How to Get More Apple Reviews for Your Podcast And Why Reviews Matter For Podcasters

Discover how to get more podcast reviews and skyrocket your podcast’s visibility with these simple steps! “Unlock the Power of Podcast Reviews”

Watch the full video:

I learned about How to get more podcast reviews from Alex Sanfilippo, the founder of PodPros. Reviews are important for podcasters as they show that your podcast has been experienced and can be used to attract sponsors or partners. Additionally, reviews can motivate you to continue podcasting and even bad reviews can be used to your advantage. Ways to get more podcast reviews include: asking your listeners, running a contest, asking your friends and family, joining a Facebook group, and using the PodPros app.

“Having reviews will bring more listenership to your podcast and it’s a gift if you don’t always get a five star review, because it creates people that want to be a fan of yours.”

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. Learn why podcast reviews are so important for podcasters and how to start getting more of them.
2. Discover how to use the tactic of getting more reviews on a podcast to also build community.
3. Explore how to use bad reviews as a “gift” for your podcast and how to run a contest to incentivize more reviews.

Get PodLottery for free to start winning more Apple reviews for your podcast: https://podlottery.com

(Or, you can learn more about PodLottery, here.)

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Full transcript:

It’s why podcast reviews are so important for podcasters and how you can start getting more of them. My name is Alex San Filippo. I’m the founder of PodPros, a company focused specifically on serving podcast guests and hosts through creating software solutions. We have services like Podmatch and podcast. SOP and one more that I’ll get into a little bit later here, but I really want to talk about why we need more Apple reviews on our podcast and not only that, but how to get them, first off, why they matter.

I’m going to dive into a few things here, but right before I do that, I want to quickly share that this can also be a strategy for building community around your podcast. So bear with me. I’m going to share that kind of throughout this. So think about how I can use this tactic of getting more reviews on podcast to also build community. But before I do that, I want to share a couple of things that matter as to why we should be getting more reviews on our podcast and why that even matters in the first place, right?

First off, the first point I want to share is listeners look at reviews. So if there’s two podcasts that are very similar side by side in the Apple podcast app, right, you’re like scrolling through it in your phone. And there’s two that are very similar. One has no reviews and the other has 10, 20, 30. People are more likely to listen to the one with reviews because it shows that somebody’s actually seen it, heard it, right.

It’s very similar to how things work on Amazon. If there’s two products that are really similar, you’re typically going to go with the one with more reviews, the one that actually has something that some other human says, oh, I’ve experienced this, it’s good, right? That’s just how we work. And that’s why reviews are very powerful. So having reviews will bring more listenership to your podcast.

The next thing is if there’s a potential sponsor who is saying, oh, I might want to sponsor this show. Sure, they’re going to ask you for all your numbers, but wouldn’t it be great if you had some Apple reviews so without them looking under the hood, they can already tell? Okay, this show’s got something. Clearly has something. It’s the same with my next point.

So my third point is with partners. If you’re looking to partner with somebody, if you can show that, hey, I’ve clearly got somebody who’s been interested in this, that’s what they can see. That’s what’s front facing. They can’t see all your download numbers and all those analytics and stuff like that. What they can see front facing is they can go to your Apple podcast profile and say, you know what, this show’s got 50 reviews and most only have one or two.

They’re clearly doing something, right. This might be something worth pursuing as an advertiser or a sponsor. Those are some really important points. The other thing is that it does something for you as the podcast host. And what I mean by that is it’s going to motivate you as an individual to continue podcasting, whether that’s conscious or subconscious.

Here’s the thing. If I’m thinking about stopping my show, so let’s imagine I’m here and I’m like thinking, okay, oh, man, I think I’m going to stop my show. I’m looking my Apple reviews and no one’s even reviewed it. Like, what’s the point? I’m just going to go ahead and stop.

But if you had reviews, you might be like, okay, I’m thinking I’ll stop my show. But my goodness, there’s 50 people have said such nice things about this. I should really keep on going. There’s something here, right? Like, that might happen to many of us.

You might be like, oh, not me, Alex. Subconsciously, that may be going on and we don’t even realize it. By having reviews, we’re reminding ourselves that we’re doing this with a purpose and it’s clearly impacted somebody’s life. The next thing that I want to share around this is if you just get a couple of haters and you didn’t prioritize getting reviews and you get let’s just say you start off your show with three one star reviews, that can be really bad. I know someone that happened to actually had a good show.

