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Looking to join a podcast community – one that has supportive people who can help you create and grow your own podcast?
Great, then you’ve come to the right place!
No, seriously, some of the groups in other articles on this topic are dead as a doornail. In our article, we’ll show you some of the best, most active groups you can find on the internet.
And as a bonus, we’ll go into detail on how to actually start a podcast of your own!
Let’s get started.
What are podcast communities?
Podcast communities typically comprise of people who are passionate about podcasting and are seeking guidance, mentorship, or camaraderie from their fellow podcasters. These communities exist on podcasting websites, social media pages, learning platforms, or in-person.
Here you’ll find folks like you who want to collaborate, learn, and grow in the field of podcasting.
Members discuss various aspects of podcasting, such as
- Episode planning
- Content development
- Podcast topics
- Technical challenges
- Marketing strategies
- Monetization
Why should you join a podcast community?
Joining a podcast community, especially if you’re a newcomer, is highly recommended. It’ll help you with a wide variety of benefits including:
Networking
Podcasting communities are the best places to network and connect with people passionate about podcasting. You’ll find podcasters, industry experts, and potential collaborators – all of whom can help you grow your own podcasting business.
Learning
There’s no better place to learn podcasting than being surrounded by people who are really into the craft!
By participating in these communities (either actively or passively), you’ll gain valuable insights, tips, and resources related to podcasting. People in these communities also post their experiences and challenges (and how they overcame them), which can be helpful in learning.
If you stick around for long, you’ll learn everything from creating, editing, marketing, and monetizing your podcast.
Staying informed about the industry
Podcast communities often discuss the latest industry news, trends, and developments in the ever-evolving podcast industry. Staying informed can help you make better decisions on your podcasting strategy.
Promote your work
These communities are an excellent way to promote your work.
You can share your latest episodes or projects, and if you’ve made some friends in the group, they can recommend your podcast to their listeners – boosting your visibility in the process.
Mentorship
If a big-shot podcaster with plenty of experience in the community takes a liking to you, they might be happy to be your mentor. This can be a fantastic opportunity, as getting personalized guidance can help you create quality episodes sooner rather than later.
Feedback and Support
You can post your podcast episodes to your community and ask for constructive feedback on your work. Experienced podcasters commenting on your work can decrease your learning curve and improve your podcast production quality.
When things get difficult for your business, members are happy to provide you with encouragement, motivation, and feedback so you can get back on your feet faster.
8 Best Podcast Communities to Learn and Grow
Podcasters’ Support Group
No. of members: 38k members
Active and supportive, this group is great to join if you’re looking for tips to set up or grow your podcasting business. The members here especially love to respond to technical questions.
Mods in the group work actively to create a healthy environment and remove posts unrelated to the topic. And members are friendly and offer plenty of feedback if you ask questions.
If you join the group, definitely take advantage of the Weekend Wankfest, running Friday-Sunday, to promote yourself and your podcast.
Best for: Getting your podcasting questions answered.
How to join: You’ll need a Facebook account. Click the link here, answer some questions, and wait for the moderators to add you to the group.
Conversation Creators by Riverside.fm
No. of members: 9K+
Conversation Creators by Riverside (which is our very own podcast community!) is a great place to get your burning podcast-related questions answered right away.
Here are some topics frequently discussed:
- Technical questions about setting up a podcast
- Questions about individual members’ personal podcasts
- Questions about the Riverside app (one of the most popular podcast recording apps with a score of 4.8/5 from 357 reviews in G2).
- Questions about podcasting tools (both hardware and software)
- Basically any podcast question under the sun!
The group is enthusiastic and active; below is a screenshot of a question asked and the overwhelming number of responses it got.
So join this group if you want a friendly community who are happy to help you on your podcasting journey.
Best for: Those looking for a friendly and helpful group for all things podcast (or Riverside) related.
How to join: You’ll need a Facebook account. Click the link here, answer some questions, and wait for the moderators to add you to the group.
She Podcasts
No. of members: 20k+
Men, skip ahead; this group is for ladies only.
She Podcasts is a great place to get your questions answered, share wins, and help each other in a safe space.
Only aspiring podcasters or current podcasters are allowed into the group. They’re strict about this, so only join this group if you’re serious about podcasting.
But if you do join the group, check out the pinned section to access fantastic resources that can help you start or grow your podcast.
Best for: Female or non-binary podcasters who want a safe place to meet fellow podcasters and learn from each other.
How to join: You’ll need a Facebook account. Click the link here, answer some questions, and wait for the moderators to add you to the group.
Podcast Technology Resource Group
No of members: 6k+
Changing tracks from Facebook, let’s look at a LinkedIn group – the Podcast Technology Resource Group.
You might particularly want to join a LinkedIn group because it lets you see which community members live in your city. By joining this group, you can connect with others in your area who are interested in podcasting and lend each other support on your learning journey.
The community mainly focuses on the technical aspects of podcasting, including equipment, production, hosting, and editing-related questions.
Best for: People abstaining from Facebook who might prefer a LinkedIn group instead.
How to join: You’ll need a LinkedIn account. Click the link here, click Join, and wait for the moderators to let you in.
#PodernFamily
No. of members: 14k followers
#PodernFamily taps into the power of Twitter to help members expand their podcasting reach.
Podcasters are encouraged to use the #PodernFamily hashtag on pinned tweets and posts for new episodes. In this way, you can help others grow their podcast by tweeting their episodes, and they can do the same for you too.
Win-win!
Join the community to discover new podcasts and network with other podcasters.
Best for: Growing your podcast business by the power of tweets.
