How Do Podcasters Recapture The Ones That Got Away?

PPS3E14 How Do Podcasters Recapture The Ones That Got Away? Transcript

Evo Terra: [00:00:00] Not everyone who listens to your podcast is going to like your podcast. In fact, most people who listen, won't like your podcast, at least not enough to ever download another episode. Now here's how we can use that reality to our advantage.

[00:00:22] Hello, and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara. You are one of thousands unique individuals who have downloaded an episode of podcast pontifications since I moved over to captivate FM earlier in the year, no, this is not a commercial for captivate. Yes, I am on their advisory board.

[00:00:45] And of course there's a link. If you want to check out captivate.com here in the episode, details. But I'm not bragging about that number. That's a very, very small number, but that's okay. My podcast podcast pontification is a weird podcast designed for a very small segment of the population working podcasters like yourself.

[00:01:08] So I don't have any crazy grandiose plans to get tens of thousands or millions of downloads. I'm happy that. Other people do I, I work on some programs that do, and so that's wonderful. This is, this is a different thing. I'm okay with that. Not bragging whatsoever, but I was looking at some captivate numbers this morning.

[00:01:31] Actually. I've been looking at him for awhile and it hit me that I need to talk about this. In fact, I had an entirely different show, all queued up to go for today, but

[00:01:39] the

[00:01:39] Evo Terra: [00:01:39] brain said, no, no. We'd like you to cover. This, this little special thing. And it's about the unique audience members that we have, not their uniqueness, you understand, but thinking about measurement from a unique audience perspective.

[00:01:58] So the individual peoples, if you want to think about it that way, although it gets a little creepy really quickly. So try not to do that too much, but really trying to answer the question of how many people listen to this program. The title of the show is, you know, something about how to get the ones that got away, because the reality is, as I said previously, a lot of people will listen once and never listen again, better said maybe a lot of people download and maybe never even listen to that.

[00:02:23] Now, not a lot of people have not a lot of podcasters have visibility into that because, well, we don't have a lot of visibility. But a few months ago, I think it was a captivate again, my media hosting company that I'm using for podcast, pontifications created an audience overview that they call it in, in their analytics section.

[00:02:43] And one of the things they're looking at is that unique listeners. So not unique downloads, right? Not, not talking about that necessarily because we can track that on a, on a daily and a monthly basis, but they're, they're tracking unique listeners and then they're giving it to you over time. So not, not per episode for your entire show.

[00:03:05] Other than this, the vagaries of this get a little bit challenging, but sure. It's important if you're selling advertising to know how many unique downloads each of your episodes is going to get over 30 days, but that's not what we're talking about here. That's fine for an advertiser who wants to know what their reach is going to look like for an an episode.

[00:03:22] This is for you as a podcaster, as the owner of the show, as the show runner, as someone who works on the program to say, are we reaching people over time? And when captivate launched this a few weeks ago, it was. Well, for me, it was like, wow, that's some pretty compelling information that I think more people should should know about.

[00:03:41] So what I want to do on the rest of the program today is walking through my numbers. Walk you through the numbers, the real live actual pulled off. Exactly. Not index, not rounded up to the nearest 50 billion, none of those tricks. They're going to walk you through these numbers. Talk about unique listeners and that's, as it's defined here, a unique listener is, and I'm going to read from the screen.

[00:04:06] A unique listener is defined as a listener from the same IP address at the same device within the presented time frame. It's a way of estimating the number of people downloading your show based on a, B V two guidelines in effect. Yeah, they've got several different timeframes. One, two, three, four, five, six different time buckets.

[00:04:29] And they've taken a look and said, all right, let's look at the unique. People who have downloaded this file. Now it's called unique listeners in this section. And of course they're not listeners. They're just downloaders. These are, this is the unique audience, but whatever, it's up to them to make their names.