They’re putting a lot into it, but somebody who is, I guess, a competitor from a business standpoint, whatever all that means, left them and have their friends leave them some bad reviews and their podcast never took off because it had one star reviews from multiple people. So just think about that. You want to make sure you’re being proactive about that, right? And I’ll digress on that point. But those are a few reasons that getting reviews on podcast are very important for us to do, and specifically on Apple, because I’m mentioning that because although on Spotify you can leave a star rating and on some other apps you can do things where’s most of listenership, apple number one and Spotify number two, spotify doesn’t let you actually leave a comment.

So it’s just like a number. And that’s okay. It shows that you have a five star podcast, but not many people are looking at it because they haven’t positioned it anywhere that matters. On Apple, it’s like front and center. You can see how many reviews the podcast has if it’s five stars or not.

And you can actually read the reviews. And we find that that’s extremely helpful once again. So keep that in mind. That’s where you want to prioritize this. So now I want to talk about real quick here before I get into how to get more review.

I want to talk about bad reviews once more, and I do air quotes here. Bad reviews. Bad reviews can be a gift for your podcast. Very rarely does any podcast host agree with me when I say this, but I promise I’m right. I’m going to explain that real quick for you here.

Whenever you see a product on Amazon, I use that as an example earlier, and it’s all five star reviews. You and I both know that’s fake, right? Like, it’s not real if everybody only has the greatest thing in the world to say about it. So if you have a podcast with 300 reviews and they’re all five star reviews, I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s fake because somebody along the way has to have found your podcast that didn’t care for it or didn’t think it was quite worthy of five stars. That’s just the nature of it.

So if you get a review that’s one, two, three stars especially, that is a gift because now it’s showing that one, okay, they have real reviews on their podcast. The other thing is, when you and I are thinking about buying a product, we don’t look and read all the five star reviews. We might read one or two of them. We immediately click to say the one, two, and three star review because we want to see, okay, what’s the opposite of this? By having a review on your podcast that can be one star.

It’s a gift because somebody can go to it and be like, okay, they don’t like it because they don’t like the host voice. Let me listen to it. I don’t mind the host voice. It’s not that bad, right? And the thing is, that goes right to my next point.

It creates people that want to be a fan of yours, so they’re going to defend it. They’re like, well, I’m going to leave a five star review saying how much I like this person’s voice, right? It actually calls for people to do the opposite of it. Someone who might not leave a review might now leave one because they disagree with the one star, two star, three star review so much, they feel compelled to leave you a good review. And that copycat will opposite copycat, if you will, will continuously happen because people are going to click to your one star review.

For me, I had somebody reach out to me like, Alex, I got a one star review. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to my podcast. I said, actually, it’s probably one of the best thing that’s ever happened. Again, I could never get them to agree. But I promise you, if you look at the data, you do some research on how it works.

It was a gift that they didn’t realize. So for you be okay if you don’t always get a five star review, because that actually furthers the point. A review is better than no review, regardless of the star, with the exception of if you have no reviews and you have three bad ones, that’s terrible, right? So you want to be proactive. But again, if you get a review that’s not perfect.

That’s okay. You can actually leverage that. You can even post that somewhere, right? I’m not going to get into all that strategy, but you can use that to market quite a bit. Okay.

How to get more reviews for your podcast and build some community around it. Hope you’re ready for this. This is kind of like the meat of what I’m going to share here. But again, we talked about first and foremost why you need them, why they’re so important, why a bad review isn’t bad, and how that can even build a little bit community. But now we’re going to get into building a community strategy through pursuing getting more Apple reviews for your podcast.

Number one, the first way to get more views is to ask your listeners, ask, now, how do you do that? You can do it through the podcast if you want, but you can also do it through anyone who’s engaging. If somebody reaches out and they’re like, wow, I really enjoyed this episode, they left a comment, message them and say, thank you so much. Hey, I’m really focused on getting more reviews on the show right now. Can you leave me a five star rating review on Apple podcast?

That would help me so much. I’ll do a little screenshot of it and I’ll share it here on social media. Chances are someone’s going to say yes, right? Or even better, ask that person for a call. Get on a call with that individual so you can learn what they like and don’t like about your podcast, how you can improve it, all that.

And then at the end of the call be like, hey, thank you so much for the time, really appreciate it. You mentioned really liking the show. Would you mind sharing some of those in a comment on the Apple podcast app through a review? People are always going to go ahead and do that, right? So you want to be asking your listeners, engaging with them on it, and then make sure that you’re sharing about it.

Because again, that inspires people to do the same thing when they see, oh, man, Tiffany got a shout out on the show or like on their social media. I want that too, because I love this show. They’re going to go leave that review as well. So you’re actually training your listeners, your community on what the expected the expectation is for them as a listener, right, which is to leave a review. So again, ask your listeners is really important.

