Episode 109
Why Listeners and Consumption Matter More Than Downloads
Listeners and consumption percentage are the two key analytics every podcaster should focus on to gauge their podcast's success.
While downloads are important, understanding who's actually listening to your episodes provides a clearer picture of engagement.
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Transcript
I'm Danny Brown and you're listening to One Minute Podcast Tips, the show that helps you be a better podcaster in just a minute a week.
If you enjoy the show and want to support it, you can do that with a donation of your choosing at OneMinutePodcastTips.com/support and thanks so much for supporting. And now, this week's episode. When it comes to podcast analytics, there's a lot of data points that you can look at. These include downloads, followers, subscribers, and more.
But there's two sets of analytics that every podcaster should be looking at, and these are listeners and consumption percentage. Now, the first part is tied into your downloads, but for me, listeners are the more important metric.
The reason for this is simple, because you can set podcast apps to auto download that can often result in episodes being downloaded without actually being listened to.
However, listener data shows you who's actually listening to your podcast, and that's what I look at when it comes to gauging the growth and success of my podcast. After all, engaged listeners make your podcast more attractive to potential sponsors and advertisers.
Following on from listeners, consumption percentage shows the stickiness of your podcast. Also referred to as listener drop off, this shows you how much of your episode is being listened to and by what percentage.
Again, this is key information that you can share with potential sponsors and ad partners, but it can also help you tighten up your podcast too.
If you've got an episode that's forty minutes long, but you find the listeners are dropping off after thirty minutes, then experiment with a shorter episode. That way any calls to action you have in your episode or sponsor messages, etc. aren't being missed.
So for me, listeners and consumption percentage are two analytics that every podcaster should look at. Until the next time, happy podcasting. Thanks for listening.
If you enjoy One Minute Podcast Tips, be sure to share with your friends and other podcasters so they can enjoy it too. Until the next time, happy podcasting.
