Podcasting: What metrics matter?

Podcasting metrics are frustrating. There are a lot of measurements offered to podcast producers, but none of them really tell us the whole story of our podcasts. There is no one single measurement that tells us whether or not a podcast is a success.

The main question regarding metrics is a personal one: What matters to you? Are you chiefly concerned with audience size? Audience growth? Content quality? What is it exactly you are hoping to learn? Answering those questions delivers the answer to what numbers are the right numbers to pay attention to.

What do you want to learn?

I know, the answer is “everything”. At the heart of your metrics search is probably a yearning to know that effort you’re putting into your podcast is actually worth it. Are people actually listening and being moved?

Tracking downloads is the most expedient way to tell if people are listening. But that can also be disheartening. It’s disheartening because we’ll always be able to identify a podcast just like our’s that has way more downloads. It’s the same mind game many of us in ministry play with ourselves: we compare our ministry to the similar ministry down the street. That youth group at that other church seems way more engaged than our youth group. The church is about the same size. They don’t seem to be investing a lot more money. Why are there more students showing up to their youth group?

You already know the comparison game is unhealthy and unhelpful. Simply tracking total downloads just leads us into the comparison trap because it sets other podcasts as the measuring sticks. We’re not really seeking to learn if our podcast is better than someone else’s. We want to learn if our’s is any good. Instead of measuring our success against someone else’s, let’s set our own podcast as the measuring stick and simply track if our audience is growing.

Is the audience growing?

For me, there are two helpful and easily accessible stats that help me determine if a podcast’s audience is growing: total monthly downloads and downloads the first 7 days after release. And the key takeaway from these stats is whether or not these numbers are trending up.

So, for example, am I consistently seeing an increase in monthly downloads month after month? If so, then there’s a good chance that the podcast’s audience is growing–more people are listening each month. Seems elementary, right?

The catch is that there are other factors that impact monthly listenership. Some months are bad for podcasts–not just your’s, but ALL podcasts. Just like there are months when we tune into network TV far less than normal, there are months we listen to podcasts less than normal. AND there are factors like release schedule and content reliability that affect our monthly numbers. So monthly downloads alone are not enough to track a growing audience.

We’ll want to couple our monthly download numbers with a look at downloads for 7 days after the release of each episode and 30 days after the release of each episode. Our benchmark for these numbers are not anyone else’s podcasts; the benchmarks are simply our own previous episodes. We want to see a bit of growth in those numbers over time.

These time-sensitive metrics help us know whether or not people have connected with what we’re offering. If we’re seeing a consistent rise in these numbers, we can assume that more people have subscribed to our podcasts and are connecting with the content.

Is the content of good quality and connecting?

The best way to measure how your content is being received and if it’s offering value to your audience is actually just to ask the audience. Reviews can be helpful here. So might an audience questionnaire. Engaging with your audience through social media will help provide some insight into this question, as well–which is why it’s so important to build community around your podcast.

For a more numbers-based approach, you can look at an “engaged listeners” stat. At the time of writing, I only know of this stat being available through Apple Podcasts’ creators portal. So, producers will first need to create an Apple creators’ account, then claim ownership of your podcast (if your host allows that… ), then view the “engaged listener” stats for your podcast.

The engaged listener stat tells you how many people listened past the first 20 minutes or the first 40% of your podcast episodes. If they’re listening, then they’re finding the content of good value. Keep going! If they’re dropping, then start looking for ways to keep the audience engaged through the entirety of the episode.

How do people find your podcast?

At times it’s a pretty frustrating endeavor to identify exactly how people come across your podcast. Most hosting systems reveal where people listen to your podcast (Spotify, web browser, Apple Podcast, etc…). That is useful information–to a degree. (In all likelihood, Apple Podcast is the most used destination.)

What’s lacking is information on how people were brought to that platform. For example, did a listener consume one of your episodes because they found it linked on a social media post? Did they listen because they found your episode through a random Google search? There isn’t a podcast statistic that will reveal this information.

The best way to get a grasp on this is to utilize a website and then drive as much traffic as possible to that website. The good news is that many hosting platforms now offer a website feature and will create a new page for each episode. Utilize that feature. And whenever your post a new episode announcement on social media, make sure you’re linking to that website or episode page. You can then utilize website metrics to see where your traffic came from. It’s not going to be 100% accurate, but it will help identify the habits of your audience and the tools through which you can better connect with them.

I realize a lot of these metrics lead to anecdotal assumptions about our audiences. But they’re still highly useful. The best gauge for learning about our audiences, however, is through direct engagement. So invest in building a community around your podcast (or the ministry behind your podcast) and then engage regularly with that community. You’ll learn a lot more about what your audience values, what their needs are, and how you can help them meet those needs.

The community coalescing around this topic hangs out over in a Facebook group. So join us at the Pastoring in the Digital Parish group!

The real question is “what do you want to learn”?