Podcast Statistics: What is Important – PCI 394

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Another one's demographic information. Now, this isn't really a stat that's measurable, you know, using podcast statistics, but it's usually done with a survey. Uh, so that gives you insights into listeners age, location, interests, you know, that kind of thing. And in our survey that we provide for all our customers, it, it even gives 'em a place to leave you a comment.

Speaker 2 00:00:26 You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochrane, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting. All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. I'm Todd Cochrane, CEO, and founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 0 00:00:50 And I'm Mike Dell, VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 2 00:00:54 Today, we are talking about podcast stats. Oh my goodness, what's important and what might not be so important when looking at your stats data. And we know some of you, some of you are some serious stats junkies,

Speaker 0 00:01:11 for sure. Yeah, they definitely, uh, anything goes wrong with stats. That's a surefire way to get my phone ringing off the hook and the, uh, tickets to fill up . So you guys pay attention.

Speaker 2 00:01:23 , you know, stats can really be an important way of measuring your podcast success. It's really depending on your goals, stats can give you insights that can help you adjust your shows content and marketing strategy. And today we're gonna kind of dig in. Matter of fact, we got some more stuff coming soon, but we're gonna dig in to what we have available today. Um, but you know, what we've really tried to do here at Blueberry is to give you digestible information that will help you really kinda look and see where your show's going and how it's growing or not, or, you know, give you some insights. And probably the really the most important stat that I think is really the one that's kind of a, a bellwether of a how show is doing is listener growth rate to see how your show is growing or not over time ending in the podcast appeal and, and reach. And that's why that trending chart is right at the top at Blueberry stats to see, you know, what has happened over the last thirty, sixty, ninety, a hundred eighty a year, two year period. And of course, you know that that listener growth rate chart or that trend chart, you know, you hope that that number continues to climb. Yep. Uh, but even my own show that I've been doing for many, many years, I've had dips. And it's just, you know, it's kind of discouraging when you see it dip. Uh, but I think it happens to all of us.

Speaker 0 00:02:49 Yeah. And that's normal. Uh, you know, audiences ebb and flow and, and it's just the nature of the beast. You know, time of year, uh, big events going on, uh, just a hundred different things can cause people to, uh, you know, slow down on their podcast listening. Like here, you know, in, in the Midwest we get, you know, spring comes and man, we got all kinds of outdoor stuff to do. So we may be listening, you know, while we're doing those things, but maybe not. We might have other events and stuff going on. So, you know, your audience ebbing and flowing like that is pretty normal. But it, you know, as long as the overall trend over however many months or years or whatever is kind of heading in the right direction, you're doing all right.

Speaker 2 00:03:35 And I know some of you will send us a ticket if you've seen like a 200 listener drop off, you know, we really can't predict what has happened because your show had a 200 drop off. Yeah. But your download numbers, you know, do provide a direct metric of how many times an episodes are being downloaded and maybe listen to, and it reflects the, the podcast popularity and ultimately download slash play numbers are things that advertisers and potential guests are really interested in on a per Go

Speaker 0 00:04:06 Ahead. Yeah, it's definitely per episode though. You know, the, the total downloads over X amount of time is a cool stat, and it's really kind of fun, but it's not super important. It's how many people on average listen to or download your each episode, you know? And that's, that's the one that the, uh, advertisers and guests, you know, really wanna know. You know, it, it doesn't matter that, uh, you got a million downloads over 15 years of podcasting. It matters what happened last week in the last episode, or a month ago episode or something

Speaker 2 00:04:44 Like that. Yeah. And, and a good rule of thumb is to let that episode percolate for 30 days. And that's gonna kinda give you, you know, kind of a number. You know, it's over the last 30 days, this, you know, my episode averages were X and, uh, we give you some of that data within the system. And you can also set date ranges as well to look at an, at an episode by episode level. But again, um, yeah, we don't, advertisers, uh, guests, yeah, they wanna know what you're doing at in an episode level, like Mike said. And I think a 30 day window is pretty good to look at episodes that are being published. Another thing that you need to pay attention to as a podcaster, and this is not necessarily something that's gonna be asked of you, is the retention. You know, this includes average listening duration and episode completion rate, which helps you understand how much of an episode listeners consume.

