Podcasting Q&A

How to tell if your podcast is growing

January 26, 2024 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
How to tell if your podcast is growing
Show Notes Transcript

Today on 5 Minute Mondays, you’ll learn how to tell if your podcast is growing.

Check out our in-depth tutorial on the Buzzsprout Advanced Podcast Statistics on YouTube.

Fill out this short questionnaire to submit a question or topic for a future episode.

Need some help with your podcast? Join the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook to get the help you need from podcasters just like you.

Travis:   0:00
Today on five minute Monday's I'll show you how to tell if your podcast is growing.  

Travis:   0:07
Welcome to five minute Mondays. We're bringing the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing now, tomorrow, tomorrow, being the day after this episode goes live. We are launching the new Buzzsprout advanced podcast statistics. So over the next three weeks we're going to dive into specific sections of the advanced stats and break down how you can interpret the data that you're seeing to make confident decisions moving forward with your podcast cause after all, the whole reason of having stats beyond just being able to see how your podcast is doing is to know how to make your podcast better so you can continue to grow your audience. And today we're gonna dive into the episode downloads chart in your advanced podcast statistics. So when you go to the home page of your Buzzsprout podcast, you click on stats, you'll see four tabs at the top.  

Travis:   1:01
The 1st 1 is just a overview, which kind of gives you a snapshot of how your podcast is doing. But then the 2nd 1 is called episode downloads. And if you click on that, you're going to see a new graf something that wasn't there before. And this graph shows you the number of downloads, your episodes. You're getting over time, and you can see for the past 20 episodes that you have published how each of those have done so you're going to see several different options. You have the 1st 7 days, 1st 30 days, 1st 90 days and then all time. And so the 1st 7 days when that selected. That means that the graph is showing you how many downloads each of the last 20 episodes that you published have gotten in the first week, and the same is true for 30 days, 90 days and then you also have the all-time option, which shows you the total number of downloads for the episodes that are shown on this chart.  

Travis:   1:57
And this is helpful for several reasons. The 1st 1 It's easier to see how your episodes air doing compared to each other. One of the difficult things about just looking at your total download numbers is that it is difficult to figure out if your show is actually growing because just cause that episode has a bunch of plays in the past and when you just published has fewer plays, that doesn't necessarily mean that your audiences smaller. It just means that the new episode hasn't had time to reach all the people that listen to your podcasts or they haven't had an opportunity to download it and listen to it yet. So it's helpful to apply this filter off. Okay, the 1st 30 days that the last 20 episodes been published, how many downloads did each of those gets that can help you with a couple things? Number one, It shows you if your marketing efforts and you know all the social media posts and things, you could do it to promote your show if they're actually working, if they're helping you reach new listeners. Because if your show isn't really growing that much, then you could start to reevaluate, maybe trying some other strategies. But then two, if you notice a certain episodes stand out among all the others. That is a clue of what your listeners want to listen to Maur. So let's say that you have a Star Wars podcast and you had an episode where you're talking about the new Star Wars movie came out the rise of Skywalker, and that one did much better than the next episode. So Okay, so, people right now wanna listen, Want to hear about this movie? So the next time I do an episode, I should do another episode talking about the rise of Skywalker Somehow some way, you know, maybe we talk about why isn't Baby Yoda and rise of Skywalker? And then you can hit two birds with one stone, because that's kind of like in the Internet zeitgeist right now, right?  

Travis:   3:40
And so you can start to pay attention to things that you see that stand out. That is like, Ooh, why did that episode do so well? And when you can identify that, then you can start to do that even more in the future. Does that make sense? So your episode download chart give you two specific things that you can track and look for number one. They help you to see more clearly how your audience is changing over time. And the number two it becomes very obvious Which of your episodes air outperforming the others. So you can pay attention. Thio figuring out why those episodes did well and the new more of that in the future.  

Travis:   4:14
Now, if you want to go even deeper into the advanced podcast statistics than make sure to check out the full tutorial that will go live on our YouTube channel on Tuesday, February 4th. And so if you're listening to this episode honor after that day, then you can go right there right now and go and watch it. Um, but if not, I left a link in the show notes. You can go to the YouTube channel, subscribe, and then you'll get notified when that video comes out.  

Travis:   4:40
But that's it for today. Hit the subscribe button. If you're watching this on YouTube, or you can subscribe to the five minute Monday's podcast in your favorite app, the squeeze even more podcasts related content into your life. And if there's something that you want me to talk about on a future episode, make sure to cook the link in the show notes to submit your question. Thanks for listening and is always keep podcasting