Creative Ways To Use Voicemail In Your Podcast

Jordan is out sick, so we talk through Voicemail and why hearing a listener’s voice can change the energy of a show. We share practical ways to collect, edit, and feature voicemails without turning the episode into a messy mailbag. 

If you'd like your voice featured on the podcast, leave us a voicemail and tell us how you found your latest, most favoritist, podcast episode.

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Transcript

Jordan Is Out Sick Today

Alban 0:00

All right, Kevin, it's just you and me today. Jordan is out sick with the podcaster's nightmare. She's lost her voice. So, Jordan, we hope you feel better and you're back on for our big episode.

Kevin 0:10

Yeah, Jordan, I do hope you feel better. It's nice of you to to call out the fact that Jordan is not on the show today. Last time you missed an episode, Jordan and I completely just forgot to even mention that you weren't on the show.

Alban 0:22

We just went ahead and did it. Even though she's taking the day off, reached out, was like, but I can still edit. If you record, I can still edit it. Or like Jordan, the whole idea of taking a day off is that you don't have to work. So if you don't like the edit, blame it on me.

unknown 0:34

Here we go.

Alban 0:40

Okay, so we just added voicemail for fan mail. Yes, we did. I just did a video about it. I kind of want to ask you, what did you envision when you made this? And how do you expect podcasters to use it? Because I'm starting to get lots of ideas about how we can use it, but I kind of want to hear your, I don't know, what kicked this off in your mind?

Kevin 0:57

Sure. Well, there's there's two ways you can look at it. One, it's it's for some people, they would absolutely prefer just to be able to click record and talk as opposed to writing something. It might not be the safest thing in the world, but like let's say you're on a road trip or something and listening in the car, you might be able to more easily just click send us some fan mail and then hit record and then just talk like you're doing a phone call or something from like again. I don't want to recommend that you do this from a car. I'm thinking about this in real time. I'm like, maybe when you're stopped at a traffic light or something.

Alban 1:26

Use case number one, fiddle with your phone while you're driving and see if you can leave us a voicemail.

Playing Voicemails And Transcripts

Kevin 1:32

Let's let's use walking the dog as a better example. You might not want to be like looking down at your phone, but you can just click click record, leave a voicemail and send it off very quickly. So some people might prefer that. And then also, depending on the type of show that you have, it might be more appropriate for you to actually play voicemails and then respond to them or whatever, just given the type of show that you have. It might not be as engaging for you just to read all the fan mail that comes in.

Alban 1:59

Yeah. So we've done these listener mailbag episodes in the past. And one of the things I think could be improved is actually having the audio on there. Yeah. In the past, I'm fumbling a read, and then you're reacting to me misreading something. Just be so much better if we could be playing audio from all of our podcast listeners. Right.

Kevin 2:19

And so for a show like BuzzCast, I think we'll probably end up doing both. I think, you know, we're gonna get, we have already received tons of fan mail as written text messages that come in over the past couple of years. Now, just in the past week, we've gotten four, five voicemails that have come in. So I could see us doing both. And you have the option, even if people leave you a voicemail, if you just want to read it, we do transcribe it. So you can just read it if you want. But if you want to actually use the audio, you can. And so I think that'll be a fun to play both back to back. Just be like, hey, we got a fan mail message, and here I'm gonna read this one. Or in this one, they actually recorded a voicemail. So we'll play that one and you can hear their voice. You can download them, you can edit them. If somebody leaves something that's too long and you just want to play the first half, like you can do whatever you want with it. And so I love this idea. And I think we're gonna start working it more into Buzzcast. And I like the idea of like for today, talking through how people can use these things in their own show.

Alban 3:06

One of the things that I've noticed listening to these is that a minute is so much longer than I thought. You know, we put this one minute limit and you kind of imagine, like, oh, people are gonna talk for a minute and it'll feel so short. You can make a minute feel like eternity if you're just kind of rambling and not really sure what you're saying. So I like downloading these and trying to get the main piece rather than including the entire clip.

Kevin 3:28

Yes, yeah, I agree. And we do that with written messages as well. Sometimes we get some very long written messages and we do some editing ahead of time to capture the main points, but not necessarily the full message that comes in. I don't want to say cut the fluff because none of it is really fluff. Like we love the full content that is sent. We enjoy reading that because it's oftentimes it's it's nice, it's complimentary, it's whatever.

Smarter Alternatives To Mailbag Episodes

Alban 3:49

Yeah. So when we ask, how do you use call to actions in your episodes? We get a lot of answers. And then some of them will be like, I really love you guys. Jordan always makes me laugh. I love Kevin's takes. Anyway, the way I use call to actions is one, two, three. So at the beginning, while it's nice social proof, it may not be in the right spot of the episode. Maybe we do have a social proof section where we read reviews, feedback, and compliments. But I think that's separate from hey, this is fitting into the main body of the episode.

