Podcast analytics you should be tracking
How many downloads are you receiving for each episode you release, and why should you care less about this statistic?
Well, dear reader as you no doubt know by now, download numbers appear to be the be all and end all statistic to track whether your podcast is making an impact.
Yes, I do agree that you should know your download numbers and certainly track them over time, but what if downloads are just the tip of the iceberg?
What if there's a whole treasure trove of insights waiting to be discovered, a deeper understanding of how your podcast is truly resonating with your audience and how far that reach actually goes?
By venturing past this single metric, you can unlock a wealth of knowledge about your listeners, their habits, and their preferences. This knowledge empowers you to refine your content, expand your reach, and ultimately, stay in it for the long haul. The more you track your growth, the more you realise how truly wonderful it is to keep your podcast going.
Podcast Host Backend Data
Let’s start with the download numbers, I recommend three podcast hosts to help you track your metrics more effectively.
Captivate - great for comparing episode numbers over time against other episodes, setting up attribution links and tracking the clicks, including research links and even booking guests
Omnystudio - very detailed stats down to the hour which is useful if you’re looking to see whether different release times make a difference to your listens. Rather pricey though especially if you want to use their dynamic ad tools
Buzzsprout - simple host that is easy to use. Great customer service and stats are easy to understand. Doesn’t give you quite as much detail and dynamic ad insertion isn’t customisable for your own slot management.
For our PodCoach clients, we track downloads over longer periods of time for every episode to see how they’re performing straight up, but more importantly how they grow over time (keywords in show notes are the winner for longer term growth)
Track key metrics like:
7-day downloads: Shows listener consistency.
30-day downloads: Indicates trends in episode popularity.
90-day downloads: Reveals if older episodes are resurfacing through search results.
Once you’ve started tracking every episode for a longer period of time (we recommend creating a spreadsheet), you’ll be able to dive deeper into what episodes resonate best with your audience.
Creating Content Pillars
Track downloads by the pillar of content to see which topics resonate most with your audience. For our PodCoach members, we look to establish five key pillars that their content falls within, and then look at which pillars are performing the best. For example, a health and wellness podcast might track mental health, physical health, spirituality, nutrition, and guided meditations.
This metric is something that you need to track for quite a long period of time to start seeing trends that are useful. You can then shape your content further based on your findings.
Average Consumption Rate
This metric (available on Apple Podcasts) shows how long listeners tune in for before dropping off. Spotify has just announced a similar metric however at time of writing, they only give you how many hours of listening an episode has received. It doesn’t give you a percentage, which is a more useful metric.
A low consumption rate (around 50%) might indicate boring content or guests and it is something you’re then able to play to try and get your consumption rate up. I recommend tracking this metric per episode over at least a 90 day period to identify areas for improvement.
Social Media Insights
If you’re on social media, which most podcasters these days are in some form, it is very useful to track how your repurpsoable content is performing over time. Look at likes, comments, and shares for individual content snippets you share from your podcast. Consider sharing on LinkedIn, Medium, and other platforms relevant to your audience too so that you can cast a wider net.
Remember, not everyone is an audio podcast listener but they are willing to engage with you in other ways.
Once you’ve started sharing your repurposed podcast content on your socials consistently, track the metrics that are useful to you and continue to iterate the way you share over time to see what works.
Experimentation on social media platforms is key.
Newsletter Tracking
Not everyone has a newsletter, and I know it’s probably one of the more time-consuming things to do in relation to your podcast, but it’s worth thinking about. As I mentioned above, there is a large portion of the population that would love to hear from you, but really don’t have the time to listen or watch podcasts.
Reading is a lot quicker for most people, so if you can share a newsletter summary, you will reach an audience that otherwise wouldn’t engage.
Track your email newsletter click-through rates to your podcast. I recommend making it easy for subscribers to access your podcast with clear calls to action and only a couple of them at most. A simple “read the transcript” call to action is often all that’s needed.
YouTube Analytics
If you have a video version of your podcast on YouTube, track its performance there as well. YouTube analytics offer a wealth of data on audience demographics, search terms, watch time, and more. Through the extra data that you find on YouTube, you can start to see what content is “trending” for your niche, and what your audience is actively searching for. This helps you understand how your podcast is performing with a different audience who are often more visual learners.
Calls to Action
How do you track whether anyone is clicking on your links in your show notes? I suggest setting up attribution links (Captivate as mentioned above has a very easy method for this). You can then see over time if the links you’re including in your show notes are actually converting. It’s also a great idea to use a form on your website with a "How did you find us?" dropdown option to track podcast-driven inquiries.
