Understand Podcast Analytics Like A Pro!

Send us a text

Numbers don't tell the whole story of your podcast's impact—but understanding them can help you use analytics effectively while staying focused on creating the content you love. Tom Rossi joins Alban and Jordan to simplify podcast stats and what they actually mean for creators.

Whether you're trying to grow your show, attract sponsors, or simply understand your audience better, we're giving out actionable strategies for podcast analytics found in Buzzsprout, Apple Podcasts, Spotify for Creators, and YouTube! 

Sound-Off Question: Tell us where you're listening from and one thing about yourself that statistics could never tell us!

Support the show

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Episode Transcript

Jordan (00:00):
My magic mouse, like Apple magic mouse, the battery
is this much.
It's just a little baby bit ofbattery, so I'm just kind of
like oh, you can just charge itwhile you're using it.

Tom (00:08):
Why wouldn't you be able to do that?

Jordan (00:09):
Yeah, I don't know why.

Tom (00:11):
I'm sure it just dangles on the back of it or something.

Jordan (00:14):
Or it goes in the front like a normal mouse.

Alban (00:16):
No Of all the grief they got, they never redesigned it.

Jordan (00:19):
No.

Alban (00:20):
It really takes a certain level of like arrogance when
everybody unanimously is likehere's a issue you have.

Tom (00:28):
Yeah.

Alban (00:29):
A lot of people are then like okay, I guess I have to
work on myself and figure thisthing out.
Apple is like no, no no, Idon't know why you're charging
your mouse in the middle of theday.
You should just be chargingthat sucker up every night.

Tom (00:40):
Yeah, Top it off.
I mean to their credit, it doeslast a freaky amount of time.

Jordan (00:44):
Yeah.
It does.

Tom (00:44):
Without a charge .

Alban (00:46):
Yeah, but you know what never needs a charge, this
bad boy.

Jordan (00:50):
You're wired.
What is that?

Alban (00:52):
It's my gamer mouse.
Is it a Dell mouse?
No, a Dell mouse, Tom.
This is a Razer Mamba wireless,but I use it wired Apparently.
Bluetooth the latency for micecan never be as high as like a
wired mouse, and once I usedthis I was like this is so nice,
like you move your mouse andit's like perfectly smooth, in a

(01:13):
way that nothing else has everbeen smooth.

Jordan (01:16):
So you're saying it was like better back in, like the
early 2000s and 90s, before wehad the wireless mice.

Alban (01:21):
No, I don't think even no .
The best mouse was the one withthe.
What was the ball on?

Jordan (01:26):
the top.
Oh my gosh.

Tom (01:30):
I had a Logitech trackball.

Alban (01:32):
Those are such bad mice.

Tom (01:34):
I hated those so much.
Oh so granular Gosh.
I'm sure that I have arthritisas a result my thumb.

Alban (01:42):
That was Starcraft.
I played Starcraft on one ofthose mice.

Jordan (01:46):
Oh, that's a deep cut, yeah, and.

Alban (01:48):
I was not very good and I blame it on the mouse.

Jordan (01:57):
Welcome back to Buzzcast , a podcast about all things
podcasting from the people atBuzzsprout.
So Kevin is out this week, sowe have our honorary co-host
joining us, Tom Rossi.
So, Tom, you're kind of likethe stats guy at Buzzsprout and
I was thinking it's been a whilesince we've talked about stats
on this podcast.
There's some new stats thathave emerged as podcasting has

(02:21):
grown, and so I thought we'dtake this opportunity to deep
dive into everything that weknow about podcast analytics.

Tom (02:27):
I don't know how I ended up in that niche, but I'll take it
Okay If that gets me on theshow.
I'll talk about stats, and Iget to talk about it at
conferences too, because theylove stats, people love stats,
it's true.

Alban (02:41):
You're.
So this guy that I went to aconcert last night and I'm just
talking to somebody who's nextto me, who I do not know, and
he's talking about his podcastwhere he interviews musicians
and he's telling me all about it.
Someone else was like, oh, youshould talk to him, he's a
podcast guy and he goes.
Oh, you work with Tom, he goes.
Yeah, I was talking to Tomabout what stats are actionable

(03:03):
and if, whether or not I'msuccessful, and he's like Tom
had some good ideas and I waslike Tom's actually like the guy
, like in the world, I like thathe uses those words.
Yeah, but he said actionableand whether or not my podcast is
successful based on my stats.
I was like, oh no, that's TomLike there's nobody else.

Tom (03:23):
What's so funny is, when I talk about stats, it almost
always starts with they're notthe most important thing, right,
like the thing that I'm aboutto talk to you about.
It's not something you shouldbe looking at every day.
It's not something that shouldbe guiding you know the work
that you do.
It shouldn't be informing howyou prioritize your week.
You know.
All those kinds of things Causepeople think about stats and
they think about success, and Ithink it's not what people

(03:44):
expect when you start a statstalk with that.

Jordan (03:48):
Yeah, because I think that's the thing is people put
so much weight on their stats.
Instead of using it as a tool,they're using it as like a
measurement of their success,right?
Yes, and so I think it's goodto like kind of reframe that
mindset around statistics andanalytics statistics and
analytics.

Tom (04:05):
It's a deficiency of the industry, because the industry
pushes them in that directionright Like in podcasting,
there's this narrative that it'sall about downloads.
There's this narrative thatit's all about CPM and how much
money you can make based on thenumber of downloads, and it
diminishes the value ofpodcasting when that's the only
way you think about the value ofwhat you're producing.

Alban (04:21):
So, Tom, could you give us a 30 seconds why you should
not listen to the rest of thisepisode?
Why is the rest of this episodenot the end?
All be all of podcasting.

Jordan (04:30):
Alban as the head of marketing.
This is a terrible question.

Tom (04:36):
I think the reason that you may consider turning it off
right now is you probably didn'tget into podcasting for the
numbers.
You didn't get into it for thestats, you know.
You got into it for the stories.
You got into it for the, forthe people whose lives you could
change or affect or make adifference.
There was something burninginside of you that got you into
podcasting and it probablywasn't the number of downloads,

(04:57):
the number of listeners or thenumber of streams.
Right, that's a big one.
And as soon as you startlooking at those numbers,
inevitably you begin to comparethem and then you start to feel
like oh, wait a minute, why am Ieven doing this?
Well, what are you talkingabout?
You get whatever.
50 people heard the messagethat you put together Like,
isn't that amazing?
And they're like well, no,because Joe Rogan gets a
gajillion.

Alban (05:17):
Okay, Don't let that rob you of the joy of what you're
doing, Everything else in life.
We are okay that other peoplemay have more of that thing and
we can still enjoy it.
If I was like, oh, I didn'tenjoy hanging out with my
daughter at the park becauseother people have more children
than me and so they have morekids at the park, You'd be like
that's not why you got intoparenting.

Jordan (05:37):
That's such a good analogy.
All right, so let's kick thingsoff with the fundamentals of
podcast stats.
So, if you're new to podcasting, you can think of them as like
a food pyramid of stats, right,the ones that are on your

(05:57):
Buzzsprout dashboard.
This is like the corepodcasting stats, and the
foundational one is going to belike downloads, streams, listens
One of the things that a lot ofnew podcasters will ask.
They'll be like well, what'sthe difference between a listen
and a download?
They're sort of the same, butthey're sort of not.
Tom, can you give us a littlebit of insight into, like, how
these are a little bit different?

Tom (06:17):
From the podcast hosting standpoint, the company that
hosts your audio file.
So if it's Buzzsprout, forexample, we know that the audio
was downloaded and we know howmuch of that audio was
downloaded, and so once they'vedownloaded more than 60 seconds,
we will call it a download.
And so this confuses peoplebecause they're like well, what
if they were just streaming it?

