Voice Mail For Podcasters

I strongly feel that the most valuable content that you can ever include in your podcast is the voice of those who listen to your show! Reading blog comments and emails from your listeners is any easy place to start. However, why not take your listener feedback to the next level?

Simply listen to the professional sound that comes from this audio clip that I play in one of the weekly podcasts that I produce for the tv show, LOST. Note: The first “listener” that you will hear in this audio clip is none other than Jorge Garcia, the actor who plays “Hurley” in the show!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Setting up a voice mail / listener feedback line for your show could not be easier. There are a few options to choose from. I’d like to share one popular choice among podcasters that I do not recommend and two to other options that I do recommend.

K7 Unified Messaging
K7 Unified Messaging provides you with a free phone number that enables you to have your voicemail messages delivered directly to your computer via email as a .wav audio file. All K7 numbers are assigned randomly from an available number list in area code 206. Calls made to your K7 number are long distance for people outside the Seattle area.

The main benefit and draw of K7 is that the service is completely free. However, there is one MAJOR DRAWBACK to their service. The K7 website states that they only desire to provide numbers to customers that will use their service. If a K7 number is inactive for more than 30 days they will terminate your account for non-use. In my mind, this is unacceptable. Another drawback to the K7 service is that the audio quality of the calls are not that great. They are not terrible. But thy are not great. It’s just that the 30 day termination policy is enough to make this an option that I warn people to stay away from. Your podcasts will have a very long shelf life. You don’t want to have to go changing your feedback number.

Kall8 Services
Kall8 is a fully integrated toll-free service that offers traditional 800 service with a complete set of online tools to manage and track your toll free numbers in real time. Most importantly, they also include the ability for you to send your toll-free number directly to their free voice mail service. Just as with the K7 option, it is very easy to set up so that your voice mails are immediately forwarded to your email account as a .wav audio file.

There is a cost associated with the Kall8 service. However the cost of their service is as low as $2 per month and you are only charged pennies (6.9¢) per minute of real time usage of your account. For example, if you had one of their $2 per month toll-free phone numbers, and you received 30 voice mails that were each 3 minutes in length, your total bill for that month would be $8.21.

There are two other added benefits of the Kall8 Service! First, the phone number is a toll-free number. Taking away the possibility of long distance charges will only serve to increase the number of your listeners who will call into your feedback line. The second additional advantage is that by getting your number after clicking through my K8 Affiliate Link, I get a commission on your use of the Kall8 Service.

Are there any drawbacks to the Kall8 service? There is only one drawback that I think is worth considering. When setting up your custom greeting, are you are actually required to call into a number that charges you 6.9 cents per minute to record your incoming message. I wrote down what I was going to say ahead of time and it with a few stops and re-records, it took me about nine minutes on the phone to get it EXACTLY the way that I wanted. With that, the cost was still under $1 and its something I only had to do once. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR KALL8!

The Broadvoice Option:
Before trying out the Kall8 service mentioned above, I had been using Broadvoice.com. Broadvoice is a VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone service similar to something like Vonage. A long time ago, I had decided to cancel our land line phone service to go to this VOIP service for our home phone usage. When I decided to do podcasting full-time as a career, I began to do a great deal of phone interviews which meant that I didn’t want to rely on VOIP quality calls, so I had a land line put back in.

I kept my Broadvoice account and dropped it to the least expensive plan at $9.99 (I pay $15.42 each month after tax). The reason for this was that I when I was using the Broadvoice service in our home, we only used it for outgoing calls. Therefore, I had used the phone number associated with it as my Voice Mail Listener Feedback Line for all of my podcasts.

With the service, I was able to configure every detail of every option online and had it set to that when someone called the number, it would ring ZERO TIMES (so no calls ringed our phone) and it would send the caller IMMEDIATELY to Voice Mail. I had also set it up so that each and every voice mail would be sent to me via email as an attached .wav file.

I’ve been happy with the audio quality of all the voice mail calls that had come in from Broadvoice. In fact the audio files are recorded with less compression and sound a fair bit better than the two options mentioned above. This is why I kept the Broadvoice service.

When the Kall8 service (mentioned above) was presented to me, I loved the idea of having a toll-free number. So I had signed up for an account. I actually considered eventually canceling Broadvoice and just going to the Kall8 service. However, when I noticed the slightly reduced audio quality, I decided to keep the Broadvoice service and also to keep the benefit of the Kall8’s toll-free number and I set the Kall8 toll-free Number to forward to my Broadvoice Phone Number.

Yes, I was paying for the Kall8 and the Broadvoice Service together. However, please understand that podcasting is my full-time career and this calls are a major focus of our podcasting efforts.

If you listen to the archives of several of our shows, you may actually catch a glimpse at the several occasions where I started to mention both 859-795-4067 and 800-757-1158 as options for leaving us listener feedback.

What started to happen was that I began to get between 35 to 55 voice mails per week that were an average of 3 minutes each. Please understand that my voice mail feedback engagement is quite an exception to the rule as I have a total of 23 podcasts that I produce with an overall audience of about 47,000 subscribers around the world.

With that said, my monthly bill from Kall8 was running between $30 to $55 per month on top of my $15.42 for Broadvoice. Because of this, I stopped advertising my toll-free number during my shows. I still have about 30 people who have the toll-free number programmed in their phone and that appreciate the fact that that there is a toll-free option.

If you choose to go with the Broadvoice option. I am also an affiliate for this service as well. I would simply ask that you to PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR BROADVOICE SERVICE. If the “referred by” field is not pre-filled, please enter 859-795-4067 as your referral number.

Google Voice
Google Voice is yet another option for a listener feedback hotline for your podcast. That is, of course, if you can get an invitation to their closed beta program. You are not going to believe this, but people are actually selling Google Voice Invites On Ebay.

The major benefits of Google Voice are that it is Free and that it is supposed to be a number than you can use your entire lifetime. I have a Google Voice account and absolutely love it. However, I don’t use it for a voice mail line for my podcast. Instead, I use it as my main number for my business.

There are two reasons why I personally did not see this as an option for my own voice mail feedback hotline.

First of all, there are way too many awesome features offered with Google Voice to waste it on a voice mail hotline. I won’t go through all those features here on this page. However, to overcome this objection, I could have simply created a 2nd gmail account just for your podcast voicemails and associated a separate Google Voice Account just for that gmail account.

However, the main reason why I chose not to use Google Voice was due to the audio quality of the voice mails. While the caller’s voice can be understood, the audio quality is way too low for the standards that I have set for my podcast.

Now, for the average podcaster, Google Voice will be the least expensive and most likely solution for your voice mail feedback line. However, for those who are very serious about audio quality, I’d recommend taking the other services I mentioned above into account.

Create A Community Around Your Podcast!
Creating a community around your podcast involves a great deal more than having a voice mail listener feedback line. However, in my mind, this is a first step that each podcaster should take to provide an opportunity for their listeners to let their voices be heard!

I hope that this information has been helpful to you. If you found this page as the result of a google search, I encourage you to check out the Podcast Answer Man Podcast. Just so you know, I’m an authorized reseller of professional audio equipment and I’m also available for one on one podcast consulting. For equipment sales questions or to set up podcast consulting, you can email me at Cliff@PodcastAnswerMan.com or call me at 859-757-1399.

Thanks,

Cliff J. Ravenscraft
PodcastAnswerMan.com