Metrics That Matter

Listener Experience

Milking Your Podcast's Popularity For All It’s Worth

Podcasters have a myopic view of metrics, often putting the greatest import on statistics that matter the least to the people who matter the most - our listeners. Here’s how to do better for your show.

October 6, 2020

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People - listeners - are attracted to popular podcasts. Other people - podcasters like us - do very little to promote the popularity of the podcast we produce.

Broadly speaking and en masse, people like to do the things that lots of other people are doing. There are notable exceptions, obviously. Tastemakers and trendsetters enjoy searching for an obscure band, a crazy TV show from Poland, or other unknown gems. But the majority of humans take (and seek out) comfort in knowing the thing they are consuming is also being consumed by others.

Lay the blame on evolutionary biology if you like, but humans tend to follow the crowd. It’s safer.

But from where does “the crowd” get information on popularity? Offline media - radio, TV, billboards, etc - put a lot of credence into audience measurement. You’ve probably heard of Nielsen Audience Measurement or the equivalent in your country, but it’s less likely you or anyone you know is a subscriber to the service. This valuable service the industry relies on is worthless to the audience of these media.

It’s worse in podcasting, as the most commonly used podcast metrics have little to do with audience activity.

Instead, the crowd picks up signals from… well, the crowd. Popular media is discussed publicly in places like Reddit forums, Discord servers, fan pages, chat rooms, messenger services, emails, and countless other places where people talk to other people.

Other Media Leave Podcasting In The Dust When Popularizing Popularity

Content may be king, but only if the king is popular. You may not want to admit it, but you’re much more likely to watch a video with a million views than a video with zero. Why else do you think view counts and the number of subscribers to the channel are so prominent? The fact that both are flawed is meaningless in this context. They aren’t mean to be accurate. They’re meant to show popularity. Or, in the case of the Podcast Pontifications Videos channel on YouTube, a lack thereof. 😢

Every social media site does the same, with indicators showing how many followers an account has, how often their content is re-shared, how many people have left a comment, and how many people liked the content. You may think you ignore these little numbers and focus on the content itself, but you’re either fooling yourself or you’re an outlier. Which of those is true doesn’t matter, because everyone that does matter lives under the bell curve that responds well to those data.

We’re not immune to this, podcasters. People really want to know the content they're engaging with is worth their time before they engage with it. Heck, before they even sample it. Especially in a high-friction and isolated medium like ours. Before investing, would-be listeners want some assurances. Is the content any good? Is there enough content to keep them engaged? Or to sum it up, is this podcast popular?

Pushing Proof Of Podcast Popularity

The most widely available proof of popularity for podcasts comes in the form of ratings and reviews collected inside a handful of podcast listening apps. I remain skeptical in-app ratings and reviews influence a significant number of people. And judging by the way the apps treat the display and collection of ratings and review, I think the podcast app makers are skeptical of the value of these data as well.

But we can take matters into our own hands, podcasters. We can take those public-facing ratings and reviews to spread the valuable social proof they offer. Each review - assuming it positive and earned - increases the warm fuzzies people have about our podcast. But only if it’s seen.

To that end, I’m going to modify a long-held position of mine and suggest a two-step course of action that I’m calling R&R Blitz and Harvest.

Ratings & Review Blits & Harvest To Promote Your Podcasts Popularity

This strategy starts with some common advice that I’ve never felt quite right about: get a bunch of ratings and reviews for your podcast. Even if your audience is small (and hopefully dedicated) you can ask them to leave a rating and a review of your podcast. But that’s only the first step.

Step two, and why I’m feeling better about this, is to harvest those reviews repurposing where they will do additional good for your show beyond the siloed app where the review was left.

Your website is an obvious place to start this repurposing. Simply take a screenshot of the review and add it to your website. Where you add it is up to you, but I’d make it prominent. I’d make sure it was seen by new people however they discover your webpages (which means more than just your home page). And I’d make sure it helped people on the fence about listening to click to listen or subscribe.

Your social channels are another obvious place. Share the screenshot and, if you’re able to make the connection, tag or mention the person who left the review for you. And include a link back to your show that everyone can use!

Share Your Podcast’s Popularity, Not Your Downloads

Forget that you’re a podcaster for a moment. As a listener, which of these gives you the warm fuzzy that a podcast is popular:

This show has had almost 34,000 all-time downloads.
This show has nearly 1,200 monthly listeners.

If you can’t get past the “big numbers are better” problem, you probably had a hard time with denominators when you first learned fractions. Bigger isn’t always better. More meaningful is always better.

The first bullet tells people nothing. It gives zero indication of popularity. And while the 2nd bullet is far from perfect (like, how many of those monthly users sampled and bailed?), it clearly indicates popularity, limited though it may be.