Next is to run a contest. So it can be hard to get listeners to leave reviews on podcasts. I found that to be the case for sure, but actually run a contest and what this means is saying, hey, this month if you leave a review on the podcast at the end of the month, we are going to do a shout out. We’re going to send you a T shirt. We’re going to send you some additional content.

We’re going to just send some sort of gift, whatever that might be, that goes along with your podcast. If you leave a review, we’re going to pick a random winner. Be sure to leave your review. And even if you don’t win, we’re going to post about it. I’m telling you what, people are going to show up, right?

They’re going to show up to do that. So that’s another thing you can do. So again, ask your listeners, run a contest. The next thing is to ask your friends and family. No shame in that.

Actually, go beyond that. Listen, I was buying a car a couple of years ago when I was starting a podcast project, and the guy who sent me the car was like, hey, so what do you do? I was like, I’m in podcasting, actually. Can I borrow your iPhone? Because he’s holding it.

And he’s like, sure. I was like, I’m going to go ahead and leave myself a review from your phone. You just make sure that you like it, right? So here’s what you’re saying about me. Let me explain my show to you real quick.

And he’s like, all right, yeah, that’s good, right? I think he changed like one or two things and hit send. Go beyond that, right? Ask your friends, ask your family. I don’t mean for this to lack integrity, but it’s so important, especially at the foundational level, that you start getting something, right?

Even if they can’t speak to the podcast, have them speak to you as the host, somebody who knows you have a little bit of integrity in it because that’s very, very important along the way. But ask your friends and family to leave a review, even if it means you have to borrow the phone. Be like, hey, what do you like about me? Tell me. Cool.

You put that as a review of my podcast, right? So go after it with your friends and family. Next is to join a Facebook group where they’re doing review swaps. So there’s a handful of these where they’re literally like, usually it seems to be on Friday for some reason. Hey, review swap Friday, post a link to your podcast and we can all share about it, right?

And then you can kind of go in there and swap reviews and stuff like that. Get out there and do that to me. Again, integrity wins. So you want to make sure that you listen to the podcast before you’re just leaving a review on it so that you can get a review from them, right? Like, what the point if it’s not authentic?

That’s really important to me personally, so those are a few ways to do it. The last solution I’m going to mention is mine. At the beginning, I talked about how Pod Pros create software solutions for podcast hosts and guests. We have Podmatch podcast. SOP and we have an app called PodPros PodPros.

This is a fancy review swap but built in a lottery format and how it works, I’ll explain it really quick. Here is you’ll register your account, you’ll get a ticket. With that ticket, you redeem it for a number. And every night there’s like a countdown at the top of the screen on the website. You just go to Podpro, sorry, you go to PodPros and you’ll see where you can log in.

You can kind of just see the countdown. And when those numbers are picked every night, if it’s your number, then you win. Listens and reviews from people that are on PodPros now, they’re all podcast hosts and we work directly with Apple on this. So we validate a listen in a review to make sure it’s actually happening and we make sure that they listen first. They left a review and that the review is actually good.

Like we can see all that data and it’s all automated and stuff like that because the point is we want to come from integrity, right? But here’s the thing, if you win, you might get 150 reviews any given time. As everybody’s reviewing it, they get another ticket, they can redeem for a number and numbers are drawn every night. So it kind of gives other people the chance to win, right? It’s a really fun thing.

You can even pick categories. You can say, you know what, I only want to review entrepreneurship Podcast or True Crime podcast. You can divide it down to that level so that you’re only having to leave reviews on the shows that you might actually want to listen to. We found beyond leaving reviews, it actually has created community and people found new shows they like to listen to. So why not?

It’s been a really great win. So that again is PodPros.com. I encourage you to check that out. It’s completely free. There’s no paywall or never will be anything like that.

It’s always going be to a completely free app. So be sure to check that out because I think it’ll add a lot of value along the way. So again, again all these things I’m sharing are around building community around your podcast, through again, the metric, if you will, is more reviews on your podcast through Apple, which I explained why that’s so important. But I think if we can really get good at this as podcast host, we’ll stay in the game longer because we’re getting motivated to do it right. But also we have a metric we can track to see if we’re really building a community around our podcast.

So I encourage you take it seriously. Start going after podcast review use because I think it’ll really help your show continue to grow. If there’s anything, all I can do, be helpful, feel free to reach out and let me know. I’m here to help and serve however I can, but good luck getting more apple reviews. I hope you use PodPros as well, and I look forward to serving you again in the future.