How to Get and RETAIN More Listeners for Your Health and Wellness Podcast

A little while back I did a podcast episode all about what causes people to tune out. Podcasts, what makes them stop listening, and that’s very useful. But back then I said I’m gonna do one as well where I’m gonna flip that and instead of just talking about how not to lose people, we’re gonna talk about some strategies to keep listeners engaged, subscribed, and repeatedly coming back to your podcast episode.

So that’s what we’re gonna do today. This is Profits through podcasting. I am your host, Joel Oliver. So someone comes across your podcast, however it happened, for whatever reason, maybe they found you through a podcast app, an ad, your social media. They were searching up a topic.

They came and listened to your podcast, where at least one episode, maybe they subscribed, whatever the case.

Now, how do we do everything possible to keep them coming back and remaining a loyal listener and thinking, wow, that was a great episode. I want to hear more of that. And remaining engaged and coming back every single episode and looking forward to the episodes that you release. Has a lot of success in podcasting.

Is going to lie here. Right? You should go back. I’ll put this in the show notes, the link to the other episode, to learn those basics of, okay, how do I at least stop people from leaving when they turn on the episodes? But now we’re getting into how do we make them stay? So number one, prioritize high quality audio. So at this point, you should have invested in a decent microphone and be recording in a quiet, non echoy space, free of noise to ensure a clear professional sound. If you’re doing interviews with guests, always make sure both of you’re using headphones, it’s gonna help as well.

And also, if you’re interviewing guests, coach them a bit before the recording. Send them some info ahead of time that lets them know. Could you please have some headphones ready? Be in a quiet room, that sort of thing. All of this is important. Now, you don’t need to spend $5,000 on a microphone because there’s only so much this is gonna help with, but the important thing is to have a minimum level of quality.

Listeners have so much to choose from these days that can go anywhere. The last thing you want is this big echoey bad. Muddled audio that’s really difficult to understand. You know, they’re just not gonna listen to it. So we want to make sure we’re doing what we can to ensure the audio the recording is sounding good, clear and easy to listen to.

And also with that, not only is it the equipment and the bit of preparation, but proper editing as well. So that comes with consistent levels. Clarity, little tricks to improve the sound or fix minor issues. Like if the guest you have does have a bit of echo in their audio. This is an important one to recognize.

You know, if you are doing your own editing, I’ve seen this a lot where people say, I know how to edit. I went on YouTube, I watched a tutorial. I edit them all on my own and. I think well, we’ll see about that. And I look or listen rather to the podcast or inspect the audio. And, you know, the host voice is really loud.

The guest is really quiet. It’s really frustrating for people to listen to. And very amateur doesn’t paint you in a good light. So there’s a lot to good audio, and we wanna make sure that you’ve got all of that in place for your episode as a complete first step. Everything needs to be sounding good.

When people tune in, they gotta get a great impression and know that, okay, this is worth keeping the episode on as opposed to immediately thinking this is junk and I can’t even listen to this. Okay, that got into a little of the how to not lose a listener, but you see my point there is gonna be some crossover here.

Next thing to think about when we wanna get and retain more listeners for our health and wellness podcasts, craft accurate, compelling episode titles. So you want your titles to be specific. You want them to be intriguing and most importantly, reflective of the episode’s core content.

So what does this mean? Well, when someone is listening to the episode, what they potentially came for, because your title intrigued them. They should get that payoff. They should get that information. If they find out that they listened to the whole episode and your title was kind of clickbait, or you never really touched on that subject at all or long enough, the thing that they came there to learn about, that’s gonna be an issue.

They’re gonna have a problem with that. You can also deliver on this early in the episode to let them know that what they came for is going to happen. So that could include putting a teaser at the start of the episode that relates to that title and make sure that they’re aware you are gonna get what you came here for.

This will avoid listener disappointment and fulfilling those promises consistently is going to keep people coming back as well. When they start to realize that you are delivering value, you’re delivering what the title says, it’s worth their time to listen to your episode. You do that consistently. You know, give them the payoff that they’re expecting that’s going to keep your audience coming back.

Help you build a loyal audience of repeat listeners. Okay? So make sure that the titles you use are accurate, specific, and intriguing. Alright? Don’t just try to trick people to come listen to the episode and make sure what they are coming for is actually there. Next, make sure you deliver engaging, valuable, focused content.

So. First, we want to hook people in the first couple of minutes of the episode, like I just mentioned. Maybe you could use a teaser for that, but beyond just a teaser. Have a strong intro that highlights value. Okay? So you don’t necessarily wanna just dive into the interview. Hey, how’s it going? Cool.

Tell me about yourself. I don’t know what’s coming up. This might be really boring. So create a strong intro, highlight some of the things that are gonna be talked about in that episode. So people know what they’re gonna get. Also, avoid doing the opposite, which is long bios, long tangents, long ads at the beginning those sorts of things.

We need to hook the listener quite quickly, so right off the bat, they need to hear why should they stick around. And if you want to spend those first couple of minutes of the episode with an ad. Or a guest telling their life story, which doesn’t really have anything to do with anything.