Speaker 2 00:05:40 Now, if you are using our retention graph, that retention graph is best used on an episode that, again, has about 30 days of publishing time on it. So if you're looking at your global retention numbers, that's probably not what you wanna look at. You wanna go and look at a specific episode, you wanna look at the retention of that, show how that audience did that, they say 60, 70, 80, 90%, and kind of compare episode by episode to kind of see where your retention rate is. And if you're creating a show that has the same format and you're seeing that at about the 70% mark that the audience is dropping off like a rock, well maybe look at what you're doing at about the 70% length of the show to see if you can spice things up and make some changes.

Speaker 0 00:06:27 Yeah. A lot of times what happens is they can tell you're just about to, to be done, and then they hit forward and get onto the next show that they're, they wanna listen to. And so it's not abnormal to see everybody drop off at the 95% , you know, something like that. Yeah. But if you're doing something, you know, three quarters of the way through that makes everybody drop off, or a lot of people drop off, then you know, well, maybe I need to adjust that or do something different, or maybe throw a little surprise in there. Something, you know, to, to keep, keep things interesting.

Speaker 2 00:07:01 And if a show has a predictable length, like the show I do with Rob, the new media show where we go 90 minutes, people know we're getting close to the end and we can see that, that, that the fall off. But on my tech show where they don't know where the end of the content is, and I don't give a hint where the end of the content is until I'm done, then I, I take 'em out to 97, 90 8% because after I hit the last article, they know I'm just gonna be asking to support the sponsor and send an email and kind of that wrap up stuff that happens those last two minutes. And majority of them bail. Yeah. So the longer you can keep 'em from knowing the interview is coming to an end, or the episode's coming to end, the better.

Speaker 0 00:07:39 Yeah. One thing about, uh, this particular stat, it's not available in all stats platforms. Uh, blueberry of course has it. Uh, you can go right to Apple or Spotify and look at retention there, but, uh, for the most part, you're not gonna get a global, uh, look at, you know, retention everywhere. Yeah. You know, with us, you know, it's always a subset depend no matter where you're at, but gives you a good idea. Another one's demographic information. Now this isn't really a stat that's measurable, you know, using podcast statistics, but it's usually done with a survey. Uh, so that gives you insights into listeners age, location, interest, you know, that kind of thing. And in our survey that we provide for all our customers, it, it even gives 'em a place to leave you a comment, which is kind of, uh, kind of handy. But, uh, that demographic info can also sort of shape, you know, what you are, what you're doing. Now, if you're, you know, say you're doing a show that's meant for a certain demographic and you get a some certain different demographic, then uh, you know, that's okay. But you know, at least you'll know about it.

Speaker 2 00:08:55 The subscriber listener data is, is difficult. And we've done our best within the blueberry platform to give you tangible information when there's info bubbles on each of those stats to give you the exact formula we're using. But what we're really looking for is, if you look at a normal podcast within the first 24 hours of a show being published, all of the apps that automatically download a podcast will do that within usually the first 24 hours Mm-Hmm. . And then anything that comes after that is usually people that are doing a, a click to play. So again, um, this is a sort of a unknown stat. Yeah. And again, there's some ways that we have presented within the platform to get a good idea what that ratio is. And something that you can do is to just look at a single episode after 24 hours and see what the number of downloads were, and then write that down and then come back after day 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and get a check on that number as well.

Speaker 2 00:10:00 And usually it, it'll be pretty predictable, um, what that is from episode to episode. And that's usually the delta between a subscriber and someone that's actively clicking playing. Also, you can check from mobile apps and app section. Most of those will have subscriber follows in the first three days or so. Um, but again, you can do additional piece where you can use, if you add the blueberries Thrive bundle to add a listener that actually that's included. I forgot to mention that the listener subscriber graph is available if you have the Blueberry Thrive bundle. So, um, we've given you a manual way to look at it the first 24 hours, and then looking at day 2, 3 3, day four, day five, and then, or use the Blueberry Thrive bundle to add that listener graph. And again, we've got those, um, those calculations on how we've come up with that. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:10:51 We've come up with a formula that is, I guess, as good as it can get . So check it

Speaker 2 00:10:57 Out. It's good as it can get. And so, again, and really the differences subscribers, you would be considered someone that has hit follow or subscribe in an app listener would be someone who has came and found your show in whichever method it may be, and hit play. Um, that is kind of the typical delta in the, in those numbers. But, uh, we talked a little bit earlier about trending graphs already, and it gives you a snapshot of how your podcast is doing. So, uh, I don't think we need to go over that anymore because we do have a great trending graph right at the top of the, of the website. Yep.

