148 | 12 Days of Podcast Growth Day #6: How to HOLD Your Listener's Attention

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast and we are on day six. We are halfway through this 12-part audio course on how to grow and monetize a podcast. My name is Kevin Spiddler and I am your podcast growth coach and today we're going to talk about how you can make podcast episodes that keep listeners engaged and wanting more throughout the whole episode. Now our goal here is to achieve episode completion rates of 70% or more, meaning on average that your listeners stay tuned to your podcast for more than 70% of your episodes. And so to do that, I'm going to share with you today a rule of thumb that will help you achieve this no matter who your audience is, no matter what your podcast listener mission is, and no matter what your format is. And I got this tip from one of the best podcasters of the last decade. You see, back in 2021, we featured here on Grow the Show Robert Smith. Robert Smith is one of the key minds and producers behind the top NPR podcast planet money. He worked there for years. He was a host. If you love planet money, you've probably heard Robert's voice. And when I had him on the show a couple of years ago, I asked Robert how the heck that podcast planet money manages to get listeners to pay attention to their episodes. And I asked him that because planet money is a show that's kind of surprising because it has spent years and years and years atop the podcast listener charts. But it's about really complex obscure economy stuff. And so that show talks about complex economic and financial concepts. And yet, it's super, super popular. So if there's anybody who knows how to keep listeners listening, how to keep people's attention, it's going to be Robert. So I asked him, I said, Robert, how the heck do you do it? How do you keep listeners attention? Here's what he said. We want to raise a question in someone's mind. Sometimes we're subtle about this. Most of the time we're not subtle at all. We literally just say the question. You know, like this story makes us think, how does that work? You know, what are the principles behind that? Like we try and like plant the question in your mind that hopefully you will be like, yeah, that is a good question. And then we always promise that we're going to answer that question. Because I think, you know, if you listen to a lot of talk radio, they love to raise questions and never answer them, you know, is bowling a sport? I don't know, the phone lines are open. Like, okay. And then the true crime shows where you listen to like 10 seasons of this crime that they're investigating. And then at the end, they're like, yeah, we never found out. I think it's really delightful to raise a question and then just say, and we'll bring you the answer, you know, or at least imply that we have the answer. We have something which we call the hello and welcome because we literally say hello and welcome to play the money on Robert's wisdom. So and so today on the show, and we say what we're going to do on the show, we lay out exactly what's going to happen. And we say the question and we promise you that we're going to answer it. And then we throw an ad in there. It's that simple. Now ever since Robert shared that tip with me in the Grow the Show audience a couple of years ago, I have taught that concept to the podcasters that I work with directly. And I've actually been super surprised at how this little trick has improved podcasts of all types entertainment shows, true crime shows, interview shows, how to shows, you name it. But why the heck is this one trick so powerful? Well, it's for a few reasons. Number one, as the creator, it helps you focus your content. By picking one question to serve as the overall mission of the episode, you are ensuring that your content stays sharp and relevant. It stays on point. Another reason why posing a specific question is so powerful is because when you do that, it holds listeners attention throughout the episode. So people stay tuned because they are eager to finally get the answer. And so if your episode, you know, veers into something that they're not interested in or you digress into some sort of topic that is not immediately obvious to them why it's important, they're less likely to turn the episode off because they still want to know the answer to the question that you posed. The other reason the third reason why this is so powerful for podcasters is that when you pose a specific question that your episode's answer, it actually streamlines your production because knowing your episode's central question actually makes planning, recording and editing way more efficient and it especially makes interviewing easier because you have some guardrails built into the conversation. So okay, you get that you want to make every episode of your podcast pose a single question. And so the natural next question that you're going to ask me is, well, at what point do I actually decide what that question is? Where do I do it within my production process? And the answer is as soon as possible. The earlier in the episode production process that you can decide what question to pose, the more benefits you're going to get from this trick. And so let's work backwards to illustrate this point and illustrate how the earlier you do it, the more benefits you get. So for this example, let's assume that you operate an interview podcast. If you pose the question later in the process, so it's after the episode is already edited and you're getting ready to publish, at that point, it's still not too late to pose the specific question that the episode is there to answer. And when you do that, you get to use that specific question to craft a great compelling episode title. We're going to talk more about how to do that tomorrow. So that's benefit number one. It helps you create your episode titles. If you go even earlier in the production process and you pose the specific question that you want to answer after you're done interviewing the guest, but before the episode is edited and before you record your intro, number one, it makes it easier