You’re gonna see listener drop off. They’re not gonna stick around. We wanna do everything that we can to get them to stay. All right? So that’s within the early parts of the episode. Beyond that, keep the discussions relevant to your health and wellness audiences interests. So practical tips, inspiring stories.

Think through their lens, whoever your ideal client is, what are they coming there for? And give them that. Right. If anything is going off on a tangent or going off beyond really what they’re interested in, it’s probably not relevant, and it’s gonna be an opportunity to cull the content of the episode and make it so that more of that content is relevant to your audience.

Okay? So keep that in mind. You don’t wanna be going off track and talking about other things that are not important. We wanna pack the value in there as much as we can. When you are screening guests. So looking at who to have on your show, whether they’re pitching you or you are sending out pitches or using a website like Pod Match, you might want to do some screening.

And you can do that by checking previous podcast appearances of theirs, where if they have their own podcast taking a look, see what they’re like. How is their charisma? How is their expertise? Are they speaking in an engaging manner? If you happen to record someone that you felt was just kind of boring, it wasn’t a great guest, you might have to make the hard decision not to release it.

But it’s. Obviously very useful to have guests who are interesting and engaging and they, don’t drone on and on and they don’t really have much to offer those sorts of things. You don’t want that on your podcast, so keep this in mind, right? When we’re thinking about the type of content you want to deliver to have people become repeat listeners, and even when they find one episode, they get hooked and they stay for the entire thing.

You can also use editing to help with this as well. So cut rambling. Cut those tangents. Cut filler words. A lot of ums tends to start wearing people who are listening. Yeah. Anything that’s off topic. Ideally to make your life easier and your editor’s life easier, avoid going down these paths at all.

Sometimes you can’t help it if it’s a guest, but guide the conversation in the way you want it to go. Then there’s less to do in editing at a later point. And you’ll start to learn that the more that you podcast, you’ll just realize, I only have this much time. My audience has a limited attention span. I need to keep this focused on the value and the entertainment or whatever the case is.

But if something is not going to benefit the audience or be of interest to them, get rid of it, preferably before it’s even said

next. Be authentic, be unique, and be yourself. People, as I mentioned, have a lot of options. They can go to any podcast. There’s no shortage of information, content and podcasts, videos out there on the internet. What is the reason that they come back to you if you are not being authentic or you’re kind of hiding who you really are, hiding your unique opinions?

Well, there’s probably million other people out there just like you. What makes you unique? What would I like about you specifically, and what will your audience like about you specifically that makes them want to keep coming back and hearing your unique perspective, hearing your interviews, hearing your content.

So be sure that you’re showcasing your true personality, your knowledge, and your unique opinions on things. Now, that’s easier said than done. This can be a process. You might think that you’re doing it, but perhaps you’re actually acting different in your podcast episodes and not truly who you are.

Now, of course, we wanna use some sense of decorum. There’s certain conversations and certain way of talking that sure is perhaps safe for certain places, especially in the health and wellness space. You know, we, we do want to keep in mind that we must look professional and that sort of thing, but you can make that decision of what is going to be acceptable for you, what will relate to your audience, what will resonate with them, and you know, what might be too far. But definitely focus on being your authentic self and letting yourself shine. Because like I’m saying, you’ve gotta show people that, Hey, this is how I am.

And the ones who like it, great, you can stick around. And the ones who don’t. That’s okay. You can go find something else. And don’t be afraid of that. That’s the big thing is if you think everyone has to like me and I’m just gonna be this nice person who has nothing bad to say and everything’s great.

you know, that doesn’t work because you end up just not being appealing to anyone. Right? So it’s better to take a bit of a risk, be appealing to the right audience and let the other people go. But again, use some discretion there. What I’m telling you. Finally, how do we get and retain more listeners for our health and Wellness podcast?

Review your stats now. You want to have enough of a number of episodes built up and downloads and that sort of thing to actually have any useful data here to start finding trends and that sort of thing. So. Analyze your download stats for episodes and see if you can find any trends, see what’s going on, see what resonates with your audience and maybe doesn’t.

So look at all time. Which episodes have the most downloads, which have the least? See if you can see any correlation there. Some will just be early episodes, but beyond that, you might just see, Hey, I’m actually getting way more. Downloads when it’s solo episodes. That’s interesting, or podcast episodes on this specific topic are getting more downloads and episodes on this don’t really get many at all.

So look at the trends there. Look at your stats and see what you could find out. And then do more of what works, because if that’s what your audience is wanting, then there you go. You’ve got your answer. And providing them more of that is going to make them even happier. Perhaps connect with more of your ideal clients and listeners out in the world and get you those results that you want from podcasting.

So there you go. Some ways to get and retain more listeners for your Health and wellness podcast to keep you on that path of growth and success, and converting listeners into leads and revenue for your business as well. I will put the link in the show notes to the previous episode where we talked about the ways to prevent people from leaving your episodes. Okay? So this was how we keep them around, but you definitely wanna get those other fundamentals and make sure you’re not doing any of , the big ones that make people just leave and turn off the show.

Get those figured out, and then think about the ones in today’s episode.