(06:38):
What if they just clicked play,but they didn't actually listen
to the whole thing, or theydidn't download it to their
device.
Well, we don't know what theydid with it.
All we saw was that the datawas accessed and that they
downloaded a certain number ofseconds of your podcast, and so
what we do is we'll count it asa download after 60 seconds of
data has gone out.
Now the internet is so fast,and most of our devices are so

(06:59):
fast, that it's very rare thatsomebody doesn't access at least
60 seconds, because when theyclick play in their app, it
immediately begins to download,and so it's going to download
more than a minute prettyquickly.
So that's why these numbersget closer and closer, even the
number of plays, which somepeople will call a play, you
know, when they press the playbutton.
Well, as soon as they pressthe play button in their podcast

(07:21):
listening app, it's going to goand start downloading the data
and then it's going to downloadmore than 60 seconds of it
pretty quick, and so that's whatwe call downloads.
And that's where I think theconfusion starts, because when
you go and you log into youranalytics with Apple or you log
in and look at your analyticswith Spotify, they're going to
show you information that wecan't tell you.
They know things that we don't.

(07:42):
They know how many times theyliterally hit the play button
and the pause button right,which is one of the confusing
things.
I think it's Apple, right,which actually tracks the number
of times they press the playbutton.
Even if they're listening tothe same episode, the same
person, they could click playbutton, you know 50 times, and
it's going to say you had 50plays, buzz, and so they're like
whoa, why are my numbers sodifferent?

Alban (08:03):
It's just apples and oranges.
All right, can I try to spitthis back to you?
Tom Sure, a download is whensomebody requests the file from
Buzzsprout.

Tom (08:12):
So they say I want it.

Alban (08:13):
And as soon as you've sent over a minute, we say
that's a download.
Yeah, a listen or a play islike in an app They've clicked
it.
And mostly it's the apps thatare saying that's a listen or a
play, because they have a littlebit more knowledge, like
somebody clicked that button soit didn't just get downloaded to
a device and sit there theremight actually be like a real

(08:35):
human there with ears.
Streams technically are theexact same thing as a download,
right?
Because if somebody's streamingit, then they're asking for the
file, so we'll count it as adownload.

Tom (08:46):
Yeah, From the hosting company.
There's no difference between adownload and a stream.

Alban (08:49):
Right, which I think is sometimes confusing to people
because when we think I didn'tdownload that whole video from
Netflix, I streamed it you feellike, oh, that's different than
the thing I used to do where Idownloaded a whole file to my
computer.
It's actually not different,Like if I'm streaming a video
from Netflix to my Apple TV, I'mjust downloading it over time

(09:11):
and hopefully downloading fasterthan it's playing on the TV.

Tom (09:15):
And the words are being used by different people and so,
based on who's using it, whatApple might call a listener, for
example, versus what Spotifymight call a listener they're
not necessarily the same thing.
And so, as podcast hostingcompanies, we've kind of
standardized on downloads.
In the old days we called themplays, we used to call them
plays, and that was a source ofconfusion.

(09:36):
So then we started calling themdownloads and so now all the
podcast hosting companies kindof agree on that.
But when you look at theplayers, they can all use
different terms, and so you kindof got to dig into them each to
know what do they mean whenthey say that?

Alban (09:49):
It's hard because these are all normal words that have
normal connotations.
Listening means like activeattention, but you know, if
you're a listener, you knowsometimes you might be talking
to somebody and you're like Idon't think you're listening to
what I'm saying.
We want to see that there'sattention as well.
Even when Spotify says, yeah,you had a listener, you don't

(10:09):
know they were really listening.
They might have clicked playand hopefully a human was in the
room.

Jordan (10:14):
Yeah.
So I have a question for you.
If a listener, let's say thatlike a storytelling podcast,
where someone might listen to anepisode, two, three, four times
, whatever, would that oneperson count as like four
downloads, or will it just countas one?

Tom (10:28):
From the hosting company.
From our standpoint, that'sgoing to count as one download.
Okay, from the consumption datathat you'll see inside of the
player.
Whatever player you're using,it knows that you played it four
times.

Jordan (10:40):
Yeah.

Tom (10:41):
So it knows, but we don't.

Jordan (10:43):
Gotcha.

Tom (10:43):
So they can tell you how much engagement and that kind of
factors into it.
If you have content that'splayed over and over again,
it'll increase your overallengagement because you might
have, for example, if theylisten to it twice, it's 200%
engagement, but from ourstandpoint it's one download.

Jordan (10:55):
Okay, that makes sense, and something that you alluded
to earlier is that your downloadnumbers, your play numbers,
whatever will completely differfrom platform to platform, and I
think that there's a fewreasons for this, one of them
being that Buzzsprout is IABcertified and I believe that
Spotify and Apple are not.
Is that correct?

Tom (11:16):
It's apples and oranges right, because the IAB
certification is really the baseminimum.
I mean, it's the minimum amountof intelligence that you should
be applying to filtering outdata to figure out whether or
not it was a download or not.
But that's because we don'tknow anything.
Yeah, from the host standpoint,all we know is that data was
downloaded from an IP address.
You know, we know what type ofdevice it was and stuff.

(11:39):
But the actual players, likeApple and Spotify, well, they
know everything and so the datathat they give you.
It doesn't really make senseto compare that to IAB certified
numbers.
Now, there's things that differbetween hosts, so this is
something that we hear.
Somebody switches over toBuzzsprout and they're like oh
my gosh, I lost all theselisteners because my downloads
went down, and we're like well,no, actually it's just the host

(12:02):
that you were on before wascounting all these downloads
that weren't really downloads,and now that you've come over to
ours again, ib is a minimum,but we go above and beyond that.
We want to provide the mostaccurate stats in the industry,
and so we are actively workingto filter out traffic that is
not legitimate traffic.
It's weird.
There's so much just faketraffic out there.

(12:23):
Sometimes it's clearly peopleboosting stats by hiring
somebody who says, oh, I'm goingto get you these numbers, and
then all of a sudden, you'llhave, you know, a million
downloads from a small villagein India, you know, yeah, and so
we're constantly in a battlewith bots and auTomatic
downloading and things like thatto try to provide accurate
stats to our podcasters, becausewe want them to have really

(12:46):
good information.

Alban (12:48):
One of the things you've said, Tom, that I always
remember is, whenever we getmore accurate, the numbers never
go up.
Yes, they always go down.

Tom (12:56):
Whenever we get more accurate, nobody gets happy.
Nobody's like.
This is so great.
I thought I had 100, but reallyI only had 50.

Alban (13:03):
And those are 50 now real people.
When there were 100, a bunch ofthose might've been bought.
Some of those were some AI toolscraping your podcast 10 times
a minute and to somebody whojust looked at it and went, wow,
100, I've made it to 100.
It feels like a big stepbackwards, but sometimes Tom
will see oh, this thing happened.
This one went and played 16,000episodes across Buzzsprout.

(13:29):
That's not one guy listeningon a huge binge.
That was some kind of bot.
Those 16,000 plays are notlegitimate.
And then someone sees it.
They're like, oh man, I wishI'd gotten that playback.
Well, we can tell, looking atall the data, that that's very
unlikely a real play, realdownload.
Excuse me.

Jordan (13:48):
I think another thing that can affect download numbers
across platforms.
You know, especially forSpotify and YouTube, when you
upload a video, they like tohost that video and what they'll
do is they will replace theaudio file.
Especially, Spotify willreplace your Buzzsprout audio
file in the RSS feed with thisvideo that you've uploaded into
the Spotify platform, and whathappens is that kind of like

(14:10):
cuts the cord between thecommunication between Spotify
and Buzzsprout and so Spotifymight be showing all these
downloads or all these views orwatches or whatever on their
platform and then it's notgetting translated over to
Buzzsprout because you took outthe audio of that podcast
episode.

Tom (14:26):
Yeah, so from our standpoint, we never see the
file getting downloaded, whichis how we count a download right
, because what's happening isSpotify is saying oh well,
you're using our video service,so we're just going to go ahead
and serve up our own version ofthe audio, we're not going to
use your hosting company.
And so as soon as somebody doesthat, like you said, it breaks
the connection and those statsbecome out of whack.

Alban (14:46):
I actually saw an article now I forget who it was a
relatively large media companythat was shooting video podcasts
started uploading video toSpotify and they claimed that it
was costing them money.
And it was costing them moneybecause Spotify went okay, now
this is a video show, so we nolonger pull the audio from your

(15:08):
podcast host.
Instead, we pull it from ourown servers.
No harm, no foul.
But the problem was that thatpodcast was putting ads into the
file dynamically and they'dswap them out once they were
served up.
And so when Spotify stoppedchecking and saying, hey, send
us the file every time, and kindof, like you said, broke that

(15:28):
cord, well, now they could notsell ads anymore the ads that
were in there in that video file.
When they uploaded that, thoseads got massive amounts of
traction.
Right, they got their bang forthe buck.
They got their bang for thebuck.
That marketer looked like agenius.
Everybody else was like well,we didn't get any plays, any
downloads, any streams, anylikes, any, whatever you want to

(15:53):
call them.
We didn't get them, so we'renot paying.
And they're like wow, this wassuch a bad experience for us
because all those files werebeing cached.

