The Podcast Stats You Should Be Focusing on if You Want to Grow Your Show
Affectionately known as: “How to Measure the Growth of Your Podcast Without Spiraling Over Every Number”
There are a LOT of podcast metrics out there and they can get very confusing, very quickly.
So I’ve compiled a list of the most important podcasting metrics for you to measure (although some of them you won’t have to look at very often). It includes a breakdown of what the metrics are, and why they’re important in tracking your progress.
📝 Have a read through and then if you want a free 7 day podcast tracker, you can grab it at the end of the post.
The Metrics That Matter the Most in Podcasting
Listener Retention/ Consumption
Your listener retention/consumption data shows you how much of an episode people actually listen to, on average.
This matters because it’s the clearest signal of how an episode is doing, and whether it’s holding your audience’s attention or not. If people are consistently making it all the way through, then your structure, pacing, and topic choice are all doing their jobs. If this drops, then something about the listener experience isn’t quite working (even if your downloads look fine).
Depending on the platform, you may also be able to see exactly where people stopped listening or how many listeners made it to the very end. These are particularly useful to check when your episode didn’t do as well as you thought it would.
If a lot of people leave around the same point, it could be a sign that the opening was too slow, the conversation started to ramble, or the episode stopped delivering on what you promised in your title.
Downloads over time / over a seven day period
This looks at the number of downloads you get across multiple episodes or weeks.
Why does this matter? Because podcasts, my friends, grow slowly. One episode doing well, or even badly (god forbid), does not determine the fate of your podcast. If you look at the number as a trend, it can give you a bit more insight into your listener base. Such as if you have a core group of listeners every single week, or if you’re trying to find new listeners with every episode.
The way I’d recommend following this data is to look at your episode downloads for the first seven days that it was live. This gives you a benchmark to measure how well your episodes do on the day of release, and then if there is any pick up in the downloads throughout the rest of the week.
A quick note on downloads vs streams!
On some websites you might see your episode listens broken down into ‘listens’ ‘downloads’ ‘streams’ ‘plays’. Technically, these do have slightly different meanings. For example - some platforms count a “play” after a someone has only listened for a short amount of time, while a download is usually counted once they’ve passed a certain threshold.
I wouldn’t recommend getting caught up in it! For independent podcasters, I suggest you focus on the total downloads per episode - that’s the closest we’ve got to an industry standard.
The Metrics That Show Commitment to Your Podcast
Followers / Subscribers
Your followers and subscriber count shows how many listeners have chosen to actively engage with your podcast.
It will quickly become one of your absolute favourite numbers to track because it shows real commitment to your show. The act of following a podcast is a small but very intentional decision - if you had to think about how many podcasts you follow, it’s probably not very many right?
Following a podcast means that someone wants to spend more time with you but it also means you get a free promotion on the Spotify/Apple/YouTube (because they’ll deliver your newest episodes straight to your followers feed.)
Growth here tends to be slower, so don’t freak out, but it’s a really good sign that you’re building trust and loyalty with your audience.
Listener return rate
Your listener return rate is indicative of how many listeners come back for new episodes.
This one is important because habits are what keeps podcasts alive and thriving. A healthy return rate usually means that the show is consistent, your listeners deem it worthy of coming back to, and your audiences trusts you to create good (and relevant) content for them.
On the flip side - if people listen once and don’t return, then the show might be hard to follow, difficult to predict, or something as simple as your humour just doesn’t land with them. I’ve written up a post with some clear tactics on how to get listeners come back to your podcast every week, you can read it here.
The Metrics That Show You Whose Listening to Your Podcast
Traffic Sources
Traffic source information is a very, very handy set of data. This shows you where your listener’s found the podcast.
That matters when you’re trying to understand how people discover and interact with you and your show. It can help to explain an increase or decrease in downloads, or even big jumps after you promote the episode on social media. It’s not something you have to watch closely every week (but if you’re nosy like me, it’s just kinda fun to).
Listener Location (Geography)
Listeners Geography metrics show you where your listeners are based around the world. It’s not something you need to check every week, but can be super helpful when you’re trying to make sense of changes.
For example, if most of your audience are in a different time zone, that can affect when they actually see or listen to your episode. If you talk about something specific to one area, you might notice a spike in that region. If you’ve been featured on another show, you might even see a new country pop up.
Do you want your podcast reviewed? ✨
I’m working on building out Podcast Audits/Reviews so that I can help as many podcasters as I can get a strategy behind their shows. It’s in beta at the moment while I work to make sure it’s super helpful for you, but if you want to join the waitlist just click the button below. I’ll let you know as soon as spots are available 💖
