If you want to be a significant podcaster, if you want to build an audience, if you want a loyal tribe of listeners who will listen to every episode, buy the march, follow you on social media - then trust is what you’ll need.
It is such common sense, but I’m constantly amazed at the number of podcasters out there who don’t respect their audience, and that means that the audience doesn’t trust them.
So, how do you go about gaining your listeners trust?
First of all, it’s not something that happens overnight, and it’s something that you’ve always got to keep in mind because new people are joining your podcast all the time, so you can’t expect them to have heard the episode where you worked on gaining trust.
Gaining the trust of your listeners should be ingrained in the very fabric of your podcast. Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to be all touchy-feely and talk about your emotions in your podcast.
Although, that wouldn’t harm things either.
It’s all about being honest with them, being sincere, being upfront.
At the same time as being entertaining, engaging and, if necessary, informative.
As I said earlier, the number of podcasters who don’t respect their listeners is staggering - but that’s where trust starts.
If you respect your listeners, be honest about changes to the podcast, your thoughts about your subject - then they will begin to trust you.
Don’t look down on your listeners, because they sure as heck won’t look up to you.
And when we talk about listeners, don’t forget who we mean here; not your friends and family, those will always be around. The proper listeners are those that are coming because of you, because of your content - not because they’re related to you.
It’s those strangers that you need to think of when I talk about gaining trust. Why should they come back to you episode after episode after episode.
Earlier on I talked about being honest, being sincere and being upfront.
And that can apply in some of the smaller circumstances too.
Let’s say that you’ve decided to change the frequency of your podcast. You’ve been doing a weekly podcast for a while, but you’ve realised that you’re not going to be a able to keep that up and you’re going to have to change it to fortnightly, or monthly.
Tell the audience. At the beginning of the penultimate weekly podcast, if you can, mention it then and reinforce it at the end. Again, on the next episode - the final weekly one - make more of a point of it.
What that means is the audience 1) knows not to expect a new episode a week later and 2) they feel that they were in on the decision.
Think about it. Whatever medium you’re on; television, radio, podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, SnapChat - the people that you listen to or watch, you want to feel a connection with them, and you want to be a part of their group, of their gang, of their tribe.
Your listeners want exactly the same thing - so don’t deny them the chance by not respecting them, meaning that they won’t trust you.
Again, I’m not saying that you have to change who you are as a podcaster - you just need to incorporate this respect, this honesty within the scope of your current podcast. You will absolutely reap the benefits.