Hey hey, friends! Can you believe 2021 is coming to a close in the next few weeks? I surely can’t. I also can’t believe this is the last episode of Savvy Podcasting for Entrepreneurs before we wrap up for the season.
In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing all about listener surveys. Why they’re beneficial, how often we should run them, what to include in them, tools to use to collect data from your listeners, and more.
Before we dive in, I’d absolutely love it if you could take a couple of minutes to take my listener survey. I value your input more than you know so if you could help me make this podcast even better in 2022, I’d be forever grateful.
I have tons of amazing guests lined up for next year and some great solo episode ideas as well, but if you have any topics that you absolutely want me to cover next year, you can let me know by filling out the survey. To take the survey and be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift card, head to savvypodcastingforentrepreneurs.com/survey
Alright, let’s get into the episode.
So let’s chat listener surveys, shall we?
First up, let’s start with why they’re beneficial.
The main reason why listener surveys are beneficial is that they can help you better serve your audience.
We don’t want to be putting out content every week that our listeners don’t care about so asking them for their feedback in a listener survey really helps us cater our content towards our listeners’ specific wants and needs.
So in terms of how often to conduct listener surveys…I would say a minimum of once a year but I think twice a year could be beneficial as well.
Any more than that, you really wouldn’t have time to implement your listeners’ feedback before sending out the next survey so I think 2 times a year max is best so you have time to receive the feedback and implement and tweak for a while.
Now let’s get to the juicy part, what the heck should you be including in your listener survey at the very minimum?
So some questions you should definitely be asking in your survey are:
-How long have you been a listener of this podcast?
-How many episodes of this podcast have you listened to?
-Where do you listen to this podcast?
-How did you first hear about this podcast?
-What’s been your favorite episode of the podcast so far?
-What other podcasts do you listen to on a regular basis?
These are the bare minimum questions I think you should be asking on your listener survey but I also recommend throwing in some that are specific to your podcast audience.
And I do want to note that unfortunately, podcast host stats aren’t that great and you can’t really dive too deep into analytics so asking them how long they’ve been a listener, where they listen, and how they first heard about your podcast will help you gauge what platforms to focus on for your marketing in addition to which platforms your listeners prefer to listen to podcasts.
For example, in my listener survey, one of the questions I ask is how long that they’ve been podcasting for and it’s a multiple-choice question and they can choose between I haven’t launched yet, 3 months, 6 months, a year, 2-3 years, 3-5 years, and more than 5 years.
I also ask them “Are you a..” and give them the options of podcaster, podcast manager, both, or neither.
This allows me to get to know what level they’re at so I can get to know them a little better so I can better tailor my content to their needs.
Adding some of those types of questions into the mix will really help you get to know your audience better.
Okay so now that we’ve covered what you should include, let’s talk about how you can easily collect the data.
I recommend one of two ways.
First up, there are Google Forms. I know a lot of people love Google Forms so I figured I’d mention it first.
You can set all these questions up in a Google Form and then have it transfer the information into a Google sheet – easy peasy.
But personally, my favorite way to do this is by utilizing Airtable Forms.
If you know me, you know I’m a huge Airtable junkie so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I am recommending using Airtable Forms over Google Forms.
But basically, you can set up a form within Airtable, and then your answers will be populated into a spreadsheet – similar to Google Sheets but in my opinion, so much better.
If you go to the shownotes for this episode, which you can find on savvypodcastingforentrepreneurs.com, I’ll drop a quick tutorial in the shownotes on how to create forms in Airtable for anyone who wants to switch over to Airtable for spreadsheets instead of Google Sheets.
Okay, I think we’ve covered it all for creating listener surveys. Now I want you to go out there and create your listener survey and share it with your audience.
The end of the year and the beginning of the following year is the absolute perfect time to do this so let’s get on it.
If you have any questions on what to include in your listener survey I’m happy to help. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram to @jenny.suneson or email me at jenny@savvypodcastagency.com and I can give you some suggestions on specific things to add.
I can’t wait to hear from you!
Since this is our last episode of 2021, I hope you have an amazing holiday season and a wonderful start to your new year. You’ll be hearing me in your earbuds again the first week of January.
If you want to check out the shownotes, you can go to savvypodcastingforentrepreneurs.com and I’ll see you in 2022, savvies!