Spotify Opens Up Q&A and Poll Options for All Podcasters

Add a bit of interactivity for your podcast listeners on Spotify

In a sort of quiet update, Spotify has rolled out its Q&A and Polls feature for all podcasters on their platform.¹

Previously, this was just for Anchor users (since Spotify owns them) and was trialed back in 2021. However, eagle-eyed podcasters not with Anchor noticed that the feature was now under their shows. A listener of my One Minute Podcast Tips show pointed this out to me:

You can see the little Q&A section under the show notes, with the question “What did you think about this episode?”

Now, I know I hadn’t activated anything so I was curious where this might have been added. So I logged into my Spotify for Podcasters account, and that’s where it became clear.

Now when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see a little Interact tab:

This has three options: Overview, Q&A, and Polls. This lets you see what questions you’ve asked, which ones have received a reply, and what polls you have running (and the votes on these).

By default, Spotify will now add a question to your latest episode, which will be the “What did you think about this episode?” one. However, if you have a Spotify for Podcasters account, you can create your own questions as well as polls (and how long they run for).

So, for example, this is what I did last night for the One Minute Podcast Tips show that one of my listeners notified me about:

As you can see, I’ve tailored the question to the specific episode topic, as well as the poll questions. These will now appear on the episodes I’ve enabled them for, and let listeners on Spotify reply.

So far, response has been limited but I did just enable last night, and I haven’t told my listeners on Spotify that they can interact this way yet. So I wouldn’t expect a lot of interaction yet.

But this is where you can get a bit smart as a podcaster.

Since I host with Captivate (which is a given, since I’m Head of Podcaster Support & Experience there), I’ll be using our AMIE dynamic content option to add a new piece of audio to every episode. This will be a simple call to action like, "If you're listening on Spotify, check out the question about this week's episode on your app - I'd love to hear your thoughts."

And to encourage more engagement, I’ll look to make it even more inviting - best reply gets a free sticker, for example, or a free month’s premium subscription.

And since this dynamic content will be on all my back catalogue, it doesn’t matter when listeners start to follow the show, they can still take part in the Q&A and poll (depending on your end date).

It’s early days, as I mentioned, but it could be a great way to connect more with your audience, as well as see what kind of content is enjoyed more or what they’d like to see in upcoming episodes, etc.

If you want to try it out as a listener, hop on over and answer some of the questions or polls I’ve published for now - I’d love to see some of your questions (note: you need to be on the Spotify mobile app)

What do you think - is this something you can see yourself using?

1. I think it’s available for all podcasters, though it may be limited by geographical location. And it’s currently only on the Spotify mobile app.