Hopefully, you can now see how valuable tracking more metrics from your podcast can be. It will give you a holistic view of your podcast's performance beyond downloads. By understanding how your audience engages with your content across different platforms, you can make data-driven decisions to improve your show and achieve your goals.
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Brianna: You're tracking the wrong metrics when it comes to your podcast. I know that everyone tells you that you should be looking at your download numbers, or maybe no one has actually even told you that. Maybe you're just thinking shortly. That's how I track how my podcast is going. And yes, that is one key part of it, but there is so much more to actually looking at how your podcast is going, how it's growing, if it's growing, what it's like, Doing.
[00:00:28] And I want to go through the other things that you should be looking at for your podcast to see the actual impact of your show. So let's go through some of the key things that we look at for our pod coach members. Number one, Okay. It's normal. We look at the podcast numbers. We go into the backend of the podcast hosts.
[00:00:48] We like to use Captivate, OmniStudio and Buzzsprout as the hosts. I like with OmniStudio that you can go all the way down to the hour. So you can see kind of when your key areas or key hours for releasing might be, but Buzzsprout and Captivate don't go that far in, but I do find that OmniStudio especially for dynamic ad insertion gets quite expensive.
[00:01:12] So I like to use Captivate as my preferred method. If we look at the actual stats in the backend of there, you can start to track seven day downloads, 30 day downloads, and 90 day downloads so that we can track firstly, what kind of content we're getting. Consistency you've got within people that tune in regularly.
[00:01:31] So that's normally within that seven day kind of realm to then how a particular episode is tracking over a longer period of time, which means normally that it's coming up in search results or you're doing some work elsewhere that has meant that. Older episodes are starting to resurface and people are getting links to it.
[00:01:48] So if you track each individual episode over a longer period of time and collate that data, you can start to see what the actual trends are for your audience. Now the [00:02:00] next thing we want to have a look at is the actual categories that you are recording within and looking at how many people or what the kind of download numbers are for a category.
[00:02:09] So a pillar in my words would be if you're a podcast that is, Focus on health and wellness, for example, you might have sort of five key things that you talk about. Maybe one of them is mental health, physical health, spirituality, nutrition, and maybe you have one that's kind of guided meditations. So if you look at those pillars, what you can do is you can start to map out when you're recording an episode, you can decide, okay, this is my mental health pillar.
[00:02:40] And if you record multiple episodes that are for a mental health pillar, you can look at how they perform against other pillars over a long period of time. And then that gives you a trend to see, What episodes are actually going really well for your audience? What do they click on more? What do they listen to more?
[00:02:59] We often find, especially for the health and wellness space, that if you have guided meditations, they normally track pretty high because people like things they can just put on, listen to, and they will repeat, they will go back and listen to them multiple times. Now on that, the next thing that you should track is your overall Average consumption rate.
[00:03:19] Now you can track that in the back end of Apple podcasts. And I have done an episode on your consumption rate quite a while ago. Actually, if you go back through our videos and on podcast platforms overall, I can have gist of it would be that how long are people listening to your podcast for before they tune out?
[00:03:36] And this is only data at this time for Apple podcasts. Spotify doesn't have that kind of metric. in there at the moment, but I'm sure it will be something that's coming. So if you have a higher percentage of people that are like on a different platform to Apple, then it won't be as good for you, the actual collection of that data, because you might not have as many reference points for it.
[00:03:56] But the reason why you want to track that particular information is [00:04:00] if you've got a consumption rate that's sitting around, you know, 50, 60%, that's pretty low. And it means that people aren't getting all the way to the end of your episodes. They're getting kind of halfway before they're like, yeah, okay, I've, I've heard enough.
[00:04:13] That can be that you've provided enough value in that short space of time. And they feel like they've learned the thing, or it can be that you're boring. It can be that the topic's boring, that the guest is boring, that they actually don't want to listen to anymore, which makes me a bit sad. So if you track that information again, per episode, you can start to have a look at over time, um, What are the episodes that people aren't really enjoying?
[00:04:37] What are the episodes that people are switching off and then do less of them or record shorter episodes for the things that you feel like people are kind of zoning out for, and they don't really get all the way to the end of. Now we've kind of covered downloads and we've covered consumption, right? But the next thing that we want to track are a lot more of these episodes.
[00:04:58] Intangible things that you don't think to actually track that we here at BME Media for our podcoach members, we track obsessively just to look at how things are going over time. So I want you to make a note at day one, when you start tracking what your social following is on whatever social platform that you're on, then I want you to track day 30, Day 60 and day 90 on all those platforms as well.
[00:05:25] Why would you track those things? If you are sharing things from your podcast on those platforms, that's going to help those platforms grow. And if it's part of your broader strategy to have a bigger social following, to have more people, more eyeballs, you want to be able to track and see what those Things are actually doing within the social channels.