Kevin 4:18

So, some ideas of ways that you can use content like this, as Alvin mentioned, the the like mailbag episodes, those are interesting. Um, we've done a couple of those. And like sometimes we do better than others, um, but they haven't been like blockbuster episodes for us. I think one of the ways that you can take listener feedback and fan mail and incorporate it is to is sort of grouping some of these things together and then letting them lead you in the direction of topics. Let's just say over the course of a couple months, you get 10 or 15 different fan mail messages that come in. Three or four of them might kind of be around the same topic, and then you could maybe chunk another three or four into a topic. And then you're sprinkling those into specific episodes about those topics, and that's when you're using those three or four. That's when you're using the next batch of three or four. Sometimes with those mailbag episodes, it ends up being hard to figure out what is this episode actually about because you're answering 10 different questions about 10 different things. And so that can be good once in a while, but it's probably not good as like regular episode type that you release.

Alban 5:16

Mailbag episodes seem to work quite a bit better for news podcasts that are all about here's what happened in the last two weeks. Um, this is probably obvious to anybody who does interviews or does journalistic or documentary style episodes, but voicemails are just going to evoke more emotion. Feels very different. Um, some of our people who've left us voicemails already are people who've written the show many times through fan mail. And then when I hear their voice, almost every one of you has an amazing podcast voice. But just second, I'm like, oh, you have an accent. I didn't realize you were in another country. Oh, I didn't realize like how cheerful you sounded. Get a lot more emotion and connection hearing someone's voice versus reading, you know, it's essentially just a text message. 100%.

Kevin 5:59

And I don't know if this is just something that's going to be unique to our podcast because we do a podcast for podcasters. And so most of the people who listen, maybe they already just have great voices naturally, or maybe they've trained their voices or whatever. But I agree. Like when we're hearing voicemails come in through the new voicemail feature, I'm like, oh my gosh, these people are so great. I can't wait to feature their voice on our podcast. But I think it goes beyond just podcasters with good podcasting voices and uh people who have trained their voices. The reality is that there's like there's an emotion, there's there's like another level of connection. So if somebody writes something, they have their own tone, their own inflection and emotion behind it. And being able to capture the full context of that message, it just brings another level of depth and authenticity that you'll never get when somebody writes something in. It it happens all the time in texting, it happens all the time in email, is that somebody might write something and you take it away that they didn't intend, the chances of that happening when they record something in their own voice is much lower.

Avoiding Tone Misreads And Conflicts

Alban 6:57

Yeah. So if there's if it's jokey, they're kind of poking fun. It can come across as like, oh man, they really don't like the show. They made a rude comment. I mean, that happens all the time with text versus talking to somebody on the phone.

Picking Which Clips To Feature

Kevin 7:08

Yeah. I can't remember exactly what happened, but uh the Pod News Weekly Review said something and I wrote something in a silly, jokey way. And uh Sam on the next podcast was like, uh-oh, Kevin's really mad at me. He said he he wrote this message and he was really upset. But I wasn't at all. I was totally joking, but that context was missed. And so I'm sure if I had recorded, had the ability to record a voicemail and sent the voicemail, it would have come through more clearly. We wouldn't have had that misunderstanding.

Alban 7:32

One way that I want us to use voicemail is kind of how we're using fan mail now, this kind of call and response. Right.

Ask Directly To Get Responses

Kevin 7:40

And I imagine that we're gonna experiment with it a little bit. If we get 10, it might be that we only play two or three. Uh the reality of playing like 10 clips in an episode with 10 different voices plus three hosts and stuff just might be might feel a little bit overwhelming. And uh Jordan's gonna make this decision, and she's an expert at this, but it might make sense to have um some actual voices come through at the right times in the right context when it really adds the value. And then we might just summarize some. But just because you do a call and response doesn't mean that every single one that comes in that you're gonna play every single one. Uh, I think people will kind of figure out like what's right for their show. But I do think you're right in terms of how do you drive the most engagement? What we've seen by far is that when we mention that we need listener feedback or we want listener feedback, or there is a link in the show notes and just tap it to leave us a voicemail or shoot us a text. Like, if you don't ask, then you don't get anything. The the reality of people just stumbling upon it themselves, it doesn't happen very often. And so I like this direct like invitation to participate in an upcoming episode and then telling them how to do that.

Listener Prompt And Sign Off

Alban 8:46

Yeah, that's a good point. I think I just need to see that voicemails or emails or whatever I'm sending in, you know, there's at least an opportunity that what I'm sending in is useful for the podcast. Yeah. All right. So next episode, we are talking about how you discovered your most recent podcast listen, what you've been binging through. Uh, we've got a bunch of good answers, but we don't have a ton of voicemails because it's a relatively new feature. So if you'd like your voice featured on the podcast, leave us a voicemail and tell us how you found your latest, most favoritist podcast episode. Uh until up next time, thanks so much for listening and we'll be back with Jordan. Oh, yeah, we need her.