Just What Can We Learn From Podcast Stats? The Podcast Report Episode #165

Just what can we learn from podcast stats? It's the podcast report, episode 165, show notes, links, conversation, and more at the podcastreport.com 16 5. So, here at the Podcast Partnership offices, we're getting ready for our middle of the month reports. What we do for our clients is we send them an update on what happened last month, and we look at a number of things. We look at downloads like everyone does. We look at what the biggest download was, what the smallest download was, and there's some interesting stats you can get from that. Because, you know, if one episode got a lot more downloads than the other episode, what was it about the subject that got more people to click play? What was it about the subject that got more people to download? What was it? But then what's interesting is we take a look at then the consumption stats inside of Apple, and we take a look at how long somebody listened to something. What's interesting is more often than not, the one that gets downloaded the most is not the one that gets consumed the most. I'll say that again, the one that gets downloaded the most isn't the one that gets consumed the most. What does this mean? This means that many, many podcasters will get the attention of their audience, but they won't necessarily keep the attention. And it's that 12 process of getting the attention and keeping the attention that makes for an exceptionally fine podcast. I had one client a while ago that we did this for, where I asked him, I said, okay, guess, or, you know, can you predict? You know, do you want to bet on which episode that month got the most downloads? Which episode that month got the least amount of downloads? Which episode that month got the most consumption, and which episode that month got the least amount of consumption? Well, here's what's interesting. The client who's been podcasting a lot, whose downloads are in the millions. This is not a, you know, I started to try to see if I wanted a podcast type of person. This is someone whose downloads in the millions, predicted, funny enough, exactly wrong. Now, there were only four episodes that month, so the odds of that aren't that crazy. But the one that he thought was downloaded the most was the one that was downloaded the least. The one that he thought was consumed the most was the one that was consumed the least. Even he didn't necessarily understand his audience. And again, millions of downloads, definitely doing something right. But the numbers didn't match the gut instinct that he had about his podcast. It made me wonder, how many other podcasters are that Way. Now, what's interesting is you take this 1, 2 combo of the downloads and the consumption, that begins to paint a story. But then what gets really interesting is a number that we look at in the report where what we do is we call recent. I can't remember the name of it. It's. It's like recent episode percentage or something like that. But what it is is basically how many episodes in October, released in October, were actually downloaded in October. So many of us tend to look at podcasts and think of the episode of the week. You know, we make our show more like the evening News or maybe 60 Minutes or that type of thing. Good for a week, good until the next episode comes out. But what's interesting is more and more clients are seeing a higher, higher number of the. The back catalog getting downloaded. Another client, we took a look at October, and what was interesting was the number was 24.99 something%. Like, almost. Almost exactly. One out of every four people were only downloading. I'm sorry, one out of every four people were downloading October episodes. Three out of every four people were listening to the back catalog. Interesting. But then as you go back and look at the research and as you go back and look at the numbers, this client had a tendency to sometimes make an episode that kind of was moment in time. And if you kind of listen to it a little bit, you realize that this isn't necessarily relevant for me. So a topic relevant, a podcast topic relevant, a podcast that looked attractive, a title that looked attractive, but then a podcast episode that didn't necessarily serve the audience two, three, four months later. Once you combine the new episode or old episode to the downloads to the conversion, you begin to build a really, really interesting picture of your podcast. And. And I want to explore a little bit about what we can do with that. If we take this episode as an example, and I'm playing with my new. You know, you've probably figured it out. I've got the new Rode soundboard, and I'm playing with that and doing an episode live to tape, if you will. This episode I'm attempting to make extremely evergreen. I'm trying to make this episode something that we could think about over time. Now, someone might be listening to this in full disclosure, I'm recording this in March of 2019, and you might be listening to this in March of 2020 or 2021 or 2022, and you might be going, why is he only measuring those four things? Because we have other things that we can measure right now. But what I want to do is I want to suggest, I want to recommend, I want to encourage podcasters to take a holistic view of what it is that they're doing. You know, so many of us take downloads only. And I joke all the time. And you've heard me on this show, I can get you as many downloads as you want. And they're really, really cheap. We look at downloads only or we look at downloads over time, or we look at different things. We look at this, we look at that, but we don't look at the whole picture. And I'd really recommend that you start looking at the whole picture because here's something funny. Let's say episode 22, the month that it was released was consumed 80% and then two months later it was consumed 60%. Then two months later it was consumed 40%. Then two months later it's consumed at 20%. At that point, if they're turning the show off before they get more than one fifth of the way into it, should you delete the back catalog? Should no longer make the back catalog available. Doesn't matter. All psychology that you want to think through for your podcast, what it is that you're doing. But flip side, imagine creating an episode that one year later stays at the 80% consumption rate, stays at the 90% consumption rate. What would that mean? What, what could you do with that? I chatted about in a previous episode, but earlier this summer I released the article on Medium and you can just search for it in Medium and we'll put it the show notes the podcastreport.com 165 in that article I chatted about how consumption of a Facebook Live video is tiny compared to that same video released on YouTube, that same video released as a video podcast, and that same video released as an audio only podcast. The conception is considerably better in the audio only podcast and that's because of the way where by which we consume audio podcasts. So grand scheme, what does this mean? Different platforms, different consumption paradigms. Track those over time and see what happens. If you have a podcast that is consumed at a wonderful space, the same six months later, a year later, heck, a month later, three months later, you begin to build yourself a winner. And if you can build a podcast of what we'd like to call around here assets, not episodes. If you build a show that has the same rate in the future, you're going to see exponential growth. Also in this episode, I'm going to link to an episode of Frank Kearns yous Next Million Podcast. And and I'VE chatted about this before, but Frank Kern is killing it. Frank Kern is doing extremely well. And what has happened with Frank and in full disclosure, he's our client is Frank has realized that more and more content is getting him more and more numbers, getting him more and more downloads. But what I can tell you behind the scenes, and I have permission to share this, is that the consumption is staying high, high. The back catalog is staying high. The front catalog is staying high. The people who download the thing, you know, five, 10, 20 minutes after it gets released is high, but the people who are listening to it later is high. And he's producing the type of content that his audience wants. Now, it's funny is the show notes are basically non existent. The SEO work is basically non existent. The promotion, as you'll see in this link again, podcastreport.com 165 as you'll see in that link, the promotion of the podcast almost completely non existent. But the numbers keep getting higher and higher and they keep coming back on a regular basis. And I'll tell you this, and we're going to explore what's happening with Frank much deeper in a future episode. But if Frank wasn't holding the interest of his audience, then his audience wouldn't be coming back for daily shows. Yes, he's doing daily shows because he's reaching his audience when and where and how they want to be reached. And he's reaching with content. Although he might say it's Friday, March 3rd, the content is just as relevant. Thursday, April 7th, Saturday, January 9th, that kind of thing. I'd like you to take a look at that. I'd like you to ponder that. But long story short, in this quick examination of reporting, downloads, yes, but consumption, yes, downloads over time, consumption over time. What kind of story is that telling about what you're doing to your audience? Hey, Paul, I've noticed that you're doing all sorts of different types of episodes this year in the podcast or this season of the podcast. And you bet I am, because we're tracking all of this to figure out these same things. I'm going to do it. I'm going to track it. I'll report back to it. I'll report back to you on it later. But I recommend that you track the same thing. Let's figure out, you know, what this means for podcasters and let's all produce a better show. Until next time. Chat with you soon. Bye.