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Your podcast doesn't need a massive audience, it needs relationships. Instead of tens of thousands of anonymous listeners, you need 50 to 100 people who care, listen consistently, and would be willing to help if you asked. And here's the good news. You probably already have those fans. You're just not keeping track of them, which means you're sitting on leverage you'll never use these might be people who have commented on episodes, responded to your post, replied to your emails, or casually told you I liked your recent episode. And if you're not paying attention, those moments will be forgotten. In this episode, I'm going to show you a simple tool I recommend to every client. A True Fans List. I'll walk you through how to identify your true fans, why this list might be the most valuable asset your podcast creates, and how to ask for support like reviews, feedback, and referrals in a way that feels natural. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to quickly tell you about our email newsletter. It's another great resource if you are trying to turn your podcast into a real business asset. Every other week, I send out one short email where I answer a listener's question, share practical podcast resources and tools, and keep you up to date on anything in podcasting you should know about. It's completely free and you can sign up@simplepodstudios.com newsletter or just hit the link in the show notes. All right, let's get into today's episode. Okay, by now you guys know that I love resources, processes, systems, and my clients always appreciate something like a content calendar. But one that often is underappreciated whenever we first set it up. But something they end up loving over the long run is our True Fans list. So today I'm going to be walking through what to put on your True Fans list, how to utilize it, when to make ask all of those things. But first, let's talk about what a true fan actually is. A true fan is someone who's going to regularly listen to your show. They mention it unprompted. They engage via DMs, comments, emails, or conversations, and would be willing to help if you asked. These are people who are not just consuming your content, but they're also participating. Discovering your true fans is pretty simple. You just need to pay attention. Whenever they show up, True fans are going to leave comments on your episodes and they're going to reply to your email newsletters. They're going to DM you, comment on social media like Instagram or LinkedIn. They might even text you as a peer, colleague or friend send you encouragement, let you know that they checked out an episode, or if you're in a one on one conversation, you might hear someone say, I listened to a recent podcast episode. These should all be triggers that these could potentially be True fans. And true fans are going to be people who genuinely care about your podcast, you, your message and mission. These are the people that you want to make sure that you're keeping track of so you never forget your supporters who can help you grow your show and your business. So let's talk about the True Fans list. Whenever you notice that someone is engaging with your content, you want to immediately go and add them to your True Fans list. This is a living list of all the people who have raised their hand, who have interacted with your content and given you positive encouragement. I think you should just keep your True Fans list simple. I don't think a Trufan's list needs to be a big CRM. It doesn't need to have complicated automation, and it doesn't need to be some kind of vanity metric that you track. Keeping it simple is going to be really effective here just by simply starting a spreadsheet and adding a couple of columns. Those columns might be name email if you have it, how you met them or where you interacted with them, some notes if you met with them virtually, they gave you some ideas, et cetera, and maybe a couple of checkboxes if you want to make sure that you reached out and asked for them to leave a review or complete a survey. I think the key here is that this list doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to exist. So why is a list like this so valuable? Well, for business owners, this list can support you in a lot of different areas, including your podcast growth, your content direction. It could be market research, it can lead to testimonials and maybe even client referrals. There are going to be moments in your business and your podcast that you're going to need to ask for help. And instead of asking strangers for favors, you're inviting your supporters to participate by keeping a list of them. This is going to remove the guilt or hesitation around asking. So what should you be asking about? I think about this in somewhat of a progressive lineation where someone is new to list. I might keep it to safe or light ask, and as I continue to see them interact with my content, give me positive encouragement. I might move into more medium or high leverage ask. So let's just start with tier one, the Safe and light ask. These are typically low effort, high win rates. This could be something like leaving a rating and review on the platform of their choice, suggesting a future episode topic, following the podcast on their preferred platform, or even subscribing to your email lists if they aren't already. I like to make one ask at a time. Usually whenever someone gets added to my True Fans list, I'll simply just ask if they can leave