Eric Schwartzman | New Media and Social Media Communications

If you subscribe to a podcast you find valuable, you should consider reviewing it in iTunes because it’s the biggest thing you can to help it get found by a larger audience. Few people know it. But it’s true. And here’s why…

According to the FeedBurner stats for my social media podcast On the Record…Online, iTunes is used by over 70 percent of my subscribers, and according to the discussions I’ve had with other podcasters, the same is true for them. iTunes is by far the most popular podcatcher, but it’s very difficult to browse for podcasts in the iTunes Store, because only a few podcasts are actually listed on the podcasts screen. Their are literally thousands of podcasts, but only a couple hundred you can find through browsing the iTunes Store. Yhe overwhelming majority of podcasts can only be found in iTunes by searching the name if the show, or another keyword of phrase that appears tin the show’s meta data (which is why ID3 taggin is so important).

If a podcaster does get listed in the “New & Noteworthy” or “Staff Favorites” sections of the podcasts screen in the iTunes Store, that’s the equivalent of a prime time listing, because it’s really the only way a podcaster gets new listeners who are browsing for shows to subscribe to their show. If you’re a podcaster, you definitely want to be listed on the podcasts screen in iTunes Store, but no one really know for sure who to make that happen.

A top podcaster who’s show is listed on the podcasts screen in the iTunes Store (and who will remain nameless for their own protection) told me Apple decides which podcasts to list based on the number of reviews the podcast gets in iTunes. If a podcast gets a lot of new reviews in a short period of time in the iTunes Store, that’s how the staff discovers it, and if they like it, how it winds up getting listed.

So if you want to support a podcast, tweets, status updates and blog posts are always appreciated, but posting a comment in iTunes has the most weight. And since the iTunes Store in Germany and France is different the iTunes Store in the US, posting comments from as many different countries as possible helps too. In this blog post, there’s a diagram to show you how to find the “Write a Review” link for a podcast in iTunes.

If you’re a listener of my podcast, and you appreciate the show, I sure hope you’ll consider writing a review. You’ll be supporting my podcast in a big way by increasing its prospects of getting a default screen listing in the podcasts section of the iTunes Store. You’ll also be encouraging me to continue doing the podcast, and to continue to search for relevant, worthwhile guests to feature on the show.