Speaker 0 00:11:36 Yeah. Right. When you sign into stats. So things that are not so important, uh, when looking at your podcast, not necessarily in the stats, but other ancillary things that would, you know, tell you what, whether you're successful or not, but the items below are for great for social proof, but may not tell you anything about your podcasts success. So like social media followers, you know, social media could be a good way to promote your show. Uh, but just because you have say, 20,000 followers on Facebook, that does not mean that all 20,000 of them are gonna also be podcast listeners. You know, it's gonna be a much smaller subset of that. I, I get a tick, I get tickets once in a while that says, well, I just put out my podcast to my 50,000, you know, 50,000 followers on Facebook. I only got 10 downloads, you know, and it's like, well, the, the two aren't necessarily connected. Again, social is a good way to promote your show, and it's good for social proof. You know, that obviously somebody cares what you think, but they may not wanna listen to the podcast for some reason. Who

Speaker 2 00:12:43 Knows. And I think, I think too, Mike, it really is an indicator if that's actually happening. If you've got 50,000 followers on a page or group and you announce a new episode and you only get, you know, a very small number of listens, it may tell you that you're not engaging correctly and you need to change your tactic on how you're trying to engage, uh, with those audiences. Now, website hits, you know, I kind of chuckle because if I had as many listeners as I had website hits, I, Mike, I could have retired 10 years ago. Oh

Speaker 0 00:13:14 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 00:13:15 Um, you know, my website gets a tremendous amount of website traffic. Uh, but that does not equal in any way, shape or form. Matter of fact, um, I near, as I configured, about one half of 1% may sample an episode. .

Speaker 0 00:13:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:13:33 So

Speaker 0 00:13:33 That's, you know, it's the same for like direct mail. You know, you get junk mail. How, how mu how much open rate do you get in junk, you know, in junk mail, right. You know, if you get 1% your, you're styling. And same thing with email campaigns, stuff like that. So, uh, just just because they show up on your website, uh, doesn't equate to a download. And, and also, you know, most people measure with Google Analytics. Well, Google Analytics has absolutely zero to do with podcast listens.

Speaker 2 00:14:04 And, and there's one thing that I also caution people, I I was, I did an interview with someone recently and he was doing five episodes a week. And the challenge with doing five episodes a week is you have to have like this amazingly engaged audience to keep listener volume where it needs to be. If you're doing five episodes a week, I do two a week, I do Monday and Thursday for my tech show. And that's been the happy spot for that show for many, many years. But the new media show, uh, we used to do two a week during covid, but it turned out that people had a lot more time to listen. Is Covid dropped off, the listeners dropped dramatically, right? So we went back to one episode a week. So it really ties into episode account. Uh, more episodes do not necessarily mean a higher quality or more listener engagement, number one, maybe they don't have time to listen to that episode. Yeah. Um, and number two, are you putting too much out there too quickly and people are just missing it. So, um, I think I caution people when they get in these high episode counts per week. You know, when someone says, I'm doing three episodes a week, my eyebrows raise a little bit. So, okay, is it 10 minutes long? Oh, no, I'm doing a two hour show and three times a week. Well, I don't know about you, Mike. I don't have time to listen to anybody for six hours a week. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:15:27 You know, there's a show that we both listen to. Uh, it does three hours twice a week, and, and you know, I have to pick and choose how far into those episodes I listen. That's right. I just don't have the time. You know, I usually try to catch the first half just because that's where all the good stuff is.