Jordan (15:58):
Yeah, I saw that one too .
That was Amanda McLaughlin fromMultitude Productions.
They have some of my favoritepodcasts in their collective and
so that definitely caught myeye and I was really surprised
when they said that they lostlike $1,000 in the month that
they tested that out, doing thevideo to Spotify.

Tom (16:16):
Because they didn't realize it would lock in the audio.

Jordan (16:18):
Yeah, and I mean Spotify obviously said that their
Spotify like partner programwhatever they're doing is making
more money for other people.
I don't know.
Spotify obviously said thattheir Spotify like partner
program whatever they're doingis making more money for other
people.
I don't know.
So I get it, but it's also justkind of like if you are doing
advertising in your podcast, itmight do you a little bit better
to not opt in for the video.

Alban (16:38):
At least there's more dynamics there than meet the eye
in the beginning, just becausethere's these different things.
It's why all the stats are sohard to pull apart sometimes,
especially for a normalpodcaster, because some things
are going to cash it, some aregoing to make a video file, some
are pulling them differently,some people don't actually
listen, some people listen withfriends multiple times and all

(16:59):
of these different types of edgecases that we're going through
lead to you think you know forsure why one number looks
different.
But there's not just like onereason why they may look
slightly different.
There's so many that a reallybig podcast collective can put
their video up on Spotify and go.
We know what's going to happenway more reach.
And then they go oh, we lost athousand bucks because of the

(17:21):
way this technically worksslightly differently.
It cost us money.

Tom (17:25):
If you go back to where we started in terms of healthy
relationship with your stats,not obsessing over them,
remembering why you got intopodcasting, all those kinds of
things.
This is typically what happenswhen somebody writes in and
they've got a really complicatedstatistics question and so
support will maybe throw it overto me to do some investigation.
It's very rare that I get intothat Cause.
I remember that, like all thethings that Alban just went

(17:46):
through, you're comparing thisnumber to this number and you're
, you know, doing all the mathand you're getting out your
abacus and whiteboard and you'retrying to figure these things
out.
And then I go and I log intotheir account and they have like
30 downloads, yeah, yeah, andI'm like, okay, you're trying to
figure out why one said 22 andone said 30, but, man, the best
use of your time is not thatFocusing on your content,

(18:08):
focusing on why you enjoypodcasting, what got you into
podcasting, and not obsessingover trying to figure out the
differences between thesedifferent numbers.
And just take it all with agrain of salt.
Yeah, it's about 30, you know,but I think that's so important.

Jordan (18:25):
I've seen some people spiral down that rabbit hole in
our community group, especiallynew podcasters.
You know they'll just be like.
I have one download across allmy episodes, what's happening,
what's going on, and we're justlike dude.
Someone probably just likesubscribe to your podcast.

Alban (18:41):
We all do it when we start something new.
When you open your first bankaccount, you're like, oh, I have
$12 in there.
Now I have $13 in there andyou're like slowly adding your
allowance to it.
You're excited.
And when I started a blog I waslike, oh, I got a reader today.
That's awesome.
And in the beginning we all arelike checking it.
You know it'd be much morestressful if, like, the bank
told you, hey, you know, some ofthese dollars are real dollars

(19:02):
and we're Canadian dollars Somewe want to tell you they're kind
of like a dollar, but they'renot really dollars.

Tom (19:08):
Why are these numbers different?
Well, it's really complicated.

Alban (19:11):
And let me tell you the bad news is, whenever it gets
more accurate, it does go down.

Jordan (19:19):
Now we're just into the crypto market.

Tom (19:22):
But you figure, you know we're coming at it from a place
that we care about podcasters.
We want them to be able tokeep podcasting, and we know
that there are certain thingsthat you know take away that
motivation, and numbers can onlyprovide so much motivation, and
so you're trying to figure outhow much to play.
I mean, it was something wetalked about with the mobile app
, right, because when you log inwith our mobile app which is
amazing, it's great the firstthing you see, though, are your

(19:44):
downloads today, and we debatedthat right.
Like how valuable is that?
It's a little bit of a brainhit of like ooh, I got you know
six downloads today, or 10downloads today, but at the same
time, we're putting downloadsin front of them, making them
think it's the most importantthing, or make them think that
you need to launch your appevery day to look at your
numbers, and so it's a delicatebalance for us to strike in

(20:06):
Buzzsprout, because we want togive podcasters what they want,
but we also want to give themwhat they need, which sometimes
is less statistics.
It's like we should have alittle thing where you can only
check your numbers so often.
You know, we used to rememberwe used to cash them for six
hours, so you could, yournumbers would not change for six

(20:30):
hours and people would complain.

Jordan (20:30):
They're like I want it to change all the time.
We're like once every six hours, that's it All right.
So let's go into what I thinkis the most fun stat for
podcasters.
It's the geographic data, thelocations.
Where are your listeners atmost platforms that you go into
are going to give you locationdata.
So it's going to be likecountries, states, cities, all
that stuff.
In our app we have a reallycool little section.
That is honestly one of myfavorite things and it's like

(20:52):
newest five cities that yourpodcast has been downloaded in.
That is just so much fun.
So it's a really quick way tosee what new locations your
podcast has been kind of likeglobetrotting to.

Tom (21:02):
Yeah, that was a fun little thing to add, to try and put
something that gives a littlebit of encouragement, a little
boost to be able to see wherepeople are listening.
And all of that is based onwhere those downloads occurred.
I remember one time somebodywrote in and said something like
I didn't get any downloads fromthis city in England.
And I know I got a downloadfrom this city in England and I

(21:26):
wrote back and I was like, well,you know, you got other
downloads in the area, you know,and so it's possible that no,
no, no, it was definitely thiscity, because my mom told me she
downloaded the podcast.
And I was like oh dude, yourmom lied.
That hurts, but what happens iswe use the IP address that is

(21:46):
used by the device thatdownloads the episode, and that
IP address is registered withwhoever issued that IP address.
So, for example, let's say youwere listening on your phone and
you have AT&T.
It's going to be an IP addressthat was issued by AT&T and
where they registered.
What geographic informationthey provide is totally up to
the internet provider, and soit's not always accurate, and

(22:08):
that's why it can be offsometimes where this poor guy in
England, his mom, might haveactually downloaded it, but the
IP address might've beenassociated with a city one
county over or whatever they arein England.

Alban (22:21):
Same issue we get with like zip codes, or you might get
with an area code for a phone.
Someone may be in Jacksonville,florida, but when they call you
they don't have a 904 area codebecause they used to live
somewhere else and that's wherethey got the phone.
Or they're from just outside,or the area code.
They added another number andyou didn't know about it.

Tom (22:41):
There's any number of reasons why the area code
doesn't 100% line up with theexact cities, so the IP address
is what everyone uses really todetermine location, and we also
have more and more what wouldyou call them like Anonymizers.
There you go.
Yeah, it could be a VPN.
It could be other sources ofbasically hiding people's IP

(23:02):
addresses, which is a commonpractice where people don't want
people to track them and theyuse ad blockers and things like
that that might change their IPaddress.
Well, because of that, it cantotally throw off the location
data.
So they have no, we have noidea where they're coming from.
So sometimes people will saywell, I got all these downloads
from unknown.
What does that mean?
Well, it's unknown.

(23:22):
We literally just don't knowthe location.
It was just an IP address.
It's not associated with anygeographic area.

Jordan (23:34):
There was like an earlier episode of Buzzcast
where you guys had this wholelike mystery about like Lake
Stevens Washington.
Yeah, I think it was like a twoepisode arc in Buzzcast.

Tom (23:40):
And didn't somebody?
Somebody actually went to LakeStevens and they posted yeah.

Jordan (23:45):
And it was like some sort of like data farm or
something like that.
I don't know what it was, butyeah.

