The #RPGPodmas Challenge
“If you like listening, please head over to iTunes and leave us a five star rating and review!” How often do we hear that a day? If you’re anything like me, you go through a fair amount of RPG podcasts on a regular basis. Similar to how online publishing and the PDF made tabletop RPGs accessible to a wider audience and a wider creator base, the relative ease of producing a podcast means that there’s an entire wealth of enriching content out there to enjoy. I subscribe to around 80 podcasts, of those, 50 are RPG related. I’ve been blessed in my adventures in gaming to become friends with a stellar group of people who all make shows, pouring their time, effort, and love into our hobby, and yet, I’ve left maybe 10-12 reviews for my friends. Let’s change that–I want to get better at recognizing the great work everyone does in this community & help bring some joy into leaving reviews.
While sharing shows by word of mouth or reacting to the latest episode online is great and gets positive feedback to the creators, nothing beats leaving reviews for the shows you love. Not only does it carry that “Christmas in July” feeling to get a review (I know because in addition to listening to a bunch of shows, I also make a few of my own), but every review pops us up on those sweet, sweet rankings. Shows with multiple reviews are more likely to get people checking out their episodes, and the quantity of reviews can even play into advertising opportunities, granting the show’s creator the possibility to turn their labor of love into a marketable item.
I want to be better at sharing my love of the things the RPG podcasting community creates. To that goal, I’m challenging myself (and you, too, now that you’re reading this) to leave one iTunes review per day in the month of December. Find a show you love, head over to iTunes and type up some encouraging words for the creators, check that five-star mark, and help brighten someone’s day. For those with an allergy to iTunes, you can leave reviews on Stitcher or other places (Google Play seems to not have a review feature on the service yet). That said, most podcatchers run off of iTunes’ rankings so if you want to maximize your review’s effectiveness you might have to bite the bullet and make an account just for reviewing purposes.
For those of us who live & breathe on social media, I’ll be using the hashtag #RPGPodmas to share screenshots of my reviews as I leave them. I encourage you to hop in and join me to go one step further still! Share the reviews of the shows you love: retweet, reblog, boost all the posts of shows you listen to and consider jumping into shows that look appealing. The power of our social networks is great for our community and this is a prime chance to find shows you may never have found before, or boost shows you think should have a wider audience. I’ll be kicking things off on Twitter on December 1st with my first reviews and we’ll have some embedded tweets from me and other Gnomes participating as well, so watch this space!
Let’s spread some Holiday cheer to close out 2017 and share the podcasts we love!