Speaker 2 00:15:43 Yep. But,

Speaker 0 00:15:43 Uh, you know, then again, you know, sometimes they're, they are compelling enough for that. So you just,

Speaker 2 00:15:50 Or I find myself even skipping, I'll listen to a whole episode. If the title of the next episode's not compelling, I'll jump to the next one because again, it's a three hour show, right. Um,

Speaker 0 00:16:00 I do listen to a daily that goes seven days a week and he does two episodes a day, but the episodes are no more than 15 minutes.

Speaker 2 00:16:09 So maybe a little easier to inhale. But again, I think you, you as the creator have to find the sweet spot of what your audience will expect. More is not always better. Now, on the other hand, minimum once a week, minimum of once a week, if you wanna grow your show, you have to be putting out an episode every week. Yeah. So, uh,

Speaker 0 00:16:29 I'm not necessarily good at that one on my personal show , but eh, it's all right.

Speaker 2 00:16:36 So, I guess the things to keep in mind when looking at your stats and podcast success is, you know, Mike, it's, we don't, you know, it's, this is not about keeping up with the Joneses, right? We don't have to compare yourself to other podcasters, although we are gonna be providing some new data soon that's gonna give you the ability to kinda look at a global scale, which kinda gave away what we're introducing. But yeah, you yeah. You have your own style subject matter that might not be for everyone in your niche.

Speaker 0 00:17:05 Yeah. You know, probably it just one of those things, you know, that a lot of times I listen to a podcast regardless of what the subject is because a certain person that I actually like, you know, I like their style, I like listening to them, and it might not even be a subject that I'm that interested in. And vice versa, there's shows that I would be super interested in the content, but I don't care for the person, the host. Right. You know, and that happens to everybody. So, you know, you may not be everybody's cup of tea.

Speaker 2 00:17:36 And what I found with my show now, almost 20 years, is pod podcast audiences ebb and flow. And it's been weird. I've heard, I've had podcaster listeners leave, come back, leave, come back, leave and come back. And I think I'm on like my, 'cause they listen for about two years. Yeah. And then I think they just kind of get tired of me. And then they, they go away for a couple years and then they come back and they say, oh, you're still podcasting. I'm back, I'm listening again. It's because, and I think I find this, even with YouTube channels, I kinda get bored sometimes with YouTube channels now, go looking for new stuff and drop things. Yeah. Um, so I think podcast audience are the same way. And this is why it's very, very important. And this is where podcasters really need to pay attention.

Speaker 2 00:18:24 You'll not keep that listener forever. You'll keep a few forever, but you won't keep 'em all forever. And this is where you have to continue to work very, very hard to continue to promote and grow your show. Because there's gonna be attrition of listeners on, on one end that may that will leave and go away for a while. Life tired of, you want new interests, they found another show that's, that's capturing their ideas. You know, again, it's this whole ebb and flow, and I think we've all done this. And if you think personally about what you've done yourself, I think you'll agree with me here. But, uh, again, uh, keep the, keep the light on for 'em though, because they will be back.

Speaker 0 00:19:09 Yeah, for sure. And you know, along that same line, it's just episode totals will go up and down again, like we talked about at the beginning of the show, you know, due to the season, due to, you know, like during the holidays, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. Depends on, you know, what your niche is. But, uh, you know, just, just know that that's normal. You're, you're not gonna have an even X number every single episode. Hopefully it grows, but it might go down, it might come back up, you know, that kind of thing. And just that is normal. And, you know, podcasts grows slowly.

Speaker 2 00:19:45 I wish the line was more steady because we'd get less support tickets.

Speaker 0 00:19:48 Oh yeah, for sure. And you know, that's, that's one of the things, you know, and, and this next bullet there, I get, I get tickets equally for why do we get so many downloads? You know, you might get a big spike once in a while. Your show might get mentioned somewhere in some high profile place, you know, tv, radio, uh, another podcast, uh, yeah, who knows. But you know, there's such a thing as going viral and podcasting and you know, just because you got a huge spike, that doesn't mean anything's wrong. Could be something wrong, but most of the time not. And also don't expect that big spike to maintain, you know, a lot of those listeners will come and listen to that one episode because of whatever caused you to get the publicity is what's in that episode. And you're not gonna have that in every episode. So you know, you're gonna not keep all those listeners. But it's kind of cool to see sometimes.