Tom (23:49):
Yeah, and so some.
Sometimes.
That that'll happen too isyou'll see a lot from like the I
think it's Richmond, virginiaor somewhere in Virginia that is
a data center for Amazon, andso you'll have downloads from
that location, and some of themare legit.
We've tried trust me, albinknows I'll go block traffic, but
then you'll find out that it'sactually legitimate.
They, when they reach out andthey're like wait, wait a minute

(24:10):
, there's an issue.
And what's happening is there'slike VPN services where they're
terminated at a regional datacenter in, let's say, virginia,
but they might actually beaccessing it from anywhere in
the world, and so all of thosedownloads will show up in that
one area.

Alban (24:31):
One of my favorite stories about location data was
Jordan Harbinger had his podcastand he started seeing one
consistent download in Tanzaniaand he was like he had one I
mean it was early on so hedidn't have tons of listeners
and he's like it keeps showingup.
It's like Tanzania, Tanzania.
And eventually he was like hey,you know, thanks everyone who's
listening, but there's, I think, one of you who's located in
Tanzania.
If that's you like, reach out.
Here's my email, Tell me ifthat's true.

(24:52):
And a guy reached out and saidyeah, I'm in Tanzania, I
download your episode, I burnthem onto CDs and then I
listened to your podcast whenI'm out in like the Serengeti
national park, like on safari,Wow, Like when you hear like oh,
I got downloaded in Tanzania,it just feels like, okay, maybe
probably that'd be cool.

(25:13):
But when you connect with theperson and then they tell you
the story of like, oh, no, I'mlistening to your podcast, it's
important enough, it'sdownloaded to a CD.
Here's what I'm listening.
You're like oh, the story is somuch more fun than just like
that stat counting a little bithigher and higher.

Tom (25:29):
Yeah, and all of a sudden that one becomes way more
significant, right?
That little one on Tanzania atthe botTom of your location data
?
Well, now there's a nameassociated with it.
There's a person, arelationship.
It just changes things.
And the reality is, every oneof your stats is associated with
a listener.
You know somebody thatdownloaded it, no matter where
it came from, and if you canconnect with that, it makes it

(25:51):
way more motivating.

Jordan (25:52):
When you do look at those numbers, Alban, I think
that story actually nicelysegues into our next set of
stats, which is device and appdata.
I don't think CD is going to beon this list, but in Buzzsprout
you can see which apps yourlisteners use whether it's
Spotify, apple Podcasts,overcast, anything like that and
then you can also see whatdevices people use.

(26:15):
I think that these are statsthat people don't really know
what to do with it or why it'sthere.

Tom (26:23):
Well, it's just overwhelmingly mobile.
Yeah, and I think that's whatpodcasters need to be aware of
is that the majority of thedownloads that are happening are
on mobile devices, especiallyin light of all the
conversations we've been havingabout video, and I know there's
been some heated exchanges withpeople that are adamant about
video.
But it's recognizing it's onmobile devices and so that's

(26:44):
somewhat limiting.
When you look at the amount oflistens that happen, for example
, in smart TVs, it's just noteven significant.
It's almost all mobile devices.
It's mostly iPhone if you're inthe West right, because that's
where most of the downloadshappen is in the US, the UK, and

(27:05):
those are predominantly Appledevices, and so a lot of iOS,
even though some other peoplemay be in other areas.
I know that, albin, we hadsomebody in our Facebook
creators group who was inCentral America somewhere and
almost all of her downloads wereAndroid Spotify, because all of
her downloads were coming fromCentral America, and so you can
see some information about it.

(27:26):
But the only takeaway that Ireally have is it's
predominantly mobile.
No matter where you are in theworld, it's going to be mobile,
and I know that there was somedata the podcast landscape
statistics from 2024, where theywere talking about, you know,
listeners being on the move, andit was something like 66% of
podcast listeners said they liketo listen while they're driving

(27:47):
or traveling.
That tells you something aboutthe mindshare that we have with
podcasting is that they're doingsomething else and they're
listening to this at the sametime on a mobile device.
And again, it informs how youshould approach video,
recognizing that 66% are goingto listen while they're driving,
61% are listening while they'rewalking or they're exercising,

(28:09):
and it bears out in the statsbecause we see predominantly
those downloads are happening onmobile devices, which would be
conducive to doing somethingelse.
Doing household chores isanother big statistic for people
listening to podcasts.
All that happens on a mobiledevice.
Web players is one of the otheryou know big download sources
that we see are people that areactually downloading it on the
web.

(28:29):
And I think it's worth talkinga little bit about that,
because the web player isquestionable in my mind, because
how often do you listen to apodcast on your browser?
I mean, I do it occasionally,but the majority of the time I
might listen on the browser andgo, oh, I want to listen to that
.
And then what do I do?
I pop out my phone and I queueit up to listen to the next time

(28:52):
I'm listening to a podcast.
Yeah, and so I'm always alittle suspicious of web player
downloads, and it might just bethat I I have just had so many
experiences where people hadtheir players.
They didn't use the Buzzsproutplayer, they use their own
player, and every time somebodywas going to the webpage, it was
downloading the episode andthey didn't realize it.
And so what happens is you'relike, oh my gosh, I'm blowing up

(29:14):
.
Well, yeah, you're blowing upwith web player downloads
because you're not using aplayer that's correctly handling
your data.
And so what's happening is,when they go to the page, as
soon as they go to the page,it's downloading the MP3.
And so the web player downloads, I think, are something that
people should be cautious aboutthinking, oh, everyone's

(29:35):
listening on my website andthey're not listening on a
mobile device.
Statistically, that would be ananomaly, and I doubt it.

Jordan (29:42):
I think that there's some services where if you get
your podcast listed or you youpay for like podcast advertising
, where they put it like on awebpage.
Sometimes I'll put it like onan autoplayer so that whenever
someone like goes to thiswebpage and your podcast is like
at the top or at the botTom orwhatever, it'll auTomatically
start playing it like in thebackground.

Tom (30:02):
Yes, and that'll count as a web player.

Jordan (30:04):
Yeah, Like a legitimate one, cause someone's accessing
it, right, but it's just they'rejust being forced to.
Yes, exactly yeah.

Tom (30:12):
They didn't choose to.

Jordan (30:13):
Yeah, so I've always been a little leery of those.

Tom (30:16):
Do you remember in the old days people used to do that?
You'd go to a webpage and itwould start playing like out
your speakers until the worldbasically revolted and they were
like we never, ever want you tostart playing audio when we go
to a webpage.

Alban (30:29):
And then podcast numbers started going down really
quickly.
One person I have seen who webplayers legitimately were a
majority of their plays wassomebody who does a podcast
about the villages, which is amassive retirement community in
central Florida, and so almostall of his listeners were

(30:56):
retirees in like their 70s and80s and for all of them they had
a desktop computer and so theywould pull up the podcast on the
website and play it and listento the whole thing.
So that one that made sense tome.

Tom (31:10):
And I would think too, I've definitely seen sites where
they create an experience ontheir website that involves the
podcast.
So, in other words, I'm playing.
I'm playing the podcast, butit's also doing stuff inside of
a transcript and maybe it's gotyou know, other information
about the podcast, like picturesand links related to it, and
you can click on those thingsand it won't stop the player.

(31:31):
So they've actually built outan experience in the browser.
Well, yeah, for those peoplethose are probably legit web
downloads, but for the majorityof podcasters they're just using
an embedded player.
I feel like it's more fordiscovery than actual listening
experience.

Alban (31:45):
Yeah, so as we kind of start talking about the
demographic data, could we talksome about how demographics are
shown inside of all these otherapps?
Because we've talked a littlebit about how, buzzsprout, we
can't show you age.
You know age, gender, thingslike that.
But some of those do show up inpodcast listening apps.

Jordan (32:03):
Yeah, the three primary apps where you can get this
information are going to beSpotify for creators, apple
Podcasts and YouTube Studio, ifyou submitted your RSS feed to
YouTube.

Tom (32:13):
And these are definitely things worth looking at.
Right, If you're interested instatistics, you should be
looking at the information thatyou can get from Spotify and
Apple, specifically If you'redoing stuff on YouTube YouTube
as well but these numbers arereally informative and there are
things that you cannot get fromyour podcast host.

