What Podcast Stats Should I Track? The Podcast Report With Paul Colligan #79

What podcast stats should I track? It's the podcast report number 79. Show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 79. This one was actually done as a live blab@blab im. Funny thing was I didn't even know that the backup recording had to be turned on for all that to happen. So if you head out to the podcastreport.com 79 you can see the final Q and A that we did afterwards. That stuff's not contained in this podcast but everything about what we should track, where to get the worksheet, all that stuff is in this episode. So enjoy. Hey this is Paul Colligan and this is the podcast report episode 79. What podcast stats should I track? We're doing something interesting in today's episode. We are recording this live on Blab im. We got a number of people who are in the room watching this live. Thank you guys. For those of you doing this live, some of you have head out to the podcastreport.com 79 and are watching a video of the recording. Others are listening to this as a plain old good old fashioned audio podcast the way God recommended it. I don't care how you're listening, I just love the fact that you are listening and I appreciate that. And that is the power of podcasting. Because this is a live recording, you're not going to have the fancy jazz music back and forth. I'll probably do something at the beginning but the fact of the matter is we want to get this done. We want to get this easy and I want to get this out in the feed. Today we are chatting about what podcast stat should I track. There are a bunch of things to track and I want to chat about what's tracking, why you might want to track them, give you some thoughts and ideas about them. I have a worksheet for this episode and if you head out to the podcastreport.com 79 that's thepodcastreport.com 79. You can pick up that worksheet. Down at the bottom of the worksheet is a link to a spreadsheet using Google Docs, which is free and you can either use Google Docs if you want or you can download it and put it in your spreadsheet program. Be that Excel, be that Google Sheets I think is the, I'm sorry, Apple Sheets, whatever the program model is, you can go ahead and use that. The tracking of stats on a podcast is important because if you're going to grow, if you're going to do better. If you are going to make this the business that we're trying to make this here on the podcast report, you've got to track a bunch of things. I want you to take this worksheet, I want you to sign up for it, I want you to print it off, I want you to put it up on your wall. And as you're doing your podcast, I want you to make sure that you've got the means and the mechanism to actually track these issues. If you don't have the means and the mechanism to track these issues, I want you to ask yourself why. Now, some of you are just doing a podcast for fun, and if that's what you're doing, that's great, that's fine. I love fun. I love people who do things for fun. I would bet, however, I would suggest, however, that if you're listening to the podcast report, the concept of doing this professionally is something that's somewhere in the back of your mind. And so even if this is a hobby, tracking these things is really, really interesting. I'm going to go over what I have in the workshee. You could probably, if you wanted to write down these issues, but if you grab the worksheet, grab the link to the Excel spreadsheet, you've got something that you can work with. It's nice, it's impressive, it's got all the fun graphics. And we'll be chatting more about that particular process in future episodes of the show. So let's hit the things we need to track. Number one, we need to track downloads. And downloads are not perfect. Downloads have never been perfect because somebody can download and not listen. Somebody can download and share with a thousand friends. It's not the perfect metric. It doesn't tell the whole story, but it is the beginning of something to track something else. If you've got a thousand downloads for episode two and you only have 500 downloads for episode three, something different happened between episode two and episode three. So you need to track downloads now. In tracking the downloads, you need to track them over time. It's not what happened in the first 24 hours. It's not what happened over 48 hours. It's what's happened over the life of the podcast. This is episode 79 of the podcast report. Yesterday, a couple of people downloaded episode one of the podcast report. Why? What is it? Do they want to go back and see how much I sucked at the beginning as compared to how much I suck now, or whatever it is? But you want to track the downloads. The second thing you want to track is the title. And this is key. A lot of people forget this. The title is the headline. The title is what draws people in. The title is what makes people go, okay, wait a minute. This is something I'm interested in. There are a lot of shows that I have subscribed to. There are a lot of shows that I track. And I'm sure you're like that, where you don't catch every episode, but this title intrigues you, this concept intrigues you. So you jump over to that. What titles are it that get people? There are titles that I have in the podcast report who've gotten twice as many downloads as other titles have. It's important to track your titles. The other thing that's important to do is to track the specific topics. You know, I might have a topic of monetization, which is a