How to Get More Podcast Reviews

How do I get more podcast reviews? 

This is one of the questions we at Wildfire Creative consistently get asked by our clients. The purpose behind reviews is simple: humans like to know someone else has tried something first and that they vouch for it. It’s the same reason you scroll down to read Amazon customer reviews before purchasing a product. 

Reviews help establish your podcast’s reputation, give you ideas on improving your content, and ultimately help influence people to listen to your show. With so many entertainment options and things vying for our time, a five-star rating often makes a potential listener choose one podcast over thousands of others.

Listener feedback is so essential for determining how many listeners are tuning in and whether your show needs improvement because the benefits of getting a vote from someone who listens to your show can be immeasurable when it comes to building community and having support around what you’re doing so don’t hesitate to ask. 

Before You Ask for Reviews

Now, before we get into all the strategies for getting more reviews, let’s take a moment and talk about your podcast itself for a moment. We all know marketing a bad product is a waste of time. Let’s be honest, y’all, no amount of money, creative marketing angles, or any Hail Mary strategy will help you grow a stale podcast.

Before you start trying to crack the code on asking for reviews, you should ensure your podcast has great audio and content. Because we promise gimmicks and shortcuts may work in the short term, but they’re not going to sustain you for the long term. As Tammy always says, ” podcasting is a long-term game.” So instead of leaping on the latest trend, focus on creating value through strong relationships, great audio quality, and value-based content.

If you are wondering how to know what’s good quality or how to improve audio quality, please listen to episode eight of the Creative Cast podcast, where Tammy talks all about how to improve the quality of your podcast, including some tips, some tricks, some editing software that you can use. 

Challenges & Strategies

One of the challenges to getting reviews is that not all platforms support this function. The only major directories that currently support listener reviews are Apple Podcasts (or iTunes), Stitcher, CastBox, PodBean, and Podchaser, so these are the ones you want to focus on. 

Now, let’s talk about strategy, but before applying these strategies, we want you to know where your listeners can leave their reviews. We want you to remove all the barriers that could be in their way because, believe it or not, it isn’t always clear how to leave a review, and certain platforms aren’t very straightforward.

Some of them are confusing, and sometimes that confusion about how to leave a review keeps people from actually leaving the review, so let’s take some time to focus on removing as much of that confusion as possible. For example, in every episode’s show notes of Creative Cast with Tammy Munson, we list the steps for leaving a review on Apple Podcasts toward the bottom of the show notes.

Apple Podcast reviews are the ones that are most important to us here at Wildfire Creative, so those are the ones that we choose to focus our attention on. If you have a YouTube channel, you could even record a short tutorial video (using Loom or other video recording software) showing your listeners how to leave a review on these different platforms. This is especially true or helpful if your demographic is older and unsure how to leave a review. This will be valuable information for them. You could spend some time in an episode walking them through the steps to leave a review on Apple Podcasts to remove any confusion or uncertainty they may have. 

One of the next things I want you to think about is reaching out to a few core die-hard fans because even if you have a small podcast, it’s likely that you’re going to have a few loyal listeners that you’ve spoken with through social media. They’ve left comments on your show notes. They’ve sent you emails. These loyal listeners are a great place to start when you need to get your first few reviews. Of course, reach out to them and ask them if they would be willing to leave you a rating and a review, and most likely, they will be happy to help you out.

If you are launching a podcast, you will create a launch team and get a bunch of reviews from them. Before your podcast, even launches, reach out to your friends, family, and any existing community to let them know about the podcast and see if they want to be part of your team.

Another strategy is to include a call to action or CTA in each episode, asking about reviews for the podcast. Now, this is the most straightforward way to get reviews. Ask your community for them. You would be surprised to hear how many podcasters don’t include that ask in promoting their episodes.

With that said, be sure to communicate with your community/your listeners about how much reviews can actually help your show and why they’re needed because since your fans love listening to you and have built a personal connection with you, they’re going to be naturally inclined to help you out. 

Again, remember that your call to action doesn’t have to be long and involved. You want it to be as simple as possible. You could say, “If you got any value out of this, I would love it if you would leave a review on Apple Podcast or Stitcher or any of the other podcast apps you may listen to me on.” Pretty simple, right?! Again, you only need to direct people to your podcast review section for a few seconds.

If you already have many reviews, I want you to highlight some high-quality ones. Imagine how you would feel if someone from your favorite podcast read your review live on the air and gave you a special shout-out. Amazing right?! Now, that’s the same thing you can offer your listeners by reading their reviews on your podcast.

When you spend 60 seconds reading one of your five-star reviews, you will encourage a feeling of community and show that you are accessible to your listeners. You’re not too high and mighty or big for your britches to interact with your fans, and that humility goes a long way. 

For example, you could say something like this, “So I want to take a moment and give a special shout-out to my friend Michelle. Here’s what she said in her review on Apple Podcast… (and you would read the review). Thanks so much, Michelle. That means a lot, and every review helps. If you’d like to receive a shout-out on future episodes, leave a review for this show in Apple Podcasts.”

Simple as that. Easy peasy, right? 

Run Review Contests or Incentives

Another option is you could run a contest. Contests work best if you have a sizable audience, but the number of reviews for your podcast doesn’t accurately reflect that yet. So if that describes your podcast, I want you to consider running a review contest. So here’s basically how it works.

First, decide what your giveaways are going to be. It could be a one-on-one coaching session with you, some fun swag you have, like a t-shirt or a coffee mug, or maybe even free access to an online course you’ve put together. Then you will announce that you’re running a podcast review contest and reveal what they’re entering to win. Next, you set a date when the contest will close – we suggest letting it run for about a week because if you cut it off too soon, you will not get many entries. On the other hand, if you let it run too long, your listeners will not feel a sense of urgency to enter the contest. 

Finally, you select the contest winner and announce it on an episode. Make sure to thank everybody who participated and tell them how much it helps the show when people leave reviews. Encourage the winner to get in touch with you via email or send you a DM so that you can give them their prize. We recommend sharing it on Instagram or whatever social media platform you currently use.

Another tip for the contest is to ask your listeners to screenshot their review and email it to you so that you can easily get in touch with them if they win. Let’s talk about incentives. Incentives are similar to contests but work toward a common goal versus individual giveaways. You could decide to release premium content or even start a new podcast once you receive a certain amount of reviews.

Whatever incentive you pick, I want you to ensure it aligns with your goals and your audience’s interests. Once you get more reviews as you’ve applied the strategies we’ve laid out for you, keep track of them.

We’ve already talked about several podcast apps on the market, and they all have different ratings and review systems. Another thing to consider is review pages also differ from country to country, so the Apple Podcast review page in the US is going to be completely different from the UK, from Canada, from whatever country you’re looking at, so if you have your podcast listed on all the major directories, which we highly encourage you to do, you’ll get reviews from several platforms.

And to avoid having to log into each platform individually, I want you to consider using a service like Podrover, Podkite, or Rating Catcher because these services help you keep track of your reviews in one place.

Getting reviews is pivotal to building your podcast reputation and community and persuading others to listen. So just like any growth strategy, these are just one tactic of many, and we suggest you use various methods to avoid over-focusing on anyone in particular. Mix and match ’em! See what works. 

Truthfully, a lot of it is trial and error, but the main thing we here at Wildfire want you to remember is this – we don’t want podcast reviews to become an obsession. Don’t let them distract you from your main goal – creating a solid value-based podcast – because the five-star reviews are just the icing on the cake.

You Can Do This! 

Please remember that if you have any questions about podcast reviews, we are more than happy to answer them. Please be sure to reach out to our team by emailing hello@wildfirecreativecompany.com.