a rating and review on the podcast. Next up is your medium Leverage Ask. I think these are still reasonable asks, especially for people who have interacted with your content multiple times. A couple of things that might be included in this tier of ask are screenshotting their favorite episode and sharing it on social giving you feedback on what episodes they like the most and what episodes they've been skipping completing a short listener survey so you can collect more information on your ideal listener and participating in any listener Q and A episodes like an AMA or a Hot Seat or an audit type episode. And finally, for your top tier High Leverage Ask. These are things that are going to be needle movers for your podcast and your business. This might be things like asking them to share your podcast with their email list, referring someone over that could be a good client, joining a beta or pilot program that you're putting together, becoming an affiliate or referral partner and asking them to speak to their audience or the organization that they're a part of. With this list, I think you can make a decision if you want to stay podcast focused like ratings and reviews or sharing your podcast with their list. Or you can even just grow this list into a business asset, utilizing it for things like client referrals or beta groups, etc. If you're going to go that way, you might want to expand this list to all of your content marketing efforts, people who routinely engage with you on LinkedIn or your email list, previous clients and current clients. These could all be really good contenders to add to your True Fans list. I'll mention this at the end of the episode, but I did create a template if you don't have a list like this already. I created once again a simple spreadsheet with all the columns that I mentioned above. And then on the second tab of the spreadsheet I listed about 40 ideas of different asks that you can make to your true fans. Which leads me to how often should you be making ask to your true fans? I'm not a big fan of spamming this list. I don't think this is something that you need to do repetitively, like every other week, but two to four Ask a year feels pretty reasonable to me. I think there are moments that you can just add to your calendar where you're going to engage with your whole True Fans list. Two things that I really like to utilize my True Fans list is a During the summer I'll ask anyone who hasn't left a review yet to leave a reveal. And then at the end of the year I I'll ask my True Fans list to complete a listener survey. If I put one together, I've had clients do the same thing and they've had a lot of success with this as well. One other good calendar moment or honestly, two good calendar moments that you might also consider engaging. Your True Fan list would be whenever your show is hitting its annual anniversary dates, which if you don't know, you should look it up and put it on your calendar. You should celebrate every year that passes of you being a podcaster. And then second, whenever you hit any milestone episode could be episode 50, 100, 150. These might be good moments to build a promotional campaign around and engage with your True Fan list and see if they can back and help support you during this effort. Aside from that, I like to rotate out ask whenever someone new hits the list, I might make a simple or light or low key ask to them. I do try to respect past participation as well. Once again, for reviews or a listener survey, I like to have two checkbox columns there where after I've asked somebody, I'll go ahead and check the box so that I'm not re asking them every single year. And whenever it makes sense, I like to publicly and or privately thank people whenever they've helped or supported the show. You could even do something like calling out a true fan at the beginning of every single one of your podcast episodes. One of our clients he does this. It's great. He anytime someone leaves a review, he does the Review of the Week segment at the very beginning. It's not only a thank you to fans who have supported the show, but also an encouragement for maybe the lurkers or the fans that haven't necessarily come out yet to go ahead and submit a review themselves. Over the past like two years that he's been doing this, he's grown from like 20 reviews on his podcast all the way up to like 250 reviews at this point in time. So if you're ready to implement a True Fans List once again, I did create a simple template that you can use to start your own True Fans list. It's ready to go. It's a spreadsheet. All you gotta do is click on the link in the show notes, download it and start utilizing it in your show. I also put that tab in there that has over 40 different ideas of asks that you can make. Some of these ask are going to directly support your podcast. Some of these ask are going to support your business. At the end of the day, I encourage you to keep some kind of running list of your fans even if you're not going to engage with them. Because at some point in your podcast there will probably be a moment where you are going to make an ask and you want to remember who reached out, who's listening and who is there to support you. I appreciate you guys tuning in today's episode. Of course, if you ever have questions or need support, you can reach out to me@justinsimplepodstudios.com I always love hearing your questions and I might turn them into episodes just like I did with today's. That's it for now. I'll see you in the next episode.