Speaker 0: Ask your audience these 3 questions in 2026.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
Surveying your audience doesn't have to be a complicated matter.
Moving into a new year, at least at the time of this recording,
here are the 3 most important questions I recommend you ask your
audience.
And you don't need a fancy form or survey system for this.
Simply ask your audience and provide an easy way for them to
respond, such as by email or voice mail, a contact form, a social
post, a comment on your website or Facebook group or community
and such.
For example, you could use Podgagement's podcastfeedback.com
feature to collect written or voice mail feedback from your
audience, and that could be really easy.
It doesn't have to be this whole complicated thing of setting up
a form plug in on your WordPress website and then building a
whole survey out.
It could simply be asking your audience these 3 questions and
telling them how they can then send that feedback with their
answers. So here are the 3 questions.
If you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode, they
are a simple tap or swipe away or go to the
audacitytopodcast.com/ 3 questions.
Number 1, what would you like more of from me or my podcast?
Or you could say us or our podcast if it's multiple people.
This starts off with something positive.
This question assumes they already like you and your podcast, and
you're looking for additional content they want from you because
they already like what they're getting from you, and maybe
there's something more that they want from you.
Anything your audience says could be a potential episode, a mini
series.
It could be some kind of extra value that you provide through a
community or something else.
It could be a product or a service that you create and sell or
some other opportunity.
For example, you might have an interview based podcast and your
audience might ask to hear more from only you.
Or maybe they give you some topics they would love to hear you
cover in future episodes. Question number 2.
What would you like less of from me slash us or my slash our
podcast?
Again, you can assume your responding audience already respects
you to some degree if they're taking the time to respond to your
questions.
So while it may sting a little to learn the things they want you
to do less, take it as constructive criticism from people who
care. Maybe they want less packed into each episode.
Maybe they want less of a particular subject you frequently
mention.
Maybe they don't like a new thing you've added to your podcast.
And even for anything that they say they want less of, try to
understand what they're really looking for here.
For example, with this, I kind of alluded to it a little bit just
now, but if they say your episodes are too long, I'd really like
it if they're shorter.
Well, maybe they're not actually talking about the length of the
episode.
Maybe they're really expressing that what you're putting in the
episode is just too boring.
Or maybe you're trying to pack too much into an episode, and if
you reduce how much you're trying to include in the episode, yes,
that shortens the length, but it also simplifies the episode and
maybe simplifies the take home value that they get from it and
the actionable steps that they might implement or whatever it is
that they're getting from your podcast.
You've likely heard the adage less is more.
Keep that in mind when your audience is telling you they want
less of something because it might actually mean they want more
of you in some way, but less of something else.
And it might actually present more opportunities for you to
engage deeper or share more of what your audience does want from
you and your podcast.
So they're not saying they want less of you.
They just want less of a particular thing.
Question number 3, what do you want to tell me slash us that's
been on your mind?
This is the catch all question, but I like the wording because it
implies there might be something that they've wanted to share for
a while but maybe didn't think you'd be open hearing.
You could get positive or negative feedback from this question,
but it is very open ended.
All of 3 of these questions are open ended, but especially this
1, while it still leads them in that direction of there's been
something on your mind, and I would like to hear that question.
But keep the assumption that your responding audience is sharing
this because they care.
Then after you've asked these 3 questions and you start getting
feedback from your audience responding to these 3 questions, Your
responsibility is then for you to turn these into to dos and take
action.
The worst thing you can do with solicited feedback is nothing.
Even if some feedback suggests something that you really don't
want to change, the least you can do is thank that person for
their response, acknowledge the value of their opinion and the
time that they took to share it with you, and be respectfully
honest about what you're willing or not willing to do.
I remember for the TV show fan podcast I had about the TV show
Once Upon a Time, we went really in-depth on that.
So the TV show episodes were in an hour slot on TV, which means
they're really about 43 minutes after you remove the commercials.
And some of our podcast episodes would go 2 to 3 hours long
discussing 1 episode of the show.
A couple of people sent in some feedback saying, your episodes
are really long.
I wish they were a lot shorter, like 20 minutes or so.
And the thing is, well, we did do a short form episode, which was
initial reactions.
But the whole reason we had the long episodes was because there
was so much to talk about sometimes.
And the understanding that I had is, well, our podcast is
obviously not for you.
If you don't want us to go this in-depth, 1 person actually, and
this was in a podcast review that they left for our show.
They said, oh, I love that they go so in-depth, and they catch
things I would have never noticed before, but I wish the episodes
were shorter. What how do you do that?
How do you go as in-depth, but keep the episodes super short
without trying to speak super quickly or brushing over everything
with only a couple of sentences per subject?
That just doesn't work.
