Texting can be the bridge inbetween podcast episodes, and a community where podcast hosts find 10x the engagement from fans compared to social.
Texting is the perfect content to fill the gap between podcast episodes. Our hosts with podcasts get 10x the engagement from fans via text compared to social. This is because texting offers your fans a direct, private, troll-free channel to communicate. No matter the topic, Subtext lets you build an exclusive community of listeners, who either act as a sounding board through regular text communication or offer their financial support for your work through our subscription offering.
Whether you’re the host or listener, podcasting can be an insular experience. Our hosts have found though that building a community of listeners who want to text with you offers unprecedented access to:
- Feedback from fans - send along a segment preview and get audience input before committing to release it
- Gather questions or ideas for future show segments - by running a poll or asking for questions
- Cross promotion - use Subtext and your podcast as marketing channels for the other platform.
Let’s take a look at how Subtext host extraordinaire Doug Lesmerises does it. Doug, a Cleveland.com sports columnist, hosts a podcast and Subtext called Buckeye Talk on Ohio State. Doug and his team have optimized their Subtext-podcast ecosystem not only for cross promotion 
but also for content creation.
They regularly use Subtext to gather listener questions and to poll them on the latest Buckeye news and analysis. They then spend the last 10 minutes of the show answering questions, in addition to answering via text.
They’ve also leveraged the podcast and Subtext to grow each community. They do 4 things repeatedly in every podcast to encourage listeners to join their Subtext communities:
- They give an overview of the benefits of joining their text community. I.e. private virtual events, access to vote in their polls, exclusive content. Providing an example of the content of a text helps as well.
- They provide the phone number (which is repeated a couple of times) so subscribers can immediately text to get started.
- They let subscribers know about the cost and more importantly about the 14-day free trial. Note: about 2/3 of subscribers stay on after the free trial.
- They mention the Subtext community about 3x per episode. This would depend on the length of your pod.
Take a listen below to how Doug weaves in the promotion of Subtext: