Think for a minute about your absolute favourite podcast.
How many hours would you guess you’ve spent with the host plugged directly into your ears?
20?
50?
100?
Personally, I’d estimate that there are multiple podcasts that I’ve spent well over 200 hours listening to.
To put that in context, that’s significantly more time than I spend hanging out or talking with most of my closest friends in a given year.
Over the course of spending that much time together, we get to know our favourite hosts in an intimate and personal way. Through personal tidbits and vignettes, we get to know about their interests, families, friends and life outside of the topic of their podcasts.
But even more importantly, over time, we come to understand how they think and what they believe.
From this deep and intimate understanding emerges trust.
We’ve talked previously about how podcasting alone is no longer enough to grow your audience.
How there are simply too many podcasts available today to hope that new listeners will stumble across ours and subscribe.
But while podcasting might not be the only tool we need to grow an audience, it’s an essential tool in turning a casually engaged audience into a tribe of raving fans and brand evangelists.
The reason is the trust, between host and listener, that podcasting is uniquely positioned to foster.
Better than any other medium, podcasts allow us a real and authentic window into the minds, hearts and souls of our favourite hosts.
Part of this is amount of time most podcast listeners spend listening to their favourite shows.
Part of this is the emotion and nuance carried and conveyed by the human voice.
Part of this is because unlike listicle articles, TikTok, and YouTube, podcasting lends itself to in-depth, nuanced discussions rather than bite-sized, quick-hit, surface level content.
Podcasting may no longer be the best tool for gaining organic exposure.
But it’s the best tool available to develop a deep level of genuine understanding and trust with our audiences.
When we understand this, we can lean into it, capturing attention elsewhere and then converting it to trust through our podcasts.
With this system in place, selling our products & services, finding high-ticket sponsors, and growing our shows becomes a whole lot easier.
