There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re talking to yourself, and almost all podcasters wish they got more feedback from their audience. Getting comments is a big part of what drives engagement on social media and YouTube. But can you comment on podcasts?

The good news is that there are plenty of options for podcast discussion. Choosing a couple to focus on can help you to:

Connect with listeners in a more intimate manner

Strengthen your podcasting community as a whole

Get feedback and improve your show

Source ideas for new topics

If you make the time and effort, responding to podcast comments and participating in online discussions can seriously benefit your podcast.

Best Places for Podcast Comments & Discussion

There are plenty of places online where you can ask for podcast comments and get in on the episode discussion. Here are some of the more popular options:

1. Reddit

Reddit is a good place to discuss many topics, including podcasting. You can find people of all interests there, and chances are at least some of your audience is hanging out on Reddit.

You can hang in a general discussion group like r/podcasts or r/podcasting. But you might also want to find a subreddit that’s specific to a niche or show, such as:

Show: No Sleep Podcast Reddit

Genre: True Crime

Genre: History

You’ll want to explore a bit, find out which subreddits are active, and see where your ideal listeners hang out.

2. Facebook Groups

There is a Facebook group for pretty much anything podcast-related. Whether you want to talk about creating a podcast or dig down into specific shows or episodes, chances are you can find the right fit.

Most podcasts come out of the gate with some sort of Facebook group set-up — even if they don’t necessarily keep it up down the line. But you can expand your audience by checking out different niche groups that you think might be interested in your content.

Creating a Facebook group or page for your show will give Facebook-using listeners an obvious way to leave podcast comments, though, and it’s where many successful indie podcasters run their communities to this day.

3. Discord

For those unfamiliar with Discord, it’s a VOIP messaging platform where you can post video, audio, and text messages and live chat with those currently online. It’s used by gamers, influencers, and hobbyists alike — and there’s no reason you can’t use it for podcast comments and episode discussion.

Like Reddit and Facebook, you can find general podcast-related groups, niche groups (podcasting and otherwise), or create a Discord specifically for your podcast. There are different benefits to participating in any of these:

You can connect with a fan base you already have

Source ideas for upcoming episodes

Get feedback on your show

Expand your audience

It’s important to note that if you’re creating a server specifically for your show, you’ll have to put in some work to manage it. Of course, you may be able to connect with some trusted fans and distribute the workload. Our full guide to Discord for podcasters can help you get up and running.

4. YouTube

YouTube is an extremely popular podcast consumption platform where comments are ingrained into the culture.

The YouTube comment section is kind of the Wild West of the internet — anything goes, and the conversations are not always the most productive. That said, they do provide an opportunity to interact with listeners (or viewers) who want to engage with your show.

Now, sometimes this section is a dead prairie landscape with a tumbleweed rolling by, but you can add a call-to-action sometime during the episode or provide some sort of bonus if they throw a comment down below. It’s not guaranteed to get the comments rolling in, but it sure doesn’t hurt.

YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world. Unlike some of the above options, people don’t necessarily have to dig around or join to access your community — so you’ll want to respond to podcast comments accordingly.

5. Your Website

Having a website for your podcast is important because it’s the only place where you have complete control over the content.

Ideally, this website is run through a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Squarespace, allowing you full control over what you put up. Your CMS isn’t (or shouldn’t be) where you upload your episodes, but they’re embedded there, and it’s the best place to share links and point folks towards.

Here’s an episode of Podcraft created as a blog post on WordPress. If you make a similar post for your episode, you can turn on comments and encourage discussion there.

Of course, not everyone’s ready (or willing) to build their own site from scratch. So, for those who want an easier route, platforms like PodPage are explicitly built to create podcast websites and have commenting capabilities.

Regardless of where your website is hosted, enabling your audience to write podcast comments on your latest episode can build a more engaged community. You can help boost this by adding podcast episode discussion topics or a call-to-action question at the bottom of the post.

6. How to Comment on Spotify Podcasts

Podcast comments on Spotify are relatively new, but they’re a great addition to the listener and creator experience.

Listeners can leave comments on individual episodes, and the creator can respond to them. The podcaster also has the power to turn off all comments, review them before publishing them publicly, or block accounts that are trolling or spamming them.

7. Podchaser

Podchaser is widely considered “the IMDb of podcasting”. It’s an excellent feature-packed and platform-agnostic platform for listeners and creators alike.

You can get and give podcast comments on Podchaser in the form of episode reviews, so a 1-5 star rating will accompany your comment. Creators can reply to these reviews, too.

The Future of Commenting on Podcasts

One of the significant strengths of podcasting is that it’s spread across many apps and listening platforms, so it’s never at the whim or mercy of any one company or CEO. However, this means that features like podcast comments are fragmented and leave little pools of listeners isolated here and there instead of all together in one place.

One promising venture on the horizon is the Podcasting 2.0 initiative’s “Cross-App Comments” feature. Here, many clever hosting providers and app developers are exploring ways and creating tools to help podcasting tech work together. Whether this is a pipe dream or a realistic goal remains to be seen, but if you like the sound of it, it’s worth supporting and doing what you can to help spread the word!

Picking the Right Avenue for Podcast Comments

As we’ve just learned, there are plenty of ways to connect with your audience via podcast comments and episode discussions, but you probably don’t want to do them all.

Engaging with your fans will only be fruitful if you do it regularly. Between planning, recording, editing, and publishing your show, you probably won’t have the time to check in on a bunch of different platforms. It makes the most sense to figure out where your audience is and focus there.

Of course, occasionally check in on other platforms where podcast comments are available. If you see some uptake there, you can focus more on it, going forward, too.

As mentioned earlier, your website is one of the best places to gather and engage with podcast comments, and one of the best ways to get your own podcast website is via Podpage. We have a full Podpage course inside the Podcraft Academy, so check it out if you’d like some help setting up and optimising your space over there!

Originally posted on September 11, 2024 @ 12:24 am