How to join: You’ll need a Twitter account for this. Just use #PodernFamily to promote new podcast episodes, retweet other people’s episodes, and connect with community members.
Meetup.com
Meeting podcasters online is great and all. But meeting them in person is even better. And this is where Meetup.com comes in.
It lets you join a community, network in person with like-minded people, find mentors and make friends. A person here can invite you to get a peek into how they host, record, and edit their podcast. And if you’re lucky, they may even ask you to their podcast!
The only issue with Meetup.com is that you’ll be hard-pressed to find people and groups in low-population-density cities.
Best for: Meeting podcasters in person.
How to join: Join Meetup.com and search for podcasting groups in your area using the search function.
Podcast Community
No. of members: 21k+ followers
Podcast Community is another active Facebook group. While self-promotion is prohibited here, you can share your podcast in your introduction.
Here, people often collaborate and join each other’s podcasts as guests. Even if you’re not a podcaster but have expertise in a certain field, you can signal your interest in being a guest by using the hashtag #beaguest.
Best for: A supplementary Facebook community to meet with different podcasters.
How to join: Join the group here.
r/podcasting
No. of members: 120k+ followers
r/podcasting is the best place to get quality answers to your questions. Its veteran podcasters are always happy to pitch in and answer your doubts.
For instance, one member wanted to know if Instagram was a good place to promote his podcasts. Here’s the most upvoted reply that he got.
The sub is lively, with plenty of podcasting topics and questions discussed every day. These discussions can spark insights into things you've never considered about podcasting – so be sure to check out the subreddit daily.
Best for: Getting quality answers from experienced podcasters.
How to join: Click the link here.
How to start your own podcast community
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of how to start a podcast community.
Decide what your community should be about
Most podcasting communities offer a supportive and collaborative space for podcasters to help each other, share resources, learn from one another’s experiences, and the like.
While all the above is important, finding a unique approach to stand out from the other groups is equally important.
For example, an underutilized strategy in many podcasting communities is the inclusion of virtual meetings. So by hosting video calls where members can discuss all things podcasting, your community will stand out.
So take time and brainstorm ways to make your podcast community stand out from the marketplace.
Find the right platform
Do you want a paid or free platform?
Free communities like Reddit and Facebook have a larger audience (plenty of native users) – meaning more potential members.
On the downside, you’re stripped of any real ownership over the community, making it liable to be removed in the face of controversy. Furthermore, hosting a community on these platforms leaves your members vulnerable to being distracted by the content of other groups or communities.
Best free platforms include:
- Facebook Groups
- Discord
- Slack
Paid or branded platforms like Thinkific give you more control over content, branding, and experience. And members can avoid getting distracted by ads or other content.
These communities offer increased customization, features, and dedicated support. For example, if you have an online course to sell, you might want to try the paid platform Thinkific. It has an option for live lessons, quizzes, and more.
Best paid platforms include:
- Thinkific
- Mighty Networks
- Discourse
Create community guidelines
Creating community rules and guidelines will ensure that the community runs smoothly and members have a positive experience.
Some of these guidelines can include:
- Asking members to be respectful and courteous
- Maintaining an atmosphere of inclusivity and diversity
- Prohibiting the use of demeaning, disrespectful, or hate-filled language
- Prohibiting spam or self-promotion
- Banning illegal or NSFW content
- Creating rules for interacting with the community – for instance, discouraging topics unrelated to podcasting.
Finding moderators
Do you plan to moderate the group yourself? Then great, feel free to skip the next paragraph.
But if that sounds tiresome to you, get a moderator, someone who ensures community members follow the rules and guidelines, answer questions and can manage events.
Finding the right person for this role could involve hiring a professional community manager or moderator. Alternatively, if you have friends within the podcasting business who are willing and able, you could also propose a co-management arrangement.
Create and customize your community
Now it’s time to brand your community. In this step, you’ll need to choose your group’s logo, color themes, imagery, etc.
Start by adding a community description that captures your community's essence; paint a clear and appealing picture of what it stands for.
Then set up welcome messages. Craft warm and informative welcome messages. These should serve as the first point of contact for new arrivals and guide them through the communities features and functionalities.
Another common induction step is to tag members and encourage them to introduce themselves.
If you're using an app like Discord, you'll need to perform some additional setup tasks. This includes creating channels, each dedicated to different topics for more organized discussions. You'll also need to set up bots to streamline community management.
Market your community
The struggle to build an online community would be futile if there were no members to join!
Here are some ways to get new members:
- If you already have people on any mailing lists, inform them about the community
- If you have a course or product, add a link to your community.
- Add links to your community in your email signature.
- Part of another community of like-minded individuals? Casually invite them to join your community.
(Note: Be mindful of the communities guidelines – many of them don’t encourage self-promotion. Only (casually) invite those members who you’ve already been in contact with and who may be interested in what your community has to offer.
- Leverage existing followers that you may have on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Make use of word-of-mouth marketing. Encourage your members to share links to your online community.
Engage your community
In the digital space, infinite things are vying for people’s attention. If they don’t find your community engaging, they’ll leave it, likely to never return again.
This is why it’s important to create a highly engaging online group. Here are some ways you can do this:
- Host Live shows where people can live call-in. One of the most effective strategies to engage your audience is through lives shows. People want to learn things and have their questions answered. By hosting weekly live shows, you give an opportunity for them to do just that.
- Host Q&A and AMA (Ask Me Anything) events.
- Hold online meetups: Discord makes it easy for groups to get together and talk about a specific topic (or just chat without an agenda).
Ask questions to spark group discussions: Ask questions that encourage people to have engaging and insightful discussions. You can even host a Question of the Day, where every day, you ask interesting questions.
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