Jordan (32:30):
What's kind of cool is that all of these different apps
provide different insights intoyour podcast and into the
people who are listening to yourpodcast.
So if you kind of likeFrankenstein, all these stats
together, you can get a reallycomprehensive look at how your
podcast is growing, how youshould market it, what your
audience looks like, things likethat.
So one of the things thatBuzzsprout has that you won't

(32:52):
see in like Spotify or YouTube,is the episode pacing chart and
it tracks your like last fourepisodes performance over 30
days, and so you can just seethis line graph and see how
they're comparing to each other.

Tom (33:05):
The episode pacing chart, I think, is a great application
of statistics that Kevin reallypushed for.
You know we went back and forthwith different ideas of how we
could accomplish it, but what'snice about it is it's comparing
your episodes to one another, soyou're not comparing yourself
to other podcasters, you'recomparing yourself to yourself.
If you're growing your audience, you should see your episode

(33:26):
pacing is getting better.
Let's say that the last episodeyou got to 30 downloads in the
first seven days.
Well, the new one, maybe yougot to 30 downloads after just
three days.
Right, so you can see thepacing is getting better.
You're getting a biggeraudience to download your
episodes quicker.

Jordan (33:42):
Yeah, Sometimes we'll kind of experiment with how we
name episodes, Like maybe acertain episode will be titled
something a little bit catchier,Maybe another one will be.
I don't know morestraightforward about what the
episode's about.
If you kind of experiment withthat, you can see on the episode
pacing chart which one's goinggonna get the most attraction in
the first month of it beingpublished.

Alban (34:02):
Yeah, and it helps you compare your marketing I mean
any marketing that you're doingaround the episode.
Sometimes it's difficult if,like, my last episode got a
thousand plays and I'm like okay, cool, and the new episode's
only at 400 plays, that soundsbad.
But new episodes only at 400plays, that sounds bad.
But then if you consider thenew episode is only two days old
and the last episode is, atthis point, two weeks old, the

(34:24):
pacing chart helps you comparetwo day old to two day old
episode and then five day oldepisode to five day old episode
and then you can see when one ofthose is outpacing the other.
You're like you can go oh,there's a difference here.
I started getting more playsfor the new episode, even though
the total number is pretty lowright now.
It's on pace to be my biggestepisode ever.

Tom (34:48):
Then you're trying to figure out why is it on a
different pace?
So what Jordan was saying, likeit may be because you took a
different approach with the waythat you did your titles or your
artwork.
It could be a difference in theway that you do your marketing
and the way that you send outyour email or posting on social
media.
But the statistics is justshowing you that the new episode
is on a higher pace or fasterpace than the previous one, and

(35:11):
then it's up to you to figureout.
Okay, what's working or notworking?

Jordan (35:14):
And let's say that you have guests on every other
episode and then you startnoticing that the episodes where
you're just like flying soloare always pacing a little bit
less than the ones where youhave a guest.
Well, maybe that's a goodindication that you should have
guests on more often, becauseguests are promoting the podcast
and so it's reaching morepeople.

Tom (35:32):
Yeah, and you know we're going to talk about the other
platforms as well, and what theother platforms offer that you
can't get from your podcast hostis engagement.
Yes, and exactly what you werejust describing.
I just was thinking about apodcast that I listened to and I
don't know if I feel a littlebit guilty, but when I listened
to it, if the main podcast hostisn't the host on that episode,
I don't listen to it.

Alban (35:53):
Oh, I have plenty where I do the same, where I'm like I
love them, but I'm bouncing.

Tom (35:57):
I'm bouncing right, so they get the download, but if they
look at their engagement,they'll see that the engagement
on that episode was less becausepeople only listened for the
first 60 seconds.
They realized, oh, the mainhost isn't on the show and so
they bounced, whereas the otherones get full engagement.
They listened for 45 minutesbecause it was the main host,
and that's great actionableinformation that you can get,

(36:20):
but you can only get it from theplayers from Apple from.
Spotify from YouTube, so we'llhave to watch this episode and
see if Kevin's going to stickaround or swap you out.
Well, at the very beginning,when we said, oh, you don't want
to listen to this episode ifyou don't want to look at stats,
Okay.

Jordan (36:38):
So one of the things I really want to talk about with
Spotify's individual stats isthe impressions.
This is something that has beenadded recently and it's how
many times your show was seen insearch results or
recommendations.
And what's kind of cool aboutthis is sometimes you'll publish
something and the algorithmwill pick it up and then you'll

(36:58):
see that the impressions are upreally high, and one of the
things that I like to look at isthe conversion rate from
impressions to like actual plays.
I have some episodes in mystorytelling podcast where it
maybe is a lesser known story.
My podcast gets served to a lotof people in the algorithm, but

(37:19):
they don't actually press play,and so I think, okay, I need to
start like really sticking tostories that people know so that
when they do see it, they'll belike I love Winnie the Pooh,
you know.

Tom (37:28):
Yeah, that impression number is really significant for
understanding, like yourartwork, your title, whether
it's working with your audience,because you'll see the
difference right, people saw theimpression and then they
actually clicked.
And if you see those numbersand the conversion rate is
really low, you want to figureout what is it that they saw

(37:48):
that they didn't want to click.
Why is it that they didn'tactually, you know, click the
button to play, whether it'sbecause they didn't recognize
the story or because the artworkwasn't compelling.
It's trying to figure that out.
So I think it's really gooddata for people to look at.

Jordan (38:01):
Yeah, and another thing that Spotify offers and actually
YouTube has this as well is theage, gender, location, device
type, things like that.
But age and gender is reallygonna tell you a lot about who
your podcast audience is, and soif that's something you're
interested in, especially ifyou're trying to get a sponsor,
they love to know what age groupyour listeners are in.

(38:23):
They love to know, you know,are they male, female, anything
like that, and so that's reallyvaluable information.
If you're trying to get anadvertiser or trying to get
someone to sponsor your podcast,you can pull that information
from Spotify, you can pull itfrom YouTube.
If you're using YouTube, justput it into like a nice little
PDF document and shoot it off tothem.

Tom (38:41):
It just has to be qualified with the idea that it's only
from those platforms.
So, for example, spotify skewsyounger, apple Podcasts skews
older, and so if you're lookingat age and gender information,
really it's only telling you forthe platform that you're
looking at, and so, depending onhow many downloads you're
getting on those other platforms, it may not be the best

(39:01):
representation that's why Ialways recommend that people do
a podcast listener survey.

Jordan (39:06):
You can just use google form.

Tom (39:07):
So great, it's free.
It's free and we know thatlisteners want to engage with
their podcaster, and so what agreat way.
I'll have people that are likewell, how am I supposed to know?
How am I supposed to know?
You know what their age andgender is.
Ask them put up a form, ratherthan trying to deduce it through
some creepy.
You know statistic?
Why don't you just ask them tofill out a little survey and

(39:27):
you're going to give them ashout out on the show, or I
don't know?
Do something.

Jordan (39:30):
Well, I have them give me like offer up topic ideas for
future episodes and that seemsto really do it.
One year I tried offering up a$25 Amazon gift card because you
can just email it to people.
This is fully digital, so ifthey just leave their email you
can do like a drawing thing.
Honestly, I did not have moreengagement with the survey from
running the $25 gift card, sobut I will say that when I did

(39:53):
run a survey it was pretty closeto what I saw on Spotify Not
exactly, but it was pretty darnclose.

Tom (39:58):
Yeah, are the majority of your downloads on Spotify.

Jordan (40:00):
Yes, Vast majority.
I would say like I think it waslike 70% of my downloads were
on Spotify.

Alban (40:05):
This show.
A majority of ours are over onApple podcasts.
So I think some of these otherstats if we talk about Apple for
a second or once that we're alittle bit more familiar with,
or at least I am.
I think one of the bestmeasures of success is retention
.
How long do people stick withthe episode when they start it?
And you can look at this graphthat starts out close to 100%

(40:28):
100% of people who click play atthe beginning and you see it
pretty quickly drop off.
Sometimes some people mightlisten to five seconds, but you
might have episodes where amajority of people are still
listening in the final minute ofthe episode.
It's really helpful because yousee what moments do people cut
off.
You know, is it when we startdoing a fan mail later in the

(40:49):
episode?
Is it when I start rantingabout video podcasting?
Is it during a long segment onwhatever it is?
You realize, oh, there'scertain aspects of the show that
everyone's engaging with andthen there's other aspects that
are pretty boring and it kind ofgives you a bit of a hint of
which pieces are working andwhich you might want to skip in
the future.

