Listener Experience

Blending Listener Emotions For A Better Podcast

Intentional or not, your listeners have feelings for your podcast. Understanding how your episodes influence their emotional state is key to strengthening their connection to your show.

January 19, 2021

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Not to get all emotional about podcasting, but this episode is all about emotions and podcasting. More to the point, I'm going to help you think through the emotional responses your podcast elicits from your listeners. We, humans, are emotional creatures. We have emotional reactions to all but the most mundane of things. And I know your podcast is anything but mundane.

If you’ve taken any formal presentation-skills training, you’ve likely been exposed to the concept of changing the emotional state of your attendees with your presentation. Knowing what assumptions (and feelings) the audience comes into the presentation with helps a good presenter understand how to guide them to a different set of assumptions (and feelings) at the end of the presentation.

Not surprisingly, that same basic before-during-after emotion-shifting framework can be applied to podcasting. Without a painfully over-animated slide deck!

Are You Not Informed That You Will Be Entertained?

Every one of your episodes elicits some sort of emotional response from every one of your listeners. Intentional or not, every podcast evokes an emotional response. Even if the podcaster had no intention of doing so. It happens. We’re human

Without a shred of evidence to back up my claim, the most common emotions or feelings elicited by podcast are:

feeling informed
feeling entertained

Think about the podcasts you’ve listened to or are aware of, and you’ll probably agree that most trip one of those two relatively benign emotional triggers.

But are either of those, in isolation, enough? If nearly every podcast elicits feelings of being informed or being entertained… how does any particular show stand out? If any podcast can make a listener feel either entertained or informed, why would listeners tell others about any particular podcast? Commodities are common, and common things are not remarkable.

Luckily, podcasts don’t elicit a single emotional response from most listeners.

Some Podcasters Are Experts at Blending Emotional Responses

There’s a fascinating study from 2017 that examines 27 distinct categories of emotion, which is a lot more than the basic emotional responses most people can list. (I highly encourage you to spend some time with the interactive tool associated with that study to see how all of those emotions work together when exposed to content.)

But let’s stay simple for the sake of this article about podcasting, since I have neither a Ph.D. in psychology nor parapsychology. If you think one-level deeper about the podcast you listen to, you’ll see how skillful podcasters blend the emotions they elicit from listeners.

Hardcore History, Dan Carlin’s extremely popular and long-running podcast, is clearly informative. It’s a history podcast. But Dan masterfully weaves in entertainment along the way. Again, because it’s history and most of us slept through a good portion of history class, precisely because history class was not entertaining. Dan’s show is, which is why millions of people eagerly await his episodes on the history of ancient civilizations told in real-time. Kidding. But they are often many hours long. And did I mention extremely popular?

Drew Ackerman’s popular podcast, Sleep With Me, is designed to help you fall asleep. But it’s more than that, as insomnia affects people differently. Drew knows he can’t force you to sleep, but he can keep you entertained as you—hopefully—drift off. And if you can’t fall asleep, that’s OK. At least you were entertained by his creaky dulcet tones. Drew’s episodes make listeners feel sleepy and feel entertained.

Now think about horror podcasts. Many people love being scared or creeped out by horror content, but only if it’s also entertaining. It’s why we watch scary movies. My wife and I wouldn’t have invested 5 hours in IT 1 & 2 last night if we were not entertained. And a bit scared from time to time. That’s all part of the fun! Horror podcasts hit those same triggers for their loyal fans.

For me and with Podcast Pontifications, I want to leave you with a contemplative feeling as I inform you about the concepts and ideas I bring forth on each episode. Were I just going for “informed”, I’d just tell you about the 27 emotional states and sign off. But to get you to contemplate what that means for you and your show, I ponder this concept in real-time with you. Hopefully it rubs off. And you’re still here, right?

What Emotions Can You Blend With Your Podcast?

Ponder the show(s) you make, and think of the emotional responses elicited in your audience. What's the primary emotion your think your content elicits in your listeners? Chances are, you’re probably trying (or not trying) to make them feel either informed or entertained. But what else?

Can you elicit feelings of inspiration among your listeners? Can you make them feel empowered by your words? What about anger, so that their anger turns into action? You might intentionally make your audience feel sad, perhaps for similar reasons? Do you want your episodes to stir up feelings of arousal? Or maybe you want to impart a sense of relief to your listeners.

That's just a handful of possible emotional responses your show can elicit. And again, whether you're doing it intentionally or not.

So here's your homework: Think about the two primary emotions you want to elicit with your episodes? Maybe you already intentional about this on your episodes now. Or maybe not, but you really want to get more focused.

Write those two emotions down on a sticky note and put that note right next to where you do your episode prep. Your mic, your monitor… Wherever you can keep them in visual range to constantly remind you that this is what you are trying to achieve with your episode. Your episodes should elicit at least those two emotional responses. And yes, you can—and should—blend in other emotions as appropriate. But don’t lose sight of the primary two for your initial blend.

Stick with those for a few episodes and see how you feel. Measure your audience’s response if you can. If it’s working—you feel better and your audience isn’t running away—great! But if not, change it up! I’m a big fan of change, as you know. Like anything, it may take a few iterations before you hit on the right blend of emotional responses that sets your show(s) apart from the rest.

If you liked what I had to say, please go to BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra to show your support.

And if I did leave you feeling contemplative and well-informed enough, I would love for you to share Podcast Pontifications with one of your podcasting friends.

I shall be back tomorrow for yet another Podcast Pontifications,

Cheers.

