When it comes to growing your podcast, listening to your audience is key.

Not only will hearing your listeners’ feedback (in their own voices) help you improve your show’s style, format and content, their questions, stories and thoughts will make great shareable content for your future episodes.

Above all, if you go above and beyond to build relationships and deliver value to your core group of loyal listeners, they’ll become the driving force that helps your podcast grow. They’ll listen to every single episode. They’ll post about it on social media. And most importantly, they’ll tell their friends to check it out.

With this in mind, we’d go so far as to say that letting your audience’s voices become part of your show is crucial for attracting, engaging and retaining more listeners. ‍

That’s why we’re so excited to share that voice recording and messaging solutions are available to help you connect with your audience quickly, easily and personally.

Let’s break down 5 major benefits of letting your audience use their voices to participate in your podcast - and explore how online voice messaging tools can help you involve your listeners more than ever:

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#1 Audience participation boosts engagement‍

Not only do your audience want to listen to you - they want you to listen to them!

According to Scientific American, people love to talk about themselves and share their experiences as it gives them ‘a neurological buzz’!

Plus, let’s not forget that we’re in the midst of a speech and audio boom. 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.

When you keep involving your listeners in your episodes, you’ll be giving them a real incentive to keep coming back for more. In turn, you’ll see your audience growing, and your engagement levels will soar.

#2 You don’t need to create as much original content

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.

Using voice messages from your listeners in your podcast 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 opinions, questions or stories, your job is simply to respond to or expand on their thoughts.

It’s a fun way to switch things up, find out what your audience is thinking and be inspired by new ideas you may not have considered before.

#3 Spoken submissions from different listeners add an even more ‘human’ element to your show 

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 broadcast their diverse voices on your show creates an atmosphere far more personal and exciting than simply reading their texts or letters aloud. 

#4 It’s never been easier for your listeners to speak directly to you 

Traditionally, to hear and respond to your listeners’ voices on your show, you might have had to set up a separate WhatsApp account to receive voice messages from your audience. 

Either that, or you’d have to ask them to call in live - meaning they’d have to be fully available and have their hands free at the exact time your episode was airing. 

Especially for smaller podcasts, these kinds of constraints not only take up a lot of your time and massively limit the number of amazing submissions you’ll be able to listen to, but they may also stop some shyer callers from getting in touch with you as they won’t be able to prepare for the questions you may ask them back.

However, with the advent of new online voice messaging tools for podcasting, hearing directly from your audience has never been easier. 

You can simply give your listeners the option to leave you a voice note telling you what they think, and they can share what’s on their mind as easily as they would send a voice message to their friends.

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#5 New technologies allow you to screen your audience’s submissions before you play them on air‍

Another benefit of using an online voice messaging tool to collect voice notes prior to each episode is that you’ll have a chance to sort through your audience’s submissions before broadcasting them.

This is a luxury that used to only be reserved for your listeners’ written submissions, which - as we touched on earlier - don’t feel nearly as personal or exciting as hearing someone sharing their story in their own voice! 

When you switch listeners’ live phone calls for pre-recorded voice messages, you’ll be able to keep your audience engaged with your show while ensuring that none of your favourite messages get left out of the equation - and encourage more people to share their story with you the second it springs into their mind.

Let their voices be heard

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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 couldn’t be easier to hear directly from the people who love your podcast the most. 

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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Want to dive deeper into audience engagement?

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If you'd like to find our more about the value of including your listeners in your podcast, along with ideas, examples and strategies, see our in-depth Guide to Podcast Audience Participation.

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How online voice messaging tools can help

Now that you’re convinced (we hope!) that audience participation is key to growing your podcast this year, it’s time to get into how you can go about using online voice messaging to spice up your own podcast.

With a voice messaging tool like telbee, it will only take you a couple of minutes to create and customise a voice recorder for your business - and you’re free to start using it right away!

The magic of voice messaging for podcasts starts with the voice recorder:

With telbee, you can create and customise a beautiful voice recorder like the ones above, which you can either embed on your website or set up on a standalone landing page that you can link to from anywhere (on social media, in emails or even via QR codes).

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

If they choose, they can also add their contact information before sending the voice note, so you can reply with a voice note of your own (or get in touch separately by phone or email).

You’ll be able to listen to, screen, organise, reply to and download the voice notes you receive in your dedicated ‘voice inbox’.

Click here to find out how to create, customise and use a telbee channel for your own podcast - it’s easy!

Let your listeners borrow the mic 🎤

Ultimately, when you start listening to your audience’s voices, and broadcasting them on your show, your listeners will feel more valued by you than ever - and you’ll have even more great content to share with them. It’s a win-win for everyone! 

To find out more about how to record interview questions for your podcast from listeners to make it even more amazing, get in touch with the team at telbee today. We’d love to hear from you!