[00:04:45] It's not what they pay me for. They don't pay me at all as an advisor. Um, so here's what we find out. So the, the numbers that make sense to me is I don't care how many unique listeners listened today. Seven Oh, 9:00 AM. I don't know when this was updated. Well, 11 minutes ago, according to the screen. So, you know, 22 listens to 22 unique downloads today doesn't mean a lot to me, but that's the number it's 22.

[00:05:11] I also don't really care that much about yesterday's numbers, which I assume is a rolling 24 hour window from when this was last updated. That shows 148. Unique downloads again. I don't think that I care about that number too much. Maybe I do that might give me a glimpse of my hardcore fans, maybe, but that's because I release a podcast four days a week.

[00:05:36] I'm assuming that unique listeners, if I was to look at it on a Sunday, when I haven't put out an episode for two days, it's probably a much lower number, so I'm not so sure of that. Value of showing the unique listeners for yesterday, but it's there 148, the next one. And where things start to get interesting to me is the number of downloads received unique downloads, not the total number of downloads, the unique downloads over the last seven days.

[00:06:07] So again, a rolling seven day window backwards to now, and that shows 399. Interesting. Interesting then, let me tell you why that is interesting. On average, my episodes are downloaded around two to 300 per episode, over the course of 30 days, which is kind of what I've been using as my audience estimate.

[00:06:36] How many people listening Evo for 30 days, I get two to three, like let's say 250, 300, sometimes more, sometimes less. But now I've got this rolling seven day number of three 99 and 400 to Roundup. I know we hate the zeros. If we think people were lying to us when I put zeros, Emma. So I give you the real number.

[00:06:54] So that's it 309 in the last 28 days, 28 days is weird, but they do it because they can do weeks easier. I wish it was 30, but whatever it shows 755. 755 in the last 28 days. And the last six, then the last 90 days 90 is I keep in mind. My show has been on break for 60 of those 90 days. This is only week four of becoming back from my season break.

[00:07:20] In the last 90 days, I've had 1,667 unique downloads. And all time and for this mate, it's all time from the beginning of the year, when I first moved over to captivate.fm, 3,134 unique downloads. Now here's what this tells me. This tells me that I get a lot of people who sample, who download the episode and may not listen a whole bunch.

[00:07:53] A whole bunch of people download this show and may not listen, or if they do listen, they're probably only listening once because that's, I'm like 10, there's a, probably a 10% chance. If you want to think about this, just from the numbers I gave you a 10% chance, the people who listen, who download this show and might listen to this show, there's a 10% chance they're going to come back again.

[00:08:21] That's is that troubling? I'm not sure if it's troubling. I think it just might be the reality of my particular show. Look, it comes out four times a week. There's just a lot of content that's in here. Maybe somebody shared it. Who thought it was interesting about, I was talking about social media, but it's all about podcasting.

[00:08:39] There are a variety of reasons why nobody should change that. There's a variety of reasons. Why 90% of the people who have sampled an episode, don't listen again. It also could be that it sucks tomorrow. I'm going to talk a little bit more about making sure that you're lining up with your audience, but.

[00:09:00] I'm thinking about how do I go back and reach those people who have listened, but stopped listening. I don't really have an answer. So it's kind of a rude thing for me to, to start this with, uh, the, the idea with the title of, you know, how do podcasts is recapture the ones that got away? Cause I don't know, honestly, I don't know.

[00:09:19] How do I reach back out to people who downloaded an episode and haven't listened again? I dunno. I don't know. Sometimes I don't have all the answers. I don't have all the answers today. Two things real quick, and I'll get out of here. We're at the 10 minute Mark, buy me a coffee.com/evo. Terra got some special perks for membership, not just supporters, but membership.

[00:09:38] Think about that. And then please, maybe one way I can fix this, as you tell other podcasts is, Hey, did you listen to podcasts? Pontifications once check out some more episodes. That'd be awesome. All right, I'll see you tomorrow for yet. Another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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