So, obviously, it was easy to understand that we appreciate the
feedback.
And clearly, this is not the kind of podcast maybe that you're
wanting most. If you enjoy us, that's great.
We'd love to have you stick around.
And it sounds like you might also enjoy other podcasts that do
things completely differently.
But no matter what, remember that just because a tiny portion of
your audience says something doesn't mean you should or should
not do it.
I've heard people alienate a majority of their audience because
of what the very small minority of their audience said, even when
what the audience said was positive.
Like, oh, I love it when you do this thing.
I would like it if you would do that thing more often.
And then the podcaster thinks, they like that.
I should do that thing more often.
And they do it more often, and then the majority of their
audience is like, no. That's too much.
We don't want you to do that thing that often.
So you have to take these things with several grains of salt at
this rate with inflation.
So here's where I want you to take some action.
I want to hear your thoughts about The Audacity to Podcast.
I would love for you to answer these same questions from me and
my podcast.
Those questions are, number 1, what would you like more of from
me or The Audacity to Podcast?
Number 2, what would you like less of from me or The Audacity to
Podcast?
And number 3, what do you want to tell me that's been on your
mind? I'd love to hear from you.
You can go to podcastfeedback.com/audacity to send your feedback
written or voice mail right there from the site, and that will
email it to me right away, even transcribing your voice mail if
you include it.
And if you send a voice mail, it really helps if you speak any
kind of URL, type it in that message box that still appears when
you're sending a voice mail because that gives me the extra
context and helps me to be able to link back to you if I include
your voicemail in a future episode in some way.
So you get some love back that way.
And that extra context is available because of how I've made
Podgagement to be able to do that. And that's the thing.
There have been voice mail systems out there long before
Podgagement came along, but it would be like, you could only do a
voice mail.
You couldn't add anything else except an email address.
So if someone was talking very slowly and then got to their web
address instead, the audacitypodcast.com, and then you might be
like, wait. What what did you just say? I didn't get that.
And how do I even spell that thing that you just said?
Well, that's where the message box still applies so you can add
some extra written context in there or your audience can.
So it's very easy for then you as the podcaster to see, oh,
that's the URL that they mentioned or that's how that thing is
spelled.
Or sometimes people will say something in a recording, and then
after they've pressed stop, they realized, oh, I forgot to
mention this thing, so they can add that in that message.
And then when you share that in your podcast, you can incorporate
that into how you include their message.
And I would do the same thing here if you send a response to
these 3 questions to me at podcast feedback dot com slash
audacity.
And that's powered with Podgagement, which I would love for you
to do.
And maybe by you doing this about me and my podcast, you're doing
this yourself will help you feel better about the kinds of
responses that you might get from your own audience when you ask
them these 3 questions.
And you can send these questions through email.
You could ask them in your podcast.
You could post them in social. Really, do all of that.
Post it in all of the places that you have an audience related to
your podcast, but especially ask in your podcast.
It could be your call to action. Instead of, hey.
Give us a rating review or share the episode.
It might be something like, hey.
For this month, what we'd really love for you to do is please
answer these basic 3 questions for us, and then you give them an
easy way to send that feedback to you.
And speaking of feedback, I appreciate the value feedback given
by Brian Insmeter from toptieraudio.com, who gave 1,363 total
Satoshis for my previous couple of episodes, and those were
streamed automatically as he was listening to those episodes.
I really appreciate that.
Also, thanks to the upcoming couple of podcasters who invited me
to speak on their podcast about Podcast Chapters and my new Pod
Chapters app that I made.
And these are other podcasts about podcasting that will be a
delight to talk with them because I love talking about podcasting
with anybody.
And especially to talk about this thing I'm so passionate about
pod chapters and how that helps you and other podcasters make
better podcast chapters, even better than the ones that you get
from Apple. And here's what's really cool with it.
Now with the new Apple feature, you can actually download the
chapters from Apple in a text file, and you can upload that into
PodChapters.
So it immediately converts it into podcasting 2 chapters and m p
3 embedded chapters for you.
You don't have to do any kind of fancy conversion or anything
like that.
It's doing it for you, or you can use the AI tools to make the
chapters for you.
I'll be talking more about those 2 podcasts and the episodes
after we've recorded those episodes because I definitely want to
give a shout out and let you hear those episodes when they're
available.
So that's why I'm not saying the names of the podcast yet until
we've actually recorded some episodes.
So what I would love for you to do, although there are lots of
things I've mentioned, the main thing I would love is for you to
send me your answers to these 3 questions for my podcast.
What would you like more of? What would you like less of?
And what else do you want to tell me?
Send your feedback to podcast feedback dot com slash audacity.
Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of
the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own
podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J.
Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com and the Daniel J. Lewis on X.
Thanks for listening.