relationship-building tool for millennia! 

Often, it’s not about what you say, but how you say it - and letting your listeners share and use their voices instantly creates an atmosphere far more personal than simply reading their submissions along. 

#2 Voice technology lets you screen your audience’s submissions before you play them on air‍

You might now be wondering if the best way to hear from your customers would simply be to let them call in live.

The problem with having people phone up to share their stories, thoughts and questions is that you don’t know exactly what they might say live on your show - and you may end up passing up on some of your audience’s best submissions while you’re still talking with someone else! 

When you have no clue what your audience will call in and say, it’s also hard to plan exactly how that portion of your show will play out. And of course, there’s never a 100% guarantee that anyone will be free to call in at all! 

When you have a chance to sort through your audience’s submissions before your show, you’ll be able to make sure that none of your favourite submissions get left out of the equation - and encourage more people to share their story with you the second it springs into their mind. 

#3 Voice technology makes it easier for more of your listeners to get in touch‍

When you ask your listeners to call in live, they need to be fully available and have their hands free at the exact time your episode is airing. 

Especially for smaller podcasts, this time constraint not only massively limits the number of amazing submissions you’ll be able to listen to, but it may also stop some shyer callers from phoning as they won’t be able to prepare for the questions you may ask them back! 

With a voice recording platform, your listeners can simply share what’s on their mind as easily as they would send a voice note over WhatsApp to their friends. After all, more and more people are opting to send voice messages over texting these days, and TechJury recently reported that over 40% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. Clearly, people love to use their voices - so make it just as easy for them to reach out to you that way! 

#4 Audience participation boosts engagement‍

As we touched on earlier, not only do your audience love to listen to you - they also love it when you listen to them! Keep involving your listeners in your episodes and you’ll be giving them a real incentive to keep coming back for more. 

Voice technology makes having an interactive, engaging podcast easy, as you can simply request submissions from your audience, choose the best and play them on your show. A win-win for both you and your listeners! 

For more opportunities and ideas, see our Guide to Podcast Audience Engagement.

#5 Listen to your audience’s submissions all in one place‍

Gone are the days of having to compile a document of questions that your audience have texted, emailed and sent in by mail. 

With a voice recording and messaging platform like Vox, you can ask your users to share a specific kind of story or question - and have them all arrive in one place (your voice inbox) for you to sort through in your own time. 

#6 You don’t need to create as much original content for each episode‍

Especially if you run a smaller podcast, it can be hard work trying to create engaging new audio content for your listeners on a weekly or monthly basis. In fact, Hot Pods recently published an article describing how many podcasters suffer from burnout while trying to keep up with the pressure to create exciting new content on a tight deadline. 

Voice messaging can help alleviate some of this pressure by letting you hand the mic over to your listeners for a change. After they’ve chimed in with their own thoughts, questions and stories, your job is simply to respond to and expand on their thoughts. It’s a fun way to switch things up, find out what your audience are thinking and be inspired by new ideas you may not have considered before. 

It’s time to start listening!  ‍

For years, podcasters have seen interacting with their audiences as one of the most exciting ways to enrich or spice up an episode. And thanks to new developments in voice technology, it now couldn’t be easier to hear from your listeners directly.

So what are you waiting for? Start letting your fans share their questions and stories with you today, and create a podcast that’s more interactive, engaging and human than ever before. 

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To find out more about how our voice recording and messaging software can help grow your podcast, get in touch with Telbee today!