Pressure your podcast hosting company to provide this info to you. All of them can. Switch if they don’t. Captivate.fm does. (Disclosure: I’m on their advisory board.) And publish the meaningful metric everywhere you can.

Push Yourself As A Podcaster To Show Your Own Popularity

Don’t forget the role you, the podcaster, play in increasing awareness and demonstrating the popularity of your own show. Actively seeking out guest spots on other podcasts (ideally in your niche) is a smart way to do this. My default answer is always “yes” when asked to be a guest on podcasts. It’s relatively low-effort for me, and I’m confident a goodly number of listeners to the episode I’m guesting on have never heard of me. And for those who have heard of me but haven’t yet listened to Podcast Pontifications, hearing me on a variety of shows they do listen to showcases my popularity, which becomes associated with my show’s popularity. Some will (finally) listen.

Don't ignore places where non-audio content rules the day. Writing articles for publications - on and offline - that showcase your expertise or POV helps prove your popularity. As does appearing on live streams, guest lecturing in an educational setting, and even cozying up to the local news stations in your town. Popularity begets popularity. And you have something to say. You’re smart if you say it (or write it) on someone else’s platform too.

All of these and more are smart ways to milk your podcast’s popularity for all it's worth. With that, I'm going to make a rare request as I try to eat a little of my own dogfood. Please go to RateThisPodcast.com/PodPont where you will see options relevant to your current operating system where you can rate and review Podcast Pontifications.

I need some specific help with Stitcher, where I have zero reviews of the show. Not that I care deeply about R&R on Stitcher. But diversity of platforms is important as I start showcasing new reviews. Podchaser only shows 11 ratings, and a whopping 20 show on Apple Podcasts. If you review Podcast Pontifications in one of those places, I will screenshot your review and put it on my website. I'm going to modify the home page and other relevant pages to accommodate this new “social proof” section, including the audience numbers I mentioned previously. I hope to have that done by the weekend, so don’t miss your chance to be featured. For free!

See you tomorrow for another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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PPS3E43 Milking Your Podcast's Popularity For All Its Worth - Transcript

[00:00:00] Podcasters have a myopic view of metrics, often putting the greatest import on statistics that matter the least to the people who matter the most, our listeners, here's how to do better for your show.

Hello, and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara people, listeners. Are attracted to popular podcasts yet [00:00:30] other people podcasters like us do very little to promote our shows, popularity. How do you get around that to people? People like doing things that other people are doing. Not always, if you're anything like me, you enjoy finding that weird obscure band or that book that nobody else has read and being a taste setter, trendsetter tastemaker trendsetter.

But for the majority of people, they get great comfort in knowing the things that they are consuming. [00:01:00] Other people are also consuming rare. That's how we're built. Just genetically. We're made up to do these things. Sure. We have individual rights and freedoms and I get all that. But collectively, if you look at people, we tend to do things that other people like to do.

What does it all mean for us as podcast as well? If we think about what happens with radio television, other sorts of offline media that we consume all the time, either for entertainment or educational [00:01:30] purposes or just whatever we want to do. The popularity of those things are gauged by something called well in America, we have an audience measurement service called Nielsen audience metrics that measures ours.

And they also do for other countries as well, but every country or a lots of other countries have their own version of that. So radio and television, that's how they, their popularity kind of like we podcast was calculated based on number of downloads or it's metrics, but just like offline radio and media [00:02:00] TV, outdoor stuff.

Human beings. Don't look at those Nielsen numbers, human beings, other than podcasts, don't look at downloading those aren't those aren't helpful for us. Those aren't helpful for, for listeners, for consumers. What I mean to say. Well, a handful of people might look at these Nielsen numbers. Nobody else does wait.

We instead pick up on popularity of shows because other people are talking about them because it's kind of in the air. There are Reddit forums and discord servers and everything else set up for all of these [00:02:30] bigger shows. We'll talk about. And that's how we gauge popularity. Now that's on the offline world and the online world, things like social media habits, beat hands down, specifically.

YouTube big time has a speed. A regular watcher, someone who doesn't want to be making content, but actually consuming content can gauge the popularity of a video channel, the YouTube channel by looking at how many views the videos get. Not yet. I know those numbers are skewed. They can gauge the popularity of the channel based on how [00:03:00] many subscribers are shown, which is questionable by the way, podcast vacations, a YouTube channel only has 25 subscribers.

So you can be one of the first, if you wanted to do that. Same across all social media, we have followers and likes we've retweets account of those things. And account of the number of comments we've had this thing, income ratio. Now people really want to know the content they're engaging with is worth their time before they [00:03:30] engage with it before they even sample it.