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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Intentional or not, your listeners have feelings for your podcast. Understanding how your episodes influence their emotional state is key to strengthening their connection to your show.
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Hello, welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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Not to get all emotional about podcasting, but I'm going to at least talk about emotions in podcasting. More to the point, I'm going to help you think through the emotional response your podcast elicits from your listeners.
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Because that happens. We are emotional creatures. We have emotional reactions to even the most mundane things. And I know your podcast is anything but mundane.
I first tapped into this years ago in business. One of the ways you get better at doing presentations, you learn a lot of things, but one of the things you'll learn in that process is that a trick is to understand the emotional state of your audience before you begin your presentation and then through your presentation, leave them with another state.
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Doesn't always work, but that's the general idea. People come in with these set of assumptions, I'm going to give this presentation and afterwards I will change their assumptions. Not only their assumptions, but also their emotional response - how will it change throughout the process.
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That's something you just learn generally in presentation school. And oddly enough, it works in podcasting because podcasting is kind of like a presentation, just minus the boring PowerPoint deck with way too many dissolves and other sorts of animation. But I'm getting off topic already.
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Podcasts elicit a common response. Podcasters intentionally, or sometimes not intentionally, put out episodes that cause people to feel a particular way. Most commonly, although certainly not only, but most commonly those two feelings, those two emotions that are pulled out at the end of a podcast is either feeling informed or feeling entertained.
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That's pretty common, but I wonder if those are strong, and let me tell you what I mean by that. If every podcast or if most podcasts leave you feeling informed or they leave you feeling entertained, is that really enough for you to spread the word about a show? I mean, again, if most of them do that, how does a podcast stand out?
Hence the idea here is blending emotions, blending the emotional response you are attempting to elicit will help with that.
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Now, linked in the episode details is a fascinating study that shows there are 27 distinct categories of emotion. Which is insane, right? But more importantly, they're all intertwined. It's fascinating. There's a very cool, interactive tool that you can look at as well to see how all of those work in together.
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But let's be simple for a moment here. Let's talk about how podcasters that you know of, or podcasts that you know of are already blending emotions around either informed or entertained.
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Like take Hardcore History for a moment - a show by Dan Carlin, long running, four and a half hour, crazy-long episodes that come out once every glacier period. I'm kidding about that. Dan's show is definitely - you're informed by it, it's history, but you're also entertained. So he's taking both of those primary emotions and blending them together. And probably a lot of other things as well, fascination, whatever, but at the high level, you're both informed and entertained when you listen to Hardcore History.
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Sleep With Me Podcast, done by my buddy, Drew Ackerman - how does that mix, how is that supposed to make the listeners feel? Well, sleepy. It's designed to put people to sleep, but also it's designed to leave them feeling entertained cause not everybody can fall asleep. So that's a combination of entertained with sleepy. Oddly enough.
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What about horror shows? Horror shows are pretty popular. We have lots of horror shows out there. Those are designed to leave you well, you know, feeling horror, creeped out, scared, whatever you want to, but also entertained. It's why we go to watch scary movies. My wife and I just watched both chapters of It last night, back to back.
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My show Podcast Pontifications - yeah, informed, but more importantly for me, I want to leave you feeling contemplative. I'm not even sure that's one of the basic 27 emotions that's on that chart, but still I want you thinking about things. I want you to say - your brain should be up going, "Hmmm. Let me ponder that for a moment." But also being informed. Like you probably didn't know there are 27 emotional States, until you listen to me, say that, most likely.
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So, what about the show that you make? Can you blend together some emotions to make your listeners feel a variety of ways? And what's the primary way you make them feel?
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Probably again, informed, entertained. What else? Inspired? You make them feel empowered by your words? Are you doing it to intentionally make them feel anger and angry about something, hopefully not about you, but are you raising issues that do that?
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What about making them feel sad? Why would anybody want to feel sad, Evo? Oh, I don't know. Why are there so many sad love songs out there? Sometimes that's an important response or an important emotion for us to elicit.
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What about arousal? Sure. That's an emotion in some podcasts, especially on the erotica side. Definitely be feeling that way.
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Or a sense of relief.
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And again, that's just a handful of possible emotional responses your show can elicit whether you're doing it intentionally or not.
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So here's your homework. I want you to map out the two - so it's not really much of a map as much as just writing down two things. What are the two primary emotions you want, or you think you want, to elicit on your episodes? Go ahead and write those down on a sticky note, whatever they happen to be.
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Write them on a sticky note, put it where you do your show prep, put it right next to your microphone, put it right next to your - on your screen where you write your scripts or your outline for your show, and stay there.
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Make sure that your episodes do at least those two things. You can blend in others, but make sure if that's really what you want to do, try that. Stick with it for a few episodes and see if you're right.
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And if you're not, obviously change it. I'm big fan of change. Don't forget. I love the change. But map those two primary emotions or write them down, see if you can stay focused on that and making sure people are doing the things, are having the feels you want them to have when it's all over.
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If we blend those listener emotions together, we'll wind up with a better podcast on the outcome, I think.
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Now, obviously, if you liked what I had to say, please go to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra. And if you are feeling contemplative and well-informed, and if that is enough, I would love for you to share Podcast Pontifications with another one of your working podcast friends.
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Okay. Tomorrow - let's just get through tomorrow. Shall we? Let's get through today. Today's one thing. Tomorrow is another thing.
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And then I shall be back tomorrow morning for yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!

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