very popular topic for this audience, but I might one title, make money. Another title, monetization, another title, Professional revenue generating podcasting or something like that. So tracking titles and tracking keywords or tracking topics covered is important. Both of those there. So what are the downloads? What's the title? What are the topics that you covered? You will see trends very, very quickly as you do that. The next thing you want to look at is you want to look at episode page views. How many people went to the specific page about the specific topic that you were speaking to. Now, this is the podcast report, episode 79. And you've heard me say a number of times, thepodcastreport.com 7, 9. So I'm going to get some page views from my audience, but I'm also going to get some page views from search. I'm going to get some page views from people who want to download the worksheet that I spoke to here. This bad boy, for those of you who are watching it on Blab. And I want to track those things because here's what's interesting. You know, let's say I got a thousand page views but only 50 downloads. That means people were interested in the topic, maybe were interested in the worksheet, but didn't want to download what it is that I was doing. Of course, what's really interesting is if I got 1000 downloads but 10 page views, that means 990 people aren't going to the website. And maybe that helps me understand how much time I spend on making my show notes and making my website. I've spoken to this in the past, but I know there are a number of you who spend a lot of time on your Website and a lot of time on the show notes and a lot of time on what it is you're doing. Yet the fact of the matter, the power of podcasting is the fact that when you subscribe, it comes to you automatically. The majority of you listening to this right now are not the people on blab, although I love the blab people. The majority of the people are not the people who went out to the website and went to the podcastreport.com 79. The majority of the people listening to this are those of you who have subscribed to the show. And then once I got this recording done and uploaded it, that recording came to your device automatically because you had subscribed, be it itunes, be it stitcher or whatever. So the page view in comparison to the downloads are really, really, really important. And I'll tell you this, if your page views are about the size of your downloads, you're not pushing subscribes enough. You're not telling your audience, you're not showing your audience the value of subscribes enough. If your page views are higher than your subscribes, oh my goodness, you're getting great search engine. But there's no reason for people to click play. Are you making that easier to do? Are you making that possible? Things you want to track. So definitely episode page views. Now, this next one's going to be a bit controversial, but the fact of the matter is calls to action. You want to track calls to action now, smart aleck in here is going to go in it. Paul, your call to action was the podcastreport.com 79 to download the worksheet yet that's also the page view for this episode. Well, see, here's the thing. Yes and no. Yes, Both are@thepodcastreport.com 79. But the calls to action are the people who downloaded the spreadsheet or the people who downloaded the PDF, those who signed up to the form. So I might get 20 page views, but I might get three people to sign up for the PDF. And it's very, very important to have the difference between and understand the difference between these two, because if I get you to visit my website and if I get you to listen to play, but I don't get you to do anything, this is not a podcast that's going to go down a profitable path. Well, Paul, what if I'm doing my podcast just for exposure? Interesting idea, interesting concept. We'll definitely hit that on future episodes of the podcast report. But if you're really getting exposure, it's Important to know if your audience is going to act. Maybe you do a giveaway, maybe you have a specific website, maybe you have a specific email address, something where you can figure out if you can move your audience to act. Because if you are just podcasting and you're not moving your audience to act, this is not impactful, this is not powerful. This is not what we're looking for. So tracking the calls to action, up against the downloads, up against the page views, really gives you an understanding of how the podcast audience comes together and how all these things make sense. The next thing you want to look at is the episode length. People always ask me, how long is a podcast? How long should a podcast be? And I always respond with some sort of snarky remark like how long is a piece of string? But the fact of the matter is different podcasts are powerful for different levels. One of my proudest moments in audio is when Lou and Lou, if you're listening to this from WDW Radio first Podcast movement, said, I never miss Paul's show because it's short. That's interesting. And you go to itunes and you see the length of the episode. And I can't remember which other platforms show that, but again, in this world where we're subscribed and we don't necessarily listen to everything, well, if we have a 60 minute show that gets downloaded 1/4 of the time is our 15 minute shows, this starts to get really, really interesting. And this is something that we really, really want to track. So is there a relationship between the length of our episode and the