141. The 2 Underutilized Podcast Stats That You Should Be Paying Attention To

Sara Whittaker 0:01

Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Do you ever feel like you're swimming in a sea of data totally unsure of what your podcast stats mean? And which stats actually matter for your show success. Today, I want to focus on two underutilized podcast stats that can make a world of difference for your podcast growth. Before we get into this, I have to say my quick piece that I always say when I talk about podcast ads, and that is that you really need to be tracking your stats monthly, I often get on the phone with podcasters for audits or strategy calls. And when I asked them, if they track their stats, their usual response is that yes, they can go into their podcast host and they can see their downloads. But that's not actually tracking your stats, you really need to have a formal spreadsheet of some kind, where you're actually getting these numbers down numbers beyond just your total downloads each month. And when you really get into the habit of this, it's not going to take you but 10 to 15 minutes each month to actually go into your spreadsheet and put these numbers, if you're somebody who's listening who's been podcasting for several months, or even several years at this point. And you're kind of at this point of stagnant growth, and you really aren't quite sure what steps to take next, or you're not sure why you're not seeing more growth. And you're not doing this, you're not tracking your stats every month and taking some time to actually look at them and think about what they mean, then I would tell you that that should be step one, in terms of action that you need to take is to start making that a monthly habit. Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, let's go into these two underutilized podcast stats that you should be paying attention to. The first one is your number of followers or subscribers. If you don't already know, each listening app kind of uses their own verbiage in terms of follower or subscriber, maybe last year, I think it was maybe even two years ago. Now, Apple used to be called subscribe on Apple. But now they have paid subscriptions on Apple. And so for free public podcasts that are out there that you're not charging people for when somebody adds your podcast to their library, it's called a follow, they hit the Follow button on Apple podcasts. Same thing with Spotify, some other apps, some other listening apps still use the term subscribe. That's why when I always talk about this, I always kind of use both interchangeably. So just kind of be aware of that that's just like a little tiny detail that you should be aware of to because when you're encouraging people to follow your show, you don't know which app they're listening on. So I would use both terms, I just always say, follow or subscribe on your favorite listening app. But anyway, within some of the individual listening apps, on the back end, you can actually see your follower or your subscriber count. Now for today's purposes, I'm going to focus on Apple just because I know for me, and for a lot of you, that's where the majority of your listeners are. And so when I go and look at, you got your stats inside of your podcast host, but then you also have stats that you can see on the back end of these platforms, I do not go into every into the back end of every listening app and check the individual stats, because I get a lot of that information from my podcast host Captivate. But I do like to go into Apple podcasts connect because they have some really, really great stats and analytics for your podcast that your host doesn't give you. And so if you've never been into your apple podcast Connect account, I highly recommend logging in checking out your analytics because there's some really great information in there and one of those pieces of information is your follower count. So in your apple podcasts Connect account, when you're on your stats tab. It's in like the top left hand corner. Monthly, they'll show you how many new followers you gain that month, and how many followers you lost. And then it gives you your net number. And then above that it also has your total number of followers as of the end of that month. And honestly this data is gold because it's not just about seeing how many followers you're Gaining but really understanding the trends. Seeing if you are over time gaining more followers or losing more followers, when you see months that are attracting a lot of new followers get curious about that. Why could that be? For example? Did you have some sort of increase in visibility that month? Like maybe you're part of a virtual Summit? Or maybe you guessed it on another podcast, and you talked about your podcast, sometimes you can see that direct correlation between a visibility opportunity and a bunch of new followers. And then vice versa, if you are seeing months that have a really large drop in followers, why could that be was the content that was not resonating with people, was it at the end of the year where people might be cleaning up their library of podcasts they don't really listen to on the regular. I mean, there's so many different reasons and and each of your shows data is going to be unique to you. But get in there and look at these numbers and see what's going on for you. And I will say everyone is going to lose followers, I check stats for my clients every month. And for myself, everybody loses followers, that's going to happen. So don't feel bad when you see that, I know that that's it's kind of like looking at your, your unsubscribes in your email marketing platform, like we, you know, it's a little bit of like a punch in the gut when you see if people are unsubscribing or unfollowing, your podcast, but it happens to all of us. So just know that that's, it's gonna happen, you're gonna see that happen. But if you're consistently losing more followers than you're gaining each month, that's when it's a problem. And that's when you definitely need to look at the content that you're putting out. And you need to dig a little bit deeper, to see if there are any tweaks that you could make with your content, because maybe there's some sort of disconnect between the content that you're putting out, and who your listeners truly are and what they need.