for you to write your intro because you can pose that specific question to your audience, right? It gets them hooked more on the episode, but it also makes it easier for you or your team to edit the conversation down and make it shorter because it makes it way easier to know what pieces of the conversation need to stay and what stuff you can edit out because it's really not relevant. If you go even earlier in the process and you pose the question before you even interview the guest, it'll be easier for you to interview them because while you're interviewing while you're having the conversation, you're going to have some guardrails in place, you're going to know what topics to cover, where to double click, or when a digression really is going to take you off track. If you pose it even earlier in the process before, not before the interview starts, but before you prepare for the interview, so researching, outlining what you want to ask, et cetera, then voila, your preparation process became easier because at the top of your page, you have written the specific question that you want to answer in this episode and you know that you don't have to go and research the guest's whole life story and research the first company that they started 30 years ago because that's not relevant to the question that you're answering today. But could you pose the question even earlier in your production process? Yes. You can pose the question that you want to answer with your episode before you even invite the guest to be interviewed on your show. And what that's going to do is it's going to make your invitation better. Your guest is going to be more likely to accept your invitation because instead of saying something like, hey, Robert Smith, will you come on grow the show? I'm a big fan. You instead say, hey, Robert Smith, will you come on grow the show? I'd love to have you come on so that we can answer the question to my listeners, how can we create really great podcast content? Robert gets the invitation. He's like, oh, that's an awesome topic. Yes, let's do that. Now you have a better invitation because you're proposing a more well thought out episode and the interview seems more interesting to the potential guest. But hold on, can we go even earlier in the process? Yes. You can pose the question that your episode is there to answer before you even pick which guests to invite? Because if you do that, if you know, hey, I want to make an episode that answers this question and then go find a guest that can help you answer that question, you're going to pick better guests because your guest selection itself will be in service of your listener mission rather than, oh, because I met this person or oh, this person might help me grow my audience or oh, this person's famous, your guest selection process will be improved by knowing ahead of time, what question do you want to answer? So do you see the benefits that this brings you? It's more than just listening of retention. The early on, the earlier on in your content creation process that you choose what question your content is going to answer, the better your content will be and the easier it will be for you to create it. And all of that adds up to podcast episodes that delight your listeners and keep their attention throughout. Now, keep in mind that this is an ideal. While you do want to try to know what question your episodes are answering as early on in the process as possible, it's also okay to not know it right away and that's going to happen. You know, it can be super fun to sometimes let the content just unfold on its own. And what's also true is sometimes if you're like me and you pose the question before you even go into the interview, sometimes you start having the interview and the answers that you get show you that, oh, wow, we're actually going to be answering a different question today. And that's okay. That can be super fun. And some of my best episodes have come from that. I had to throw away all my preparation, but it still happens sometimes and you can still make great episodes. But the key is to throughout the process from ideation all the way to publishing to be constantly on the lookout for the answer to this. What question is this podcast episode answering for my listeners? Once you know what that is, your content will be better and it will hold listeners attention better. And remember, this approach is not just for interview shows, even though that's the example that we just used, whether you're running a solo show or a sports talk show or a classic interview podcast or anything else framing each episode around a question will keep your audience hooked. Go ahead, try it for your next episode and watch how things get better. I guarantee you're going to see a difference not only in your listener completion rates, which was our goal today, but also in how engaged your audience becomes. You're going to hear from them more. They're going to comment on your stuff. They're going to email and say, wow, this was amazing. So now that you know how to create podcast episodes that hook and hold listeners attention, you're well on your way to publishing episodes that average completion rates of 70% and above, meaning episodes that people put on, they put their phone away, and they love. And I'll tell you right now, it's pretty hard to not grow a podcast that averages 70 plus percent retention rates every single episode. And with that, we're ready to start getting into the more tactical stuff that I know you want to learn about. And so tomorrow, we're going to talk about how to take these amazing episodes that you know how to create and how to package them up and promote them to your current audience. That's what we're going to dig into tomorrow in lesson number seven. I'll see you then. By the way, if you want to get the text versions of these lessons in your inbox as they get released, go ahead and go to 12 days of podcast growth.com. That's one two days of podcast growth.com. And you'll receive an email in your inbox every day for the remainder of this series. The link to 12 days of podcast growth.com is in the show notes. See you tomorrow.