download of our episode? The other thing is simply the release date and the release time, you know. But Paul, isn't the power of podcasting the whole idea that anytime, any place, anywhere? Yes, yes, it totally is. But the fact of the matter is, if you've got subscribers, they get that beep of, they get that ping, they get that notification of a new episode. Well, what if it's Monday morning when they're really busy and they're coming out from their homework? Or what if it's Sunday when they're not even checking their computer? Or what if it's different times? Tracking the release date of your podcast and tracking the downloads and the interaction that comes from it is something really, really interesting to do. So, Paul, what do you track? What are the numbers that you run? How do you do all of this? Well, if you head out to the podcastreport.com 79, you can download this sheet here. Those of you watching on Blab can see a Copy of it. Those of you who are just listening to the audio, go ahead and download it. Yes, I'm tracking you for a call to action. And yes, I'm trying to figure out if this is the type of thing that gets a higher call to action than other shows. Then on that worksheet is a URL for a spreadsheet that can give you a better idea of how to track all this stuff. And, and what happens with data is if you just have data and you write it down and you track it, you'll just begin to see trends. Yes, you can track downloads to page views, yes, you can track length of time to downloads and you could have some calculations there. But as you track all of this stuff, it's going to get really, really, really interesting from a scientific level, from a really in depth level of, you know, gosh darn it, every time I talk about monetization, I get downloads. Every time I talk about, you know, book authoring, I get people who make calls to action. You know, I can do these things and I can realize this downloads and we are good to go. It's, it's powerful, it's impactful and it's what you want to do. So these are the stats that you should track? These are the stats that I track. And yes, I track all of them. So what do I do if there's nothing here that I can track? What if a call to action is just visit a random website? That's a really bad idea. That's why podcasts do GoDaddy.com podcastname audible.com podcastname do a call to action that you can track. Paul, what if I have a really cheap platform for my podcast? I don't get download episodes. Episode A versus episode B. Get a stat system that allows you to get episode A versus episode B. You want to do these things. Paul, what if I don't track the release date time? Well, first of all, the podcast cops are going to come to you. But if you don't track the release date time, you're not going to know how that impacts things. Fact matters. I'm recording this at two o' clock in the afternoon Pacific time. We're past quitting time in the east coast. We're going to see how this later release time actually gets people to what happens in terms of downloads as well. So this is what you should track. I really would internally question yourself if I am not tracking one of these things that Paul asked me to track. Ask yourself why. If the reason is because Paul's nuts, that's great. But you've been listening to this for quite some time, and if you think I'm nuts, don't waste your time listening to me. If it's because you didn't know, well, how can you change an act? If it's because you've been scared, don't be scared. Track this stuff Paul I don't know how to do it. Well, if you download the worksheet, I've got the link to the spreadsheet that will show you how to do it and we will be in a great place. So that's what you want to track. That's how you can get all this stuff. Print off the worksheet, put it on the wall, get to work. This has been episode 79 of the podcast report. What podcast stat should I track? If you want to get the worksheet and the link to the spreadsheet, you can grab that at the podcastreport.com, one of the things you heard me speak to earlier was the power of subscriptions. If you haven't subscribed yet to the podcast report, please subscribe. Head out to the podcastreport.com iTunes or thepodcastreport.com Stitcher or thepodcastreport.com TuneIn or thepodcastreport.com Overcast or whatever platform you listen to your podcast on. And if for some reason you go to the podcastreport.com how you listen to your podcast and it doesn't take you somewhere, then head to the podcastreport.com 79 put that in the comments. We will get that fixed. I want you to subscribe so that when a new episode comes out you automatically get updated. I want you to subscribe so that you have to have this interactivity with me once and then it all comes to you from that point. So definitely subscribe. Also, love interactivity. If you head out to thepodcastreport.com 79 make some comments, that'd be great. If you head to Twitter, we're on Twitter. Facebook. We're on Facebook. All the big social networks are there. I would love the interactivity. We'd love to hear from you. Would love your shares. Last but not least, the email address for the show is the podcast report@outlook.com that's the podcastreportoutlook.com thanks for participating in this live version of the show. If for some reason you want to see more live versions like this, reach out to me in one of the ways listed and we will make that happen. With that said, and done. Thank you so much. Chat with you next week. Make sure you subscribe so that all this happens, Sam.