And then if you're retaining a lot of your followers, this is why I love to look at this number because it gives you an idea of retention rate, if you're retaining a lot of your followers, and you're not losing many months to month, that's really great to see too. And it's a really good indicator that you're serving your audience really, really well. Okay, let's jump into the second underutilized podcast stat. And that is your average consumption rate per episode. This is a really powerful metric that really goes beyond just simple download numbers, it actually tells you how much on average of your Episode Your listeners are actually consuming. And again, there are, you know, some the back end of some listening apps will show you this information. I think only apple and Spotify do this, but I could be wrong, don't quote me on that. Again, I usually just pay attention to what's in Apple podcasts connect, because that's where the majority of my audience is. And it just gives me an indication of of what the average consumption rate is. So you can find this in your apple podcast connect as well. It will show you each episode and then it will give that episode a an average consumption rate. A high average consumption rate indicates that your audience is not just clicking that episode, but they're actually sticking around to listen to it. It's a measure of how engaged they are with your content. And on the flip side, a low consumption rate might signal again that something needs tweaking with your content. Maybe your intros are too long, or your content needs to be more concise. Know what you are probably thinking because it's the question that everybody always asks, which is, well, what's considered a quote unquote, good consumption rate. And I like to tell people that I like to see that the majority of your episodes have an average consumption rate of 65% or higher. And so really, these two stats, your follower account and your average consumption rate, they kind of tie into each other in a way. Because if you're seeing that you're losing a lot of followers and your consumption rate is really low, then that is like red flag waving lights flashing something is disconnected something, you've got to take a step back and think about some changes that you can make. And my best advice to you would be to send out an audience survey and figure out exactly who's listening, and what they're enjoying what they want to hear more of what they need from your podcast, what's going to keep them around. And in many ways, in my opinion, these two stats are more important than your download numbers because they give you information about how your audience is responding to your content. So now that you have this information, what should you do? Well, it's definitely time to take some action. So number one first step is to commit to tracking these numbers each and every month at the end of the month, or I do it the first week of a new month for the previous month. Number to get Curious about what your data is showing you. Like I said before, your numbers are going to be different than mine, they're going to be different than the next person's. So give yourself some space to not only input your numbers every month and look at those numbers, but actually some time to think about what those numbers mean for you. And then number three, you're going to use that information to create more content that is resonating with your audience that they are highly engaged with. So today, my advice to you is to head over to Apple podcasts Connect account, explore the data in there, there's lots to look at, beyond what I talked about in today's episode, and let it help you guide your decisions and guide where your podcast goes next. Like I just said, these are just two of many numbers that you can track, not just an apple podcast, but in your podcast host to help you understand how your podcast is doing and how to make those data driven decisions. You know, sometimes as podcasters, if you're not really hearing directly from your audience, we often are kind of like scrambling like I don't I don't know if people are enjoying the content. I don't know if people are listening and, and questions like that. But really, your data tells you so so much without even directly hearing from your audience. If you need some more support and understanding your podcast data, and would love an incredible template that will tell you exactly what numbers to track, I would invite you to join us in my audio course podcast like you mean it. One of the lessons is solely dedicated to podcast data. And it's one of the most it's actually the most popular lesson in the course. Because it comes with a podcast metrics bundle template, which will allow you to input your numbers every month, and then it actually it's hooked up to what's called Looker studio. If you aren't familiar, it's free. It just connects to your Google Spreadsheets. And it will turn your numbers into a visual representation to show you your podcast data in a way that makes it so much easier to understand and to interpret. Just a quick glance. So I'll leave the link for that in the show notes for today's episode, podcasts like you mean it is one of my favorite things I've ever created, because there's just a lot of great resources within it, including the podcast metrics bundle, but so many more things as well. So definitely check it out. Lastly, if this episode was helpful for you, and you have not written a review for the show on Apple podcasts yet, please do that today. As you very well know, podcasting is a lot of work. My podcast manager and I both worked so hard on this show, to get out a new episode for you every single week. And we would love to hear your feedback with a review. It just takes a minute and it's a free way to support this show. So head on over to this podcast in Apple podcasts. Scroll on down, you can leave your five stars write a review, and just let me know how this podcast has helped you. And maybe if you have a favorite episode you had let me know which episode that was. All right. As always, thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

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