With the launch of comments on podcast or video episodes, all creators no matter where your show is hosted now have the tools to directly engage with their audience and develop their fan community on Spotify. To learn how creators have been taking advantage of this feature, we chatted with Dope As Yola & Marty O'Neill of the Dope as Usual podcast and Annie Elise of Serialously with Annie Elise to understand their strategies behind engaging their audience with comments.
The key to a thriving comments section is making sure your audience is aware of where and how they can reach you. Both shows include a call to action in every episode to leave a comment on Spotify.
“There’s a couple key places where we encourage our fans to interact with us directly in the episode. We drop a call to action for our fans to leave a comment at the beginning and end of all of our episodes and we try to make comments from our fans a part of our show.” - Dope as Usual
As part of her true crime podcast, Annie makes sure to include calls to action throughout her episodes to engage her fans during interesting moments that she knows her audience will have opinions on.
“I typically include a call to action in my episode outro but I don’t just say “leave a comment on Spotify” or “Tell me what you think. Instead, I want to create a conversation or dialogue going between me and my fans, so I also always include open ended questions around segments I know will be interesting or controversial in my episodes to encourage them to engage.” - Serialously with Annie Elise
The benefits of building your fan community go beyond just the interactions you are having with your fans. Dope as Usual points to their engaged comments section as proof to potential sponsors or guests that their fans are loyal and tune into their content, no matter what the topic might be.
“I think comments are one of the key ways we’ve been able to grow our show. The more the world can see in terms of audience engagement grows our ability to attract potential sponsors and guests. It’s social proof for them as well and makes them excited to be a part of our show.”
Encouraging listeners to leave a comment is step one, but the real work starts once the comments start rolling in. Replying back to your audience and making sure you incorporate their feedback is key to building a healthy and vibrant community in the comments section.
For Dope as Usual this means taking the time to recognize the individual behind every comment.
“Be genuine and care! We always reply back when it makes sense versus just reacting with an emoji. We know many of our long-term fans by name, directly from the comments section and it’s a connection that never goes away for us. It’s our secret sauce.”
Dope as Yola says he spends a few hours a week replying to comments, but it’s one of the highest returns on investment for their time. The fruit of their labor comes when they are able to see how their online fan community translates in the real world. Recent meet and greets have seen lines around the block and fans waiting hours for their chance to meet them.
As an interview style podcast, they also feed off of their fan’s comments to improve their show. Whether it’s identifying future guests to book or changing the launch time of new episodes to avoid releasing during Monday Night Football (a true story!), Dope as Usual is particularly keen to incorporate their fan’s feedback into the entire fabric of their show.
For Annie, she has found success by specifically letting her audience know that she wants to engage and reply as an incentive to get her fans to comment and let her know their thoughts.
“I will remind them that I'm so excited because now I can respond directly to you guys. So if you have specific questions about a detail in this case or if something felt weird, let me know and I'll let you know my thoughts as well. And then I feel like they're more inclined to listen and do that.”
Annie has also used the ability to reply to fan comments to point her audience to back episodes of her catalog if they are requesting a case she has already covered in the past, a great way to use the feature to deepen your connection with new fans.
Managing listener feedback at times can be a challenge, but it’s important to create a general process around what comments you want to engage with. For Annie, she prioritizes engaging with comments from as many listeners as possible to ensure that her audience knows that she’s reading them.
“I try to get to every comment and want my listeners to see that I’m engaged and reading their comments. If it’s something simple I’ll give it a like, but I always reply to questions or interesting comments from listeners. The Spotify for Creators mobile app makes it easy for me to reply to comments whenever I have a free moment.”
Both Dope as Usual and Serialously use the Spotify for Creators mobile app to manage their listener feedback. With the mobile app you can easily:
The most important advice that these creators had for anyone looking to develop their own communities around their show was to be yourself. The community you cultivate ultimately will be a reflection of you, your show, and the unique conversations and relationships that you have with your fans. For Serialously, Annie wants to have an open dialogue with her fans and values healthy debates in her comments section.
“I always enjoy seeing constructive criticism from my audience so that I can cater my show better to them. Even if it's harsh, I try to make it a point to respond back. If you as the creator respond in a respectful way, it allows for other viewers to see that conversation and I believe it helps create a more healthy dialogue in the comments.”
For Dope as Usual, connecting with their fans in the comments ultimately helps humanize them as not just hosts of the podcast, but as another member of the community they have helped create around the show.
“The strongest thing you can have as a creator is a close relationship with your fans. They don’t just care about our show, but they also care about me. They support everything we do because they care about us as people.”
Ready to get started? Download the new mobile app to view and respond to new listener comments.
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