[00:05:46] So we go steps further than here's the actual followers that you have, but we look at the individual snippets that are being released over those periods, how many likes they get, how many comments they get. How many subscribers you [00:06:00] get for all of the social channels. And we see how that's growing, or if it's growing over time, we look at how many extra comments you're getting and the DMS stuff.
[00:06:09] That's being transferred from creating, from sharing that repurposed content from your podcast on your social channels, because the thing you have to remember. Is that podcasting is a marketing channel for whatever else is going on in your business. If the podcast, its only job is to be entertainment, that that is the whole thing, that there isn't other, some other business creating around it, that podcasting is the business.
[00:06:34] That's a little bit different, but you still need to track what's going on. All those other things, and it is still serving as marketing. So that's why it's important for you to go, okay, yeah, I'm getting this many downloads, but if I share, and if I repurpose properly, what else is happening? What other activity am I having on all my other channels?
[00:06:56] The other thing I like to say is you should be sharing things to LinkedIn. If it's part of your strategy, if it makes sense for you, if you're sort of more B2B articles, LinkedIn articles. Medium articles and track the data on the back end of all of those as well. How many reads are you getting? How many likes are you getting?
[00:07:12] How many shares are you getting? There's so many things that you can track within those social platforms to see how things are actually going over there as well. Because I can bet you that if those things are growing, you are making more sales. You're making more sales than you think from your podcast.
[00:07:32] All you've been doing up until this point is just relying on what the download numbers are telling you. But you're not looking at all the other places that people are actually engaging with your podcast as a repurposable machine. This is all to say you should be repurposing your podcast in every way possible.
[00:07:52] Don't just release the podcast episode and then be done with it. What else can you do with it for our clients, especially on our bigger packages? That gets [00:08:00] really interesting because we can repurpose on a much bigger level, all the things for your podcast. It's an investment for you to do that for us to do that for you.
[00:08:09] But the results that you get are a lot better because the marketing that you're able to do around it, it just, it's more of a machine and it's more fun too. So, we've gone through audio, download, podcast, stats, consumption rate, your social channels, all the social channels, everything that you're tracking within the actual individual video snippets, how they're all going, any articles that you're sharing, anything that you're sharing at all, carousel posts, graphics, anything to do with the podcast, I want you to track that.
[00:08:40] And I want you to have a look at how it's. Actually resulting in more sales in more activity than you think it is. And then I want you to go a little bit further and I want you to look at your newsletter. If you have a newsletter, look at the click through rate on the newsletter at day one day, 60 to net today, 90 and beyond.
[00:09:00] But what I want you to do is make sure that with that email newsletter, You're making it really easy for that person to click through from your newsletter to your podcast. And one of the best ways to do that is mention the podcast, put a graphic in if you like, but give them one thing to click on, whether that's read the full transcript.
[00:09:21] And then they click through and it takes them to your website where you have the full transcript. Don't give them too many options. Don't give them, listen on here, listen here, listen to Apple, listen on Spotify. Don't, don't do that. There's too many things for them to click on and they're already on a newsletter.
[00:09:37] Give them one way to engage with your podcast and track how that click through works. So check your attribution, make sure you've got something linked there so that you can see how it actually goes and builds on over time. I'll also want you to be on YouTube. And if you're not there already, please make some moves to get there.
[00:09:57] That can be an audio only podcast [00:10:00] where all you're doing is you are just feeding through your RSS feed to the back end of YouTube and then it just gives you all the audio episodes in there. That's fine. You can do that. It's a great place to start. But you'll see more traction. I would say almost definitely if you actually do a video version, like I am right now of your podcast, then you're able to track a lot more juicy stuff.
[00:10:25] If it's the backend of YouTube, where the analytics are actually insane, there is so many things that you can look at within YouTube to see how people found you. Well, What words they were searching for, how long they're watching for, uh, what the can, again, what the retention rate is. That gets really fun to then be able to see more data around your podcast because it's on video, because it's easier for people to connect with, because you can supply graphics that people will click on and you can do a lot more SEO targeting and keyword sort of searching there.
[00:10:58] You can start to see again, how the podcast is performing, not just on audio, but engaging with a completely different audience that aren't audio listeners. They don't listen to podcasts. They go to YouTube to learn something like you are right now. Hi, you're learning right now on YouTube. Isn't that mind blowing?
[00:11:19] So that's why I say it's important to be there on YouTube and also make sure you're tracking the things on YouTube. How many. Views are you getting? How long are they watching for? And know that how long they watch for is going to be very different to how long they listen for. So your consumption rate on audio platforms is going to be much better than your consumption rate on video.
