Podcast statistics you need to track

I get a little nerdy in this episode because who doesn’t love a good pie chart and statistic, right?

Stats don’t lie people and it’s super fun to track the growth of your podcast over time to see how things are going. Make sure you’re with a podcast host who provides good statistics because there are some really useful things you can do with them.

In this episode, I list some of the things to take note of when checking out your stats. I talk about downloads per episode, what platforms your listeners are tuning in on, your most popular episodes, targeting your demographic and more.

Now don’t get obsessed with it. It’s all about tracking your growth over time and if you see a theme happening with particular episodes, start doing more of them. Have fun with it!

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1281877

OmnyStudio:https://omnystudio.com/learn

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod Hello, welcome back to my voice. How are you doing? How has your week been? Have you been hanging out? Have you been enjoying some new freedoms that you didn't have before? What's been going on in your world take a minute to just reflect on the good things that have happened this week. And what you did that was different to the week before. Now, this is not a personal development podcasts. So I'm not gonna go any deeper with that. But I just wanted to say hi, and I hope that you are doing well.

What I'm going to go through today is growth metrics. What should you be tracking? So if you have any kind of decent podcast hosts, which is something I go on about a bit Buzzsprout is the one that I recommend that we use. I also really like Omni studio for a different reasons. But they're my kind of two recommendations, they both have great statistics, you want to be with a podcast host that has good statistics that tells you a lot of things because it's fun to measure stuff, right? It's really cool to track the growth of something over time. Did you ever have a stick in your house where your mom or dad would just track your growth, like on a stick and just see how fast you were growing. And it was like super exciting when you'd grown like a whole massive chunk in a short space of time. That just made me think of that. So yeah, stats for your podcast could work in a very similar way.

So when you go to the stats section of your podcast, there's a few things that are good to firstly, take note of overall, how you are going per episode is good to know, within seven days, how many podcast downloads are you getting? It doesn't matter where you start, it doesn't matter how many you have to begin with. It's more about the growth over time. So if you can track that on like a spreadsheet, or you can even just download statistics, from the podcast host, hopefully, if you have a good one, and you can just put it in a new tab for every month, you could make a pie chart or you could do all sorts of things. That would be something to check just how you're going per episode. And track that week, on week or month on month, that sort of thing just to see how the growth is going. Your Podcast statistics should have a graph that kind of shows you how your tracking over time as well, like there should be an all time one that shows you like the trajectory of where you started and how it's gone over time. So that should be something that you can be able to check quite easily.

The other thing to look at is the top apps, like the apps that people are using to listen to your podcast. That is good to know. Because like let's say for example, most of your podcast listeners are coming from Spotify. Spotify has no way of allowing people to review your show like write a written review. So you might actually not include that in your podcast call to actions. Because when you look at your stats, you're like, man, well, there's barely anyone listening to it on Apple podcasts, which is the one you can download, you can actually put reviews on. So I just think I might skip that for a while because it's a call to action that can be annoying for people. And if they can't review it, because they're on Spotify, then maybe they don't want to hear about it. You know, that's not so much a stat. But it's just a good to know, it's not something that probably will change over time so much. It's not something you need to track month on month. But it's really good to know where people are tuning in from.

The next thing to have a look at is now that you kind of know how many downloads you get within seven days or 30 days or whatever. It's really good to go back and actually just have a look at what your most popular episodes are. And try and gauge why perhaps they were popular. And don't just look at how many download numbers you have. Because it could be that one episodes got a whole bunch of downloads, but it's really old episode. So it makes sense that it would have the most downloads because it's super old. There's more time for that episode, you have clicks because it's been up there for the longest. So don't just look at that have a look at you know some of your most more recent ones and how they're tracking against each other. And look at the reasons why it might be that they went really well. With the titles really good. Did you have really good guests. There's heaps of things you can look at from there. And you'll also want to play off each other like if you have solo episodes and guest episodes. Have a look at how your solo episodes track versus your guest episodes. If your guest episodes get way less downloads, then that's kind of cool because it means that you can just do more solos knowing that they're the ones that are the big hitters for you. And it might be that your audience is the other way they really like when you do guest episodes. So if you track that information, and you can play it off each other, then you can see what actually would be better to release.

Another thing that you should track is the countries territories, the places that people are listening to your podcast from. Because I mean, firstly, it's freakin cool to just look on a map and go, Oh my gosh, I've had so many listens from different countries, who are these people? Like, that's really cool. And then just to track that over time, it also really helps with sponsorships and ads and things moving on, like further down the track. Or if you are wanting to, to, like, if you were a personal brand, or you know, an influencer or your podcast is really taking off and you want to do some live recording somewhere, then you can look at the countries that are the most popular and track that over time and go okay, well, I know that Brisbane, Australia, Queensland, is really a great place, I'm getting heaps of downloads there. So I'm definitely going to visit that location when I am doing a tour or something like that. So definitely track that information. It also means that when you're advertising things on your show, you could be specific to a country if you know lots of people are tuning in from a certain country, and you're advertising something for that country, that's really good, just makes sense for you to target the demographic that is listening to your show. So definitely track that.

The other thing that you can track is your reviews. Now, I know we went into the fact that Spotify doesn't have reviews, but if the bulk of your podcast listenership is coming through from Apple podcasts, then I would expect and want you to be receiving quite a few reviews. And if you look at your reviews, and there's not much going on there, I will be doing a call to action and actually asking people to leave a review because a it's really cool to get some mad props, and just have people shouting you out and, and thanking you for the podcast and telling you why they like it. But it also helps your show get noticed, it doesn't help as much as it used to Apple doesn't, you know, look at all the reviews that you have and track that as much as it used to. But it's still a really good metric to include and to have people engaging with it. So definitely track that. And if it has been a while and you haven't had any new reviews, then I would be doing a giveaway or a shout out call to action, some sort of reason for them to leave a review and reignite that spark of giving you a bit of feedback, because it all helps. It all helps make your show better.

07:55
So those are the main things that I would say to track. The other thing that I would recommend having a look at is listen notes.com Listen notes is a really cool website where you can type in your show. And it will come up with a listen score and a global ranking. I'm not going to go into massive detail of listen notes. I believe I've I've mentioned it before in previous episodes. And this is something that you'd get more detailed information from within my my own private groups and that sort of stuff. But listen notes is a cool place to go and visit see where you're ranking and track that over time. See if it increases as well. Those are the things that I would recommend that you track.

Always have a look at your podcast, download numbers, don't be obsessed with it, but it's just cool to track it over time. And if you're seeing that something in particular is really resonating with people, a particular podcast episode or like there's a theme of podcast episodes that seem to be going really well. Do more of them play more into that and track it over time.

If you'd like to know more about how to podcast what to do if you've got specific questions that you really would like answered or maybe there's new information in there already, I would head to the pod lovers.com which is my free community for people who have podcasts or who are looking to start when you can jump in there. And there's a bunch of information that I put in there and people ask questions, clients, I answered them, they talk amongst themselves, that sort of thing, completely free community and I will be launching some paid opportunities from within that in the new year 2022. If you want any further information about what we do as a business, then you can go to Bamby media.com. And there's a whole bunch of production stuff that we do from there as well. That's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed this quick little one all about statistics. I'll see you inside the pod lovers.com if that interests you.