The Giant Podcast Testimonial Gathering Guide

How To Get Podcast Testimonials

Hopefully, by this time in your podcasting career, you have a few listeners and they’ve been kind enough to tell you that they enjoy your show. This is heartwarming and fulfilling – and 100% necessary to monetize any podcast.

Podcast testimonials are social proof. Regardless of how large your podcast is, if you’ve got a lot of people crowing about it, then you’ve got a great sales tool to include in a media kit.

If you don’t have this yet, you might be feeling like finding them is going to be tricky. But fear not! I have some tools and tips to get plenty of praise for your podcast.

1. Screenshot/copy+paste praise from FB and Twitter.

Has anyone tweeted about your show and how much they like it? Hopefully you’ve bookmarked or copy/pasted that stuff, but if not, now’s your chance. Do a dig (read: search) on your podcasting Facebook page or within Twitter to find what people have said about you, and grab it now. It’s good to have both in text form AND a screenshot, for different uses. This way you’ll have a variety of formats depending on their use.

2. Use a survey question for feedback.

Perhaps part of your demographic survey can be to ask for them to leave you a comment, positive or negative, about your show. Something good has to come of that, right? Even small snippets will be valuable, even when anonymous.

3. Write it yourself.

No, I don’t mean review your own show. (Shame on you!) What I mean is that if you have one or two fans that you know are down with you, and you’re feeling a little shy, maybe remember a conversation you’ve had with them or paraphrase something they’ve said to you, send it to them with a note that says “Ok if I use this as a testimonial?” This takes all the work out of it for someone else and you get a nice piece of praise to use for your media kit.

4. Offer to trade HONEST reviews with another podcaster.

For the love of all that is holy, do NOT get caught up in this and do not add yourself to those trade lists, and definitely don’t do this with anyone and everyone. But if you have friends, you can explain to them what you’re doing and that you’d love an honest listen and some nice words, and you’ll be happy to return the favor. It’s very easy to get caught up in the review trades, and it doesn’t do our industry any good to have review after review in Apple Podcasts just to bump up our ranking in there. But I’m suggesting that whether it is in Apple Podcasts or not, you’ll approach a colleague and say, “I’m creating a media kit and would like some positive feedback from listeners. Have you listened to my show yet, and if so do you have anything I could use? I’ll be happy to supply you as well.”

That’s all! I honestly HATE lists and trades people do in order to bump their rankings – please don’t do this!! But we do need testimonials, and this can be a last resort.

My favorite article on this subject is by an author named Alexandra Franzen – here’s the link. It’s fantastic.

Alex Franzen – How to gather testimonials from clients, customers, fans.

5. An amazing service called My Podcast Reviews.

Our good friend Daniel J. Lewis of The Audacity to Podcast created this fun little service after being tired of having to check reviews on Apple Podcasts for his own podcast. For one podcast, you sign up and add your feed for FREE and it’ll send you the most recent 30 reviews in Apple Podcasts. This is absolutely AWESOME because you can copy and paste the text right out of your email instead of retyping it yourself.

Bonus! We’ve added a whole mini-course in the Academy called Gathering Audience Intel. 

Check out the video tutorial that shows you how to use My Podcast Reviews in by registering your free Podcast Success Academy profile and start cutting/pasting your praise right now!

Do you have any tips that aren’t mentioned here? How have you gotten to know your audience demographics, and have you been able to get praise from your listeners? Let us know in the comments!

Have you gotten your audience demographics? Read our guide on getting to know your audience here.