Jordan (41:09):
Oh yeah, I have like clockwork about one minute into
my podcast I have a 60 second adread.
And if you look at Spotify,the retention graph, if you look
at Apple podcasts the retentiongraph, there's a perfect little
divot in every single episodeabout a minute in where people
skip and they come right backLike they're they're sticking
around, but there's that littledivot right there and so you

(41:32):
know, if I were diabolical Imight switch it up on them and,
you know, put it like twominutes in instead of one minute
.
But there was one podcasterthat I had heard from that they
were having people justcompletely drop off about like
10 minutes before the episodefinished and they were like why
does this keep happening?
And they went back and listenedand every single episode

(41:53):
towards like the last 10 minutesthey're like all right, guys,
well, you know we're wrapping up, and then they'd continue
talking or they do like the callto actions or things like that.
And so they realize like, oh, Ineed to quit saying all right
before we wrap up or okay beforewe end things.
And I think that that was areally good takeaway from
episode consumption or audienceretention.

Alban (42:14):
Yeah, we've seen this a lot with YouTube, especially
when we're making YouTube videosthat the minute you say thank
you for watching, then peopleimmediately click off of the
video because that signals tothem oh, this is over, even if
you say thank you for watching,here's another resource, here's
something valuable, here'sanother tip and there's more
after that.
It's like I don't knowManchurian candidate, the minute

(42:36):
that you set off like thatsecret phrase in their brain
thanks for watching.
They're like I'm out of here.
And they click off as quicklyas they can.
One thing over on YouTubethat's unique, that I really
enjoy for video content.
So if you're making podcastswith a video element, or maybe
you've put your podcast just asan audio podcast over on YouTube

(42:58):
, one thing you'll get istraffic sources.
And sources will tell youwhere that traffic came from.
It's not always, in webanalytics, the most accurate,
but it will kind of tell youlike this came from another
website.
You kind of go okay, somebodyrecommended it, or it came from
YouTube search, which meanspeople were searching for this.

(43:20):
They'll sometimes tell you theexact search terms people were
using.
It came from YouTuberecommended, which is like it's
either on that sidebar or it'son that big homepage with videos
.
They start telling you wherethings come from and, based on
where those traffic sources comefrom, you learn a little bit
more about what type of contentyou're creating.
So if something shows up inYouTube search all the time,

(43:43):
you're kind of more how tocontent.
You know how to fix adishwasher, how to fix this
thing, how to make something,but where?
If it's recommended, you'reprobably less how to and you're
more likely entertainment andpeople are just like they see it
and they're like, oh, this willbe fun, I'll just click this on
and watch.
You know my favorite golfer dosomething silly.

Jordan (44:03):
Yeah.

Alban (44:03):
That's a valuable thing If you're on YouTube, especially
if you're creating videocontent.
That traffic sources issomething I would go look at.

Jordan (44:10):
All right.
So we covered all the statsthat I think we really can cover
in podcasting.
There's one thing that wedidn't cover and I kind of want
to reframe this.
I see this question a lot ishow do I study my competitors'
podcast analytics?
And the way.
I want to reframe this, becausein podcasting I don't feel like
there's competitors, there'sjust community.
So I want to say how do I studyother podcasts in my community?

(44:34):
Like, how do I study my equalspodcast analytics and see how
I'm measuring up against them?

Alban (44:39):
I know a lot of us recommend the OP3 tag open
podcasting analytics tag.
Sometimes podcasters make thatpublic, but I often will check
podcasts with listen notes.
So, I go to listen notes and Iwill search for the podcast and
it will kind of tell you likethis podcast probably in the top
50% or the top 1% or the top0.001%.

(45:01):
And it gives you an idea ofabout how big it is.
You can go look at somethinglike CastBox, which actually
shares how many subscribers areon CastBox for that show.
So you can kind of look at andthen, based on you know cast
boxes, 2% of the industry youcan multiply by 50 and you've
got like a ballpark of the playsthey're getting.

Tom (45:23):
And there's always reaching out to the podcast, right.

Alban (45:25):
Oh yeah that's true.

Tom (45:26):
Podcasters are pretty friendly and insecure, and so
they kind of want to know well,if you share your numbers with
me, I'll share my numbers withyou, you know.
Yeah, so there can be anopportunity, especially when
you're in the same community.
You're trying to make adifference and help both
podcasts grow.

Alban (45:46):
Yeah, I think there can be a little bit of people
inflate their numbers a bit.
I think when you're on YouTube,it's pretty clear how many
subscribers and plays yourvideos get, and so people are a
little bit more honest becauseeveryone can see it.
But since podcasting is hidden,which is probably healthier,
the unhealthy piece is thatpeople will say, oh yeah, I'm
getting about a thousand playsper episode, but maybe they hit

(46:08):
thousand sometimes, but onaverage they're mostly getting
like 500.
You just remember, when peopleare sharing it with you,
especially if they're trying toportray themselves as the guru,
they might be inflating thosenumbers a little bit.

Tom (46:21):
So one of the things that I'm always thinking through as
I'm looking at statistics is howcan I make it actionable, how
can I provide a podcaster withinformation that they can
actually do something about?
But the reality is thepodcaster can only do so much.
The podcaster can only do somuch, and so, from your
perspective, what are the thingsthat you can do that stats
might inform decisions thatyou're?

Alban (46:42):
making Well.
Number one is go into ApplePodcasts.
Look at that playthrough data.
Identify drop-off points,especially for shows that are
segmented.
Like this show is we have anintro but then we have main body
and then we have sound off.
Then we have, like this postshow.
If we go in there and all of asudden the post show is just a

(47:03):
massive drop off, you could justdelete that part of the podcast
.
You know.
Find the weak areas, cut thoseout.
That's one of the mostactionable things you can do.

Jordan (47:11):
I think another one that comes to mind specifically
because we kind of went throughit with Buzzcast, is to make
sure that your podcast titlesare optimized.
We went through a period ofhaving these cheeky, kind of
catchy, funny, punny episodetitles, which were great and
they were so cool, and then thedownload numbers were kind of
dropping and so we realized like, okay, we have to make sure

(47:34):
that we're hitting actualkeywords that independent
podcasters are going to betyping into the Apple podcast
search engines, and so I had togo back and retitle those and
the performance was much betterthan having these funny titles I
thought were great.

Tom (47:49):
So maybe you see that in terms of pacing, because you
change your titles anddescriptions and then you got a
faster pace on your downloads.
Or maybe you got betterclick-through conversions from
impressions in your Spotifystatistics.
Those numbers would help youoptimize those titles and
descriptions.
That's a good one.

Alban (48:07):
I would just go look at what are your top 10 episodes,
or what's the top 10% of yourepisodes, you know, if you have
100, go look at the top 10.
How are those different?
Different titles, differentformat, different length,
different topics, differentguests, different host.
What's different there?
I recently read a really greatreview of a blog and the guy

(48:28):
said yeah, I actually regularlyget three, four times as many
reads if I double the amount oftime I work on the blog.
He was like, for some reason,the ones that I work harder on
they just come out in adifferent way and I get so many
more reads so I'm just doublingdown on how long I spend on each
post.
Not intuitive to me that thatwould be the case, but when he

(48:49):
looked at the top 10%, the top10% were all ones he'd put way
more time into.

Tom (48:54):
So, looking at those popular episodes, just looking
at which ones, maybe over aperiod of time, the same period
of time, so you're comparingapples to apples, which ones are
the most popular and then lookfor patterns on those.

Jordan (49:06):
Yeah.
Another one is definitely, ifyou're trying to get like
sponsors or brand deals,definitely look at YouTube,
spotify to find that gender,geographic data, age, things
like that.
Because you're going to want tomake sure that when you do find
a sponsor, when you do workwith a brand, that you are
finding one that is going toresonate with your audience.

(49:27):
You don't want to betray youraudience's trust by like okay,
so for like my bedtime storypodcast, I'm probably not going
to do like me undies, cause thatmight be like a little weird.