Speaker 2 00:20:43 So I know this is hard. This can be a hard statement for many of you to, to swallow. Don't stress or get obsessed with your stats. Podcasts grow slowly and podcast stats are not instant. Try not to check stats several times a day. Come in one time a day at the same time, maybe after work when you get up to have your coffee, get in, look, see how things are going, and then come back the next day. You are better spent, that time is better spent and preparing for a better episode. Yeah. Better, better spent those 10 minutes that you're looking through there and scratching your head and wondering why this one went up a hundred or 200, a thousand, and why that one went down 5,200 or a thousand. It's better to spend that time planning the next episode. Now if things are look totally whack, we'll happen to take a look for you. Sure. Um, but again, do that

Speaker 0 00:21:40 All the time.

Speaker 2 00:21:41 It's, do your best to dig through and look at referral data. See where, because again, uh, I've seen what recently actually happened was I kept noticing that some of my super old archive was getting some downloads. Now, this is weird. I mean, like episodes have been out 18, 19 years, they'd never seen downloads for, you know, since the millennia. Right. And they would show two or three, two or three, two or three, and it went kind of in batches. Turns out I had two people going through the back catalog, 20 and 25 at a time that they emailed me about months later and said, I'm all caught up. I've listened to all 1,730 episodes. And I'm like, really?

Speaker 0 00:22:24 Well, that's some old news back then

Speaker 2 00:22:26 Too. And what they were doing it, they were actually using some of, from a historical standpoint to see how the, how tech had changed over the past 19 years. And they were actually doing as part of a, a study. And I thought, well that's interesting that they were using the show archive to get that kind of information. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:22:44 And then, you know, for those that don't know your show, you, you do current tech news.

Speaker 2 00:22:48 Current tech news. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:22:50 So you're not really, you know, it's, it's not long tail No. Like this show, we're trying to make it long tail. Yeah. So you should be able to go back in our archives and

Speaker 2 00:22:59 Listen to this five years, you know, from now or whatever. But, you know, again, it's, it's, and here's the thing too, a a lot of podcasters say they are, they have long tail. They most don't. If you take a hockey stick and you, you step it on end and where the Huck the puck, I don't know what it's called, not the puck, but the, the blade, the stick, whatever the hit where you, where you hit the puck, is pointing upwards. Sports ball. That's, that's the way most podcaster stats look like. It, it's releasing it. That's huge spike straight up. And then it rolls like a hockey pup kind of down and kind of flat with a few bumps, uh, here and there. If you're lucky enough to create true long tail and you're getting this, you know, similar type of downloads month after month or month for old episodes, uh, ladies and gentlemen, you have hit the gel jackpot and we need to talk. Yes. Um, there's not a lot of shows that have that kind of success. Um,

Speaker 0 00:23:57 And there'll be new listeners coming in and they'll just download the whole catalog if they really like you, you know, depending on what your niche is. So you will get, you know, downloads on older episodes, that's normal as well,

Speaker 2 00:24:08 But they have to Apple podcasts now they have to initiate that. It doesn't happen automatically anymore. Yeah. So, um,

Speaker 0 00:24:15 That's why, you know, in stats, of course, I, I think we might have talked about this, but Apple changed the way they download back episodes in iOS 17. And you know, so people's totals, you know, per a certain amount of time went down, but your per episodes should not have changed. Right. Or not changed much because of the way, you know, the way they did it before versus the way they're doing it now. So that kind of freaked out a lot of people, but, uh, trust me, everybody had the same problem so

Speaker 2 00:24:47 Well some had a much bigger worse. Yeah, some had worse. Much, much bigger problem. Um, we had a not near as much as, uh, others did because the way we count. Yeah. But is that all Mike? Did we get through it?

Speaker 0 00:25:00 Yeah, I think we got through it. So again, you know, don't stress about your stats and uh, thanks for joining us here on Podcast Insider and we'll bring you, uh, more insider access and tools you need to succeed. Until next time, keep podcasting.

Speaker 2 00:25:16 Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease because we can't afford the ease.