I'm sorry, podcasters, but we are not immune to that. People want to know if the show is popular. They also want to know if content is good, right? They may be, they want to know things like, is there a sufficient amount to keep me going? Maybe that's something else that listeners want to look at. But again, listeners really look at things differently than we do when they are gauging whether or not a show is popular and whether it fits [00:04:00] for them.

All we have all we have are what ratings and reviews inside of apps. Well, sure. It's there for some apps. I remain skeptical that any significant number of people go to the app store and choose their listening by what's got the most ratings and reviews. I've said that for years. However, I'm changing my tune a little bit.

Thinking about [00:04:30] this last from a, what can ratings and reviews in the app do for you as a podcaster answer at much to what can you do as a podcast or with those ratings and reviews for your podcast? Maybe something more we can do specifically. I think we can use these public facing data. To our advantage we can, but just not on that particular platform, look, they're public facing data.

[00:05:00] So we can take those public facing data and utilize them by putting our best foot forward in the concept of social proof, not just socially, but just overall giving people warm fuzzies about our show. Here's what I mean by that. I have in the past said, don't worry about asking people for ratings and reviews on your podcast.

There's other, other calls to action. You can ask them for it. And I'm not sure I'm stepping away from that. Totally. But I might be stepping back from it a bit because I think if you do have a [00:05:30] dedicated group of people who can do a ratings and reviews blitz, in fact, let's call this whole thing, a ratings and review blitz and harvest because it's gotta be both of those things blitz and harvest.

Get a whole bunch of people. 10 people, a hundred people, whatever the number is and have them go do ratings and reviews of your show. Hopefully honest opinions. I'm not asking you to fake anything, but then once they've done that, it's your job to harvest that content, harvest that content and put [00:06:00] it where it can do some good, not just people who have already found your show in a podcast listening app, but somewhere else, like your website.

If you've got a really good rating and review from Sam one, take a screenshot, put it up on your site. This is what people have to say about my show. When you get a great rating or review, share it on your social channels, take a screenshot and share that image with a link saying, Oh, look how great this is.

People love my show. Share it out with people. Also when [00:06:30] we're thinking about sharing data points, sharing data with potential listeners. I have a quick question for you. I mean, it's, it comes down to what you think is most important. So what do you think is most impressive from these two very real numbers?

If I was to say to you now, I know that you're a working podcast or so your brain works a little bit differently than most people. But if I was to say I've had almost 34,000 all time downloads. That's one number. That's one thing. That's a big number, but all time downloads. [00:07:00] Or if I were to say to you, I have nearly 1200 unique pod-casters listening to podcast pontifications.

And in the last four weeks, that happened 1200 people, 1200 active working podcast is listened to somebody gets pontifications over the last four weeks, 1200 people or 34,000 downloads. In an all time. I am pretty clear, which one of those means something more to human beings. So I think that's [00:07:30] the second thing you do celebrate number of people, number of people who have engaged with your content.

Again, listen to your show in last 28 days or something along those lines. I think it's also super smart for you to, um, you know, getting a good pop show in case in your popularity is you can also showcase your popularity by trying your best to get on as a guest on other podcasts that are in your niche.

That's another way that popularity is maybe not measured by numbers. We, people are listening to something else, someone they go, Oh, [00:08:00] I didn't hear about this person before they must be popular. They're on this show. I listened to regularly. That's a good way to pimp out your own popularity. And also don't forget the non podcast content, not just audio, right?

You can write articles, you can do videos, you can do lots of different things to gain that exposure, to show how popular you and your show and the content you share. Hat, put it somewhere else. Don't just publish it on your own. Go find places which will accept your article, except your video and publish for them.

[00:08:30] Magazines, articles, all those sorts of things. They're smart ways. I think we can milk. As I have said, our podcast popularity for all it's worth. Now I'm going to make a rare request, a rare request. I don't normally do this, but pretty please. If you would go to rate this podcast.com/pod Pont, there, you will see places where you can rate and review this show.

Now I need some specific help Stitcher. Stitcher is still around. They still do [00:09:00] ratings and reviews. I have zero people who've rated and reviewed. The show wants to show I'm pod chaser. I'm there got 11 people have rated and reviewed the show on pod chaser and a whopping 20 on Apple podcasts. If I, what I'd like to do is start putting some of my own efforts into play here.

So anytime if you review one of, in one of those places, I will actually put it on my website. I'm going to redesign the website. Well, not redesign, relay out the homepage to accommodate. This popularity section with my [00:09:30] download numbers off the downloads with the audience numbers. I mentioned previously, plus these ratings and review numbers, doing all that stuff, hopefully this week.

So please rate this podcast.com/pod Ponte rate. This podcast.com/pod Ponte. That's it. See you tomorrow for another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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