Podcast listener survey questions: 12 to ask and what to do with the answers

Downloads tell you how many people listened, not how they found you or what they'd skip. Reviews don't fill the gap. In a survey of 109 podcast listeners by The Podcast Host, 71% said they don't rate or review podcasts at all (The Podcast Host). That's a small sample, and the article doesn't say how people were recruited. Still, a survey lets the quiet majority answer.

Edison Research publishes a free listener survey template built from "the most common questions both producers and advertisers have" (Edison Research). It runs to dozens of questions, from listening habits to demographics, and Edison says to change anything that doesn't fit. Transistor's guide has another 17 sample questions (Transistor). The list below borrows from both.

How people found you

1. "How did you first find the show?" Use a list and shuffle the order. Edison's options include a friend's recommendation, a mention on another podcast, search, browsing a podcast app, social media, YouTube and "some other way".
2. "Which app do you usually listen on?" Tells you where your show notes actually get seen.

How they listen

1. "Do you listen to every episode, almost every one, or a few?" Adapted from Edison.
2. "How soon after an episode comes out do you usually listen?" Same day, within 48 hours, within a week, or later.
3. "Should episodes be longer, shorter, or about the same length?" Easy to act on.

What's working

1. "Which episode would you send to a friend, and why that one?" Open. The reason matters more than the title. More on this below.
2. "Have you ever told someone about the show? What made you do it?" Open, adapted from Transistor's list.
3. "What would you like us to stop doing?" Open, also from Transistor. Harder to hear, and more useful.

What to make next

1. "Is there a guest or topic you think we should have on?" Open. A list here would only show people the ideas you already had. When Pew Research Center asked voters to pick the issue that mattered most, 58% chose the economy from a list, but only 35% named it when writing their own answer, and 43% wrote something that wasn't on the list at all (Pew).
2. "What other podcasts do you listen to?" Open. Transistor suggests using the answers to find shows for promo swaps.

Who's listening, and what you can share

1. Age range, country or line of work. Only if a sponsor asks for it. Edison's own note on these questions: "you do NOT need it to analyze the results of the survey."
2. "Can we read your answer on the show?" Yes with my first name / yes, but anonymously / no. More on this below.

A strong default set is 1, 3, 6, 9, 10 and 12. That's six questions.

The Elixir Wizards podcast ran a listener survey in 2020 and wrote up what happened (SmartLogic). It got 113 starts and 51 completed answers over three weeks, beating its goal of 30. The question about how people found the show gave a clear split: 33% through a podcast service, 26% social media, 16% the community forum, Slack or subreddit, 8% search and 8% word of mouth.

The open questions didn't do as well. The team wrote that the questions asking for positive and negative feedback on the show overall "didn't get us super useful answers", and that the wording "could be improved to prompt for the kinds of feedback we were hoping to get."

"What do you like about the show?" asks people to sum up months of listening in one box. A question about one moment, like which episode they'd pass on and why, is easier to answer and gives you something to act on.

Keep the open boxes few. On Pew Research Center's panel, people skip open questions about 18% of the time on average, against 1% to 2% for multiple choice, and questions asking for several sentences get skipped more than ones asking for a single word (Pew).

Reading a few answers out on the show tells people their reply was read. It's also a reason to make the survey anonymous by default.

• Don't require a name or email. Some people will only say what they'd stop if nothing ties the answer to them.
• Ask permission in its own question, like question 12. Then you only read out answers from people who said yes, credited the way they chose.
• Keep identifying fields apart from the open answers. If you want a contact for follow-up calls, make it a separate, optional question at the end.

Ask on the show. Transistor suggests inviting listeners while you record, saying the URL, linking it in the show notes, and a merch draw as an incentive. Mention it in more than one episode, since plenty of people listen weeks after release.

Read the first 20 answers before you sort anything. Then label each answer, count the labels, and reread every answer under your top three before you decide. Our guide on how to analyze open-ended survey responses walks through it step by step.

For question 6, label the reason, not the episode. The numbers below are invented to show the method. They are not from a real show.

Say a weekly interview show gets 140 replies, and 118 people answer "Which episode would you send to a friend, and why that one?"

Counting by title shows which episodes were popular. Counting by reason shows people pass the show on when it helps at work, and when the hosts are funny together. Those are two things to keep in every episode.

The 26 with no reason are normal. Next time, split the question in two: pick an episode from a list, then "What made it stand out?"

Google Forms is free and fine for the multiple-choice questions, and you can label the written answers by hand in Google Sheets. Tally and Typeform are other common form builders, and our comparison pages show how they differ. A general AI chat can sort a pasted column of answers, but check its counts against the replies before you trust them.

Enform writes the survey from a description of your show, you share one link, and it reads every reply and counts what people said. Every count opens to the replies behind it, so you can pick the answers to read on air. If you already use another tool, see Enform vs Google Forms or Enform vs Tally, and pricing is here. Running a newsletter too? See newsletter reader survey questions.