[00:11:43] You know, it's the nature of the beast. Unfortunately people kind Get bored or they click off. They've got too many other distractions. When it's on video, they have other tabs open. They're doing other things at the same time. They've got all the information they need. They can skip through cause there's chapter markers and find what [00:12:00] they actually need.
[00:12:01] There's so many reasons why people will just stop on YouTube or on video versus audio. And so don't be. Don't be sort of upset if you're not getting the amount of consumption rate there. You should feel excited by the fact that you're engaging with a completely new audience on YouTube that can allow you to just track completely different metrics over a really specified amount of time.
[00:12:26] And you can see how all those things are going. Now we've got audio podcast downloads, we've got consumption rate, we've got social channels and the individual posts that you're on the platforms. We've got newsletter, the newsletter subscribers, the click through rate. We have now got YouTube and the analytics around YouTube.
[00:12:47] And then ultimately also at the end of the day, we want to look at things like depending on your business, how many calls, discovery calls people are booking in. And so you should have a specified link somewhere. That is on all your podcast stuff, like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and then on YouTube or anywhere else you want to put it, where you can track this particular thing.
[00:13:12] Book a discovery call with me, if it makes sense for your business to have that particular link. Then you can look at the amount of people that are clicking through from that link to that link. actually booking in a call with you. And that again, gives you a different metric of, Oh, okay. This is actually coming from the podcast.
[00:13:32] This person has come from the podcast. Then you can also track, if you have a form that people fill out on your website somewhere, Make sure you have a little like drop down thing. Where did you find us? And make sure podcast is one of the things that they can click on and then track that. How many do you get in a month, in a 60 day, 90 day period of people that have come through to you, learn about you, want to work with you on the basis of your podcast as well.
[00:13:58] This isn't even an [00:14:00] exhaustive list. I could actually go further into the other things that you can track for your podcast. I don't want you to focus on that one thing of audio download numbers. It's all the other ways that people can connect with you and read your Feel like they know you, like you, trust me, the same way I hope that you know, like, and trust me now.
[00:14:21] If you've looked at more episodes on my YouTube channel, if you've listened to multiple episodes on my podcast, or maybe it's the first time, hopefully I'm feeling good to you. That would make you then want to work with us here at Bamu Media in some way. We have multiple ways to do that. We don't take on many clients.
[00:14:42] We have a very full roster, but we do have the podcoach experience, which I mentioned at the beginning of this video as well. We take on a small cohort of people where we track basically what I have just described to you in full. We listen to every episode that you record. You don't have to be a client of ours to do this.
[00:15:04] We listen to every episode you record. We track how you're going. We look at your episode titles. We track all the data. We give you feedback on a whole bunch of different elements like your content. the actual audio quality, the production value, what your video snippets or your social snippets look like, a whole bunch of things.
[00:15:24] And then every week we give you feedback on each of those things and then track all the things that I've mentioned just now on the backend through a fancy spreadsheet that we use as well and check in with you. To see how you develop over at least a three month period. So the podcoach is really cool for that.
[00:15:43] If you've just watched this or listened to this whole thing and you're like, Oh my God, that's, I have to track all that stuff. Like what a pain in my ass. We can do it for you. So. Just know that is something that you can do. You can go to BambiMedia. com slash podcoach and you can [00:16:00] apply. As I said, we take small cohorts so that we can give you really tailored, structured feedback.
[00:16:06] We don't want a lot at once. So know that. There's an application only. And then we will get in touch with you to see if you actually meet the requirements that we have to work with you in that manner. That doesn't feel like something you want to do right now. That's fine. Go yourself, go and put together some sort of spreadsheet where you can go and feel like you can track everything and get a really good handle on On what it is you should actually be doing.
[00:16:32] What it is you should be focusing on. Where are the things that you're falling down? Is it your episode titles? Are your show notes not good enough? Because people aren't getting to find you. They can't search for you because your show notes kind of don't have key phrases, don't have keywords. Are you not providing certain aspects that someone is really wanting to learn about from you as well?
[00:16:54] Track all these things. And I can guarantee you if you track them over a long enough period of time and you are open to feedback, you are self critiquing. If you don't have someone like us here at BAMI Media critiquing for you, if you understand that you need improvement and then make those improvements and track again and again and again, there is no way you can lose.
[00:17:19] There is no way you won't grow. I promise you. So think about that. Get the right metrics in place. I have other videos that are going to pop up here so that you can see what else we have to offer you here at Bambi Media on the YouTube channel. We're really growing this channel and I'm just enjoying it so much.
[00:17:38] I love the comments. Please give me comments. I just love replying to them. And if you have any feedback, let me know. Okay. Bye.
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