Podcast Statistics: What is Important – PCI 394

Podcast Insider

Todd and Mike sprinkle bits of advice about what podcast statistics that podcasters should pay more attention to as well as the ones that are less crucial to creators overall understanding of their success. Podcasters should focus on key statistics that reflect their unique goals and aspirations instead of getting caught up in every available metric.

Remember the importance of not stressing over stats but focusing on consistency and quality of the content to ensure steady growth and audience retention in the long term.

Today’s Hosts: Mike Dell and Todd Cochrane

Podcast statistics can be an important way of measuring your podcast’s success. Depending on your goal, stats can give you insights that can help you adjust your show’s content and marketing strategy.

What to Look For In Your Podcast Stats

Aka these are the important podcast statistics in our opinion 😉

• Listener Growth Rate: See how your show is growing (or not) over time, indicating the podcast’s appeal and reach.
• Download Numbers: (Per Episode) Provides a direct metric of how many times episodes are being downloaded (or listened to), reflecting the podcast’s popularity.
  • Advertisers and Potential guests are most interested in per-episode downloads.
  • Total downloads and downloads over X amount of time, for the whole show are interesting, but not super important.
• Retention: This includes the average listening duration and episode completion rate, which help understand how much of an episode listeners consume.
• Demographic Information: (This is not directly measurable in stats, but it can be done with a survey.) Insights into listeners’ age, location, and interests can guide content creation and marketing strategies.
• Subscriber/Listener Counts: The number of dedicated listeners who subscribe to receive updates or automatic downloads, indicating a stable listener base. This is sort of an unknowable stat, but there are ways to get a good idea.
  • Check a single episode and see what the downloads were in the first 3 days or so.
  • Also check for “mobile apps” in the apps section. Most of those will be “subscribers or followers” in the first 3 days or so.
  • Use Blubrry’s Thrive bundle to add the listener/subscriber graph
• Trending Graphs: This gives you a snapshot of how your podcast is doing over time. An upward trend means it’s growing. On Blubrry stats, you can see trends Monthly, Daily and even hourly for the first 7 days.

Non Crucial Podcast Stats

The items below are good for social proof, but may not tell you anything about your podcast success.

• Social Media Followers: Social media can be a good way to promote your show, but just because you have x followers does not mean everyone who follows you on social media will listen to your podcast.
  • This includes subscribers to your YouTube channel, Facebook, etc.
• Website Hits: The same as social media. Just because someone clicks on your link and lands on the episode page on your website doesn’t always translate into a listen/download.
• Total Episodes Count: More episodes don’t necessarily mean higher quality or more listener engagement.

Things to Keep in Mind When Reviewing Your Stats & Success

• Try not to compare yourself to other podcasters. You have your own style, subject matter that might not be for everyone in your niche.
• Podcast audiences ebb and flow. Someone might subscribe and listen to every episode but then disappear. People try out podcasts and then move on to other podcasts.
• Episode totals might also go down and back up from episode to episode, this is normal.
• You might get a big spike once in a while. If your show is mentioned in some high-profile way. Those listeners might just listen to that one episode and not subscribe.
• Don’t stress or get obsessed with podcast stats. Podcasts grow slowly, and podcast stats are not instant. Try not to check stats several times a day, it will be frustrating.

Thanks for joining us on Podcast Insider, where we bring you insider access to the tools you need to succeed.Until next time, keep podcasting!

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