The Not So Sad World Of Podcast Follower Remorse

Your podcast is followed by lots of people who don't listen. So is mine. So is everyone's. Is that a problem to be solved? Or just a reflection of the complex relationship people have with on-demand content?

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

I wonder how many of your subscribers or followers you have for a podcast that have buyer's remorse? Or, in this world, followers remorse? And, of course, by your followers and subscribers, I mean, my followers and subscribers as well.

In case my meaning isn't clear, I'm talking about someone who took the time to add your podcast to their listening app and now they kind of wish they hadn't. For whatever reason, it's no longer for them. Here's what you and I would do in that situation - if a show in our subscription or follow list was no longer for us, we'd unsubscribe or unfollow that show with haste. Or would we?

If I just described what you do every single time, then kudos to you. But that's not most people's behavior. Most people, especially people who are more casual podcasting listeners, tend not to unsubscribe. I know, anathema, right? But you probably don't unsubscribe or unfollow as often as you think you do, even for shows that don't pan out the way you had hoped.

My problem here is this is thinking about a problem in a binary way and you know how much I despise binary thinking. See, we think that people either subscribe or follow because they want to listen and then when they don't want to listen they unfollow, they unsubscribe, right? But the data we can all see, comparing our download numbers to the listen metrics from the apps, clearly demonstrate that thinking is wrong. Reality oftentimes is it's more complicated. Human behavior, as it turns out, is rather messy.

We podcasters need to embrace the reality of the middle listener. Or the middle follower or subscriber I should technically say since it's not a listening issue here because this middle person only listens to some of our episodes.

Now, a quick caveat here, creators of serial content, fiction podcasts, docu-series, or other multi-part contiguous content see very different behavior than what I'm describing. They're not immune from this, it's just different.

This middle person actually represents a lot of different behaviors. Some of the people who are middle listeners had every intention of listening to every episode that you put out, but they just don't. Perhaps they started out eagerly consuming your content, but then stopped for whatever reason.

Maybe they got everything they needed from you and your podcast with a couple of episodes and just left it there.

Maybe their interest in your content or the topic that your podcast covers waned eventually.

Maybe they discovered and prioritized a different podcast or a different set of podcasts.

Maybe they're very good at triaging their podcast listening app, deliberately choosing which episodes to listen to with their own decision tree and sorting methodologies.

Maybe they subscribe or follow in a show of solidarity or in support of that show, either with you or with others who have your show in their lives. Maybe that was important for them to have that badge that I'm a subscriber. But I'm not really a listener.

Or maybe they just view your feed updates as transactional and they're happy just knowing that you're still producing content. That's good enough because maybe someday they'll listen.

And finally, it's not that easy to unsubscribe or unfollow a podcast, at least not while you're actively listening to that podcast. Here's the deal, if I subscribe or perhaps someone subscribes me to an email list that I don't really want to be in, there's an unsubscribe button right there in the email. Where is that in podcasting? We don't have it, not at the episode level. There is no easy way to bounce back up to the show level because there's not some obvious unsubscribe button, at least not like the ones mandated by various trade commissions that are for email.

Sometimes, yeah, it is a simple swipe to delete, but oftentimes, listeners have to go into the configuration or to the settings of their program, their app to actually do the work. That's not very easy, is it? So do we really care about these middle followers, if you will, who don't want to, or at least don't want to go through the hassle to unsubscribe or unfollow, but they also don't want to listen to every single episode? Should we try to clear them out to keep a cleaner feed?

I'm not so sure there's a solid reason of why to do that. It costs them virtually nothing to keep updated about your new episodes. Perhaps you're even sending them episodes they don't listen to and that's okay because you never know why they don't listen and they might actually start listening again.

Should we try to convert as many of these middle followers to dedicated listeners as we possibly can? Well, yeah, of course, but that's something that's probably not very much in our control because we don't know why someone became a middle follower. We don't know what to change to make them into a dedicated listener. We just don't know. But that also doesn't mean we should stop trying.

I'll have more thoughts on this concept of middle followers as the season progresses. But for now, I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected transcript, both created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.

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