Alban (49:37):
It's very weird.

Jordan (49:37):
Yeah, that'd be weird right, but a brand that I would
work with, especially since myaudience leans predominantly 30
to 50 year old women.
I might do a women's likepajama company or something like
that, because that's going toresonate more with them and
actually it's going to make thatsponsor come back because it's
probably going to get moreaction.

Alban (49:57):
And with all of these insights, I think the key piece
is it's a guess.
You read your stats, you try todo something, you go okay,
here's my guess, here's myhypothesis.
Go through the scientificmethod and come up with an
experiment and then let's try toimprove and you might find this
experiment has incredibleresults.

(50:18):
You might find this experimentdoesn't seem to have any effect.
Both of those are good thingsto learn, because you're trying
to find which are the leversthat, when you pull them, things
are happening that are reallygood for your podcast and which
ones are just a total waste oftime.
Because if you can figure outwhich things are a waste of time
, then you never have to do thatwork ever again and you get to

(50:39):
free yourself from it.
So experimentation is really awonderful thing in saving
yourself time and streamliningyour process.

Jordan (50:47):
Thanks, Tom, for joining us on that discussion about
stats.
I am really glad that we wereable to take that time.
I know we went really deep intothe topic and hopefully it was
interesting.
I think it will be.
But if we did not cover aquestion that you have on stats,
you can always post a questionin the Facebook community group,
in the Reddit community, andwe'll be sure to answer that.

(51:07):
So make sure you're engagingthere.
Let's get into sound off.
So our first message is fromMegan Assa, the lives I've lived
podcast.
Megan says Hello, I startedpodcasting July 2024.
And buzzbrow has been such anincredible tool, so glad to hear
that I gave myself the goal ofbeing consistent for one year to

(51:29):
see if I like the form ofcontent creation.
I love it and I'm alreadycommitting to a second year.
What keeps me motivated isgenuine connections I get to
experience as I interview eachguest and I've also gotten
feedback that going down memorylane with my guests has allowed
them to really celebratebeautiful moments they haven't
thought about in a long time.
I love that.
Megan, Thank you so much forwriting in.

Alban (51:48):
Somebody in Kalamazoo, Michigan, reached out and they
said what was the marketingpodcast that Alban mentioned?
This was the Ahrefs MarketingShow.
Ahrefs is a little bit hard tospell.
It's the HTML tag, so it'sA-H-R-E-F-S Ahrefs Marketing
Show.
It's also on YouTube as a videopodcast.

(52:10):
So great in both formats.

Tom (52:12):
This is Ken from Discount Storytime he writes in.
Sometimes the universe lines up.
When you talked about listenerfeedback, I felt discouraged
because I had not received anyfan mail.
No sooner had I finishedlistening than I got my first
fan mail message telling me howmuch they enjoyed the story that
I told.
I have a question for you allabout sharing listeners'
comments.
What if a commenter leaves aname?
Do you leave that out orsomehow get their permission

(52:33):
beforehand?
I want to be respectful of myaudience's privacy.
It's funny because we just toldKen's name.

Jordan (52:40):
Ken did explain in another message that it was okay
if we used his name.
So thank you, ken, yeah.

Alban (52:46):
I think most people can use a little bit of discernment.
If someone's sharing a reallyprivate thing and the only way
you know their name is becauseit was in a previous message,
like you can leave the name out.

Tom (52:57):
I think this is a great thing that he's saying about the
universe lining up and gettingthat fan mail.
Because I talk to people andthey're like discouraged by fan
mail because they turn it on andthey don't get any fan mail.
And I always ask, like, whathave you done to get people to
send you a fan mail?
Like, have you asked a question?
Have you encouraged them to beable to do it?
Because when you get that firstone, when you get that first
fan mail, it feels so good toknow that there's one person

(53:19):
that's listening, that's willingto click it and send you a
message.

Jordan (53:21):
All right, and so we actually have some messages.
Alban, you've been sort of likethe center of topic discussion
a bit here I'm going to startwith a message that I actually
received during this recording.
Okay, and this is from Tina atthe Cancer Pod.
She says this is for Alban.
I listened to the last Buzzcastepisode, the man Needs Air.

(53:42):
Alban, about the room yourecord in, some plants would
love that CO2 you are making andthey'll give you the O2 you
need.
Get some plants.
So if you didn't listen to, Ithink, a pre-show that we had a
couple episodes ago, alvin got acarbon dioxide.

Alban (53:58):
Just a CO2, carbon dioxide.

Jordan (54:00):
Yeah, okay.

Alban (54:01):
Which right now is well into the cognitive impairment
zone.
So if this podcast has gotten,it'd been degrading.
I blame it on the CO2.

Jordan (54:11):
She also sent in some links for more plant stuff, so
I'll make sure that I forwardthat to you, alvin.

Alban (54:17):
I have some fake plants in here.
They do not provide the CO2relief.

Jordan (54:21):
Yeah, no, you got to get the real stuff in there.

Tom (54:23):
We had a listener in Chicago write in and I'm going
to try and read it as best I canin his voice Dude Alban, very
impressed with your running.
Great work, bro.
I've been doing CrossFit for 16years, currently 51 years old,
but running has always been aweak point for me.
Hearing about that massive longrun in Georgia and now the 15K

(54:44):
where you were pushing the limitthe whole way Very impressive.
Great job man.

Alban (54:50):
I didn't realize.
You just do a CrossFit brovoice.
I wanted to do a CrossFit bro.

Jordan (54:55):
He's probably like the nicest guy ever too.

Alban (54:58):
Listener in Chicago.
I don't know if you knowPodcast Movement Evolutions at
the end of the month is inChicago.

Jordan (55:04):
Yeah.

Alban (55:04):
You know it's a smaller version of Podcast Movement, but
if you're free it's during theweek it's a good conference.
I'll be there If you come.
We can go for a run, we go do aCrossFit workout, you can get
on the running journey.

Jordan (55:17):
All right and we've got another response to the 15K
story.
D Sparkling Life Coach saidlove the quick cast post show.
Congrats, alvin, on completingthe 15K.
I think your friend in the suitis great.

Alban (55:30):
That's true.
That's my friend who ran thewhole thing wearing a suit and
tie.

Jordan (55:35):
Yeah.

Alban (55:35):
So Kevin had a pitch for everybody which was talking
about sometimes doing things soyou can talk about them on your
podcast and his challenge toeverybody.
What he asked everyone to dowas write in with a challenge
for us and so we can do some ofyour challenges and try to
report back.
The first one targets Kevinspecifically.

(55:59):
Steven Robles from Riversidefmwrote and said I challenged
Kevin to make a video.
It can be short and post itwith the same rant against video
podcasting that he did on theshow.
Steven, excellent marketingmove there.
You know he may be usingRiverside FM to do that video

(56:19):
rant, so Kevin's out this weekbut maybe when he comes back
he'll consider it.

Jordan (56:25):
All right, lamar's, iowa , listening to you talking about
doing things.
Just talk about it on thepodcast First of all.
In general, it could be a funway to try something new.
They say for our podcast weshare research-based tools,
techniques and quite frankly, Ihaven't done all the things we
share, so sometimes I will trythem to share about my
experience, for example, givingkids choices, mindfulness, et
cetera.

Tom (56:45):
D from Sparkling Life Coach .
Of course, my challenge has todo with health.
I challenge you to a seven-daysugar-free detox where you ditch
added sugars and processedsweeteners from your diet, and
if you decide to take thischallenge, I'll do it with you
too.
Okay, so I know I'm not part ofthe challenge, but I just
wanted to get a little humblebrag in here that I did give up
sugar for 20 days.

Jordan (57:08):
Wow.

Tom (57:08):
Absolutely no added sugar, nothing.
What were the results?
I lost like 15 pounds.

Jordan (57:14):
Are you serious?

Tom (57:15):
Yeah, no 20 days.
How much added sugar were youeating, Tom?
Okay, I got to be honest.
Like that's the only when youtalk about, like, giving up
carbs, the only carbs that arehard for me to give up are the
straight sugars, okay, so yeah,Tom's eating pure sugar cubes.
Yes, right, ice cream andwedding cake.

(57:35):
I mean, come on, that's, that'swhat we're talking about.
But anyways, I don't know ifyou guys want to do that for a
seven day challenge, but youknow what?

Jordan (57:40):
I'm actually not going to opt for this just because, in
honor of St Patrick's day, I'mdoing like a dry March, so I've
already cut out wine and beer.
I'm don't think I'm going tolike rid myself of all joy in
the world.

Tom (57:53):
You know what?
For 20 days, that's what I feltlike every day I'd just wake up
and I'd be like why do I evenget out of bed?
I can't have any sugar today,Like this is just crazy.

Alban (58:05):
The next one we had was Marty from Nepal, and he said I
love listening to the three ofyou banter.
Hearing Alban's run storysparked an idea for a challenge
Record an episode outside of thestudio space you usually use,
though not inside of a car.

Jordan (58:16):
Yeah, thank you, marty.

Alban (58:17):
While you run.
So what I've got in my hand andI'm showing Tom and Jordan on
the video right now is I boughta mobile audio recorder and I
added a strap to it so that itkind of like I can hold it in my
hand and I use it when I run.
So I've been running withoutlistening to music and mostly

(58:37):
I'm just thinking, you know, alot of times trying to work
through a work problem in mymind, and I took this audio
recorder so I can record littlesnippets and then I go back and
I type up what I wrote earlier.
So it's not really good podcastaudio, but yeah, I've kind of
been leaning into this a bitmore.
I love kind of taking these oneuse devices so that I'm not

(58:58):
distracted by other things.

Jordan (59:00):
That sounds like a spinoff podcast that we could
have, like Alban's runningthoughts.

Alban (59:04):
I mean it's the recorder is shockingly good.
The audio quality is pretty badbecause you know there's wind
and I'm breathing.
I'm like make sure I tellJordan about, like, does it
sound great?

Jordan (59:18):
And then we also have a submission from manhood matters
podcast saying here's somethingthat you guys can do for the
sake of discussing it on theshow.
Listen to one of my episodesand give me an honest and brutal
review.
I know you're too kind to bebrutal, so maybe don't worry
about the content, but moretechnical things I can improve
on.
Okay, so my husband recentlydid this with chat GBT.
He fed a transcript of all thispodcast episodes into it and

(59:41):
said give me a brutal review.
Don't do that, because chat GBTwill take it as an opportunity
to just roast you.
It's really bad.
I'm tempted to do it forBuzzcast.
We might make that a segment.
I'm not sure, but I did listento a few episodes, marty, and I
think that your podcast isreally great.
Obviously, your Buzzsproutwebsite is completely stacked.

(01:00:02):
You have all the featuresturned on.
I love it.
One thing I did notice aboutyour podcast is that you don't
have a call to action anywherein your podcast.
You have all your social medialinks.
You have your support the showusing Buzzsprout subscriptions
and you have fan mail enabled,and I didn't see a call to
action in your episodes.
You got to put a call to actionin there to get more listener
engagement.

Tom (01:00:20):
It's a good one, steph from Geopats.
Her challenge is to wear goofyclothing during a recording to
see if it changes your mood orvocal sound at all, and talk
about it at the end of theepisode.

Alban (01:00:32):
Joke's on you, steph Tom, and I have been wearing goofy
clothes every episode that we'veever done.

Jordan (01:00:38):
That's why we don't do video podcasts.
That's the real reason.

Alban (01:00:42):
Michelle from Rise and Rain.
My challenge for all three ofyou is to swap hosting styles
For one episode.
Kevin tries to sound likeJordan or Alban Alban tries to
sound like Jordan, or AlbanAlban tries to sound like Jordan
or Kevin.
This would be a great post-showat some point.
So we divvy them up.
I like this idea.
This is ridiculous.
And she says whoever doesJordan has to try to imitate her

(01:01:03):
laugh.
This is mandatory.

Jordan (01:01:04):
Totally agree.
Oh gosh, kevin Lowe, with grit,grace and inspiration, says as
a guy who has been completelyblind for 21 years, I find it
hysterical how amazed people arethat I can eat without making a
mess.
So my challenge is to sit downfor dinner with lights turned
off, a blindfold on and havesomeone else set your dinner in
front of you.

(01:01:25):
Now attempt to cut up your food, find your drink, butter, your
roll, all the normal dinnerstuff.
From experience attendingfundraisers called Dining in the
Dark, it's more difficult thanmost imagine.
This is a really good challengeand I think it's something that
, honestly, everyone should doat some point.

Alban (01:01:42):
There was an exhibit years ago that my wife and I
went to called Conversation inthe Dark or something.
It's like you go into a museumand they take you into a room
and it gets darker and darkeruntil you're in a room that is
complete pitch black and thensomebody who's blind comes into
the room and they says, likeokay, we're about to go through
this whole exhibit together, sojust keep listening to the sound

(01:02:05):
of my voice.
You're going to experience whatit's like to be blind and you
go through a grocery store, youtry to cross the street and
they're just trying to give youa little bit of an experience
and in the end of it you atefood and had a drink and stuff,
and it was such a interestingexperience.
One of the things I noticed washow much your senses are
heightened by the end of it.

(01:02:26):
You know, when you can't see,you start noticing smells so
much more strongly and yoursense of direction and space
changes.
So that was like a couple hours.
So yeah, kevin, I love thisidea.
I think, kevin, I need to tryit out.

Jordan (01:02:40):
All right.
So do we have a sound offquestion for the next episode?
Do we have any ideas for that?

Alban (01:02:46):
Yeah, Jordan, you kept bringing us back to listener
surveys.
You're saying why don't youlisten?
Why don't you ask people?
Why don't you ask people?
So let's do it.
We've got all of our stats, allof our download data.
We think we know where you livebased on that download data.
But tell us like, where are you?
Where did you download thisepisode?
If you want to tell us a littlebit about you, Something that

(01:03:07):
we wouldn't be able to tellanother way, right.

Tom (01:03:10):
Like something that we could.
Statistics could never tell us.
Something about yourself thatstatistics could have never told
us.

Jordan (01:03:15):
Do you burn our podcast on a CD and listen to it on
Safari?

Alban (01:03:20):
And I'm thinking like one sentence no life stories.
Hopefully we get lots of themand I want to look at if you
heard this episode and youanswer us, I want to go see if I
can find you in the stats.
If you heard this episode andyou answer us, I want to go see
if I can find you in the stats.
And so if you say like, oh, Ilisten, and if you're the person
in Tanzania and you say Ilistened in Tanzania, I want to
go see.
Do we see someone in Tanzania?
So let us know where are you.

(01:03:42):
Tell us one sentence aboutyourself and we will report back
with all the listenerdemographic data that we get.

Jordan (01:03:49):
I love it.
That's going to be fun.
All right, so to have yourresponse featured on our next
episode, go ahead and tap thelink in the show notes to Texas
Show.
And, as always, thanks forlistening and keep podcasting.

Alban (01:04:06):
So, Tom, one of my favorite episodes of the Office
is when Michael and Jan comeback from their trip together to
Jamaica to Sandals, the SandalsResort.
And you recently came back andposted in our company project
management software that youjust came back from Jamaica with
your wife.
So how was Jamaica?
How was the Sandals Resort?

Tom (01:04:24):
That's right, that's right Two tickets to paradise.
It was great, it's great.
My wife and I went.
We got to do all the Sandalsactivities, got to go scuba
diving.

Jordan (01:04:34):
Yeah.

Tom (01:04:35):
Got to go sailing wakeboarding.
You know I'm not.
I can't, I just can't sit atthe pool, you know, for that
long, and you're eating anddrinking a lot, and during the
episode I talked about how muchweight I lost, and on that
weekend I only gained back fourpounds.
So Wow, only gained back fourpounds, so you lost like 20

(01:04:58):
pounds in 20 days and you gavefour pounds in three days in a
weekend.
Yeah, a lot of added sugar.
A lot of sugar.
Other beverages that turn tosugar.

Alban (01:05:06):
That's awesome.
So you scuba dived?
Are you scuba certified?

Tom (01:05:09):
Uh, yes, I got scuba certified in college and, um,
I'm pretty sure I went scubadived.
Are you scuba certified?
Uh, yes, I got scuba certifiedin college and, um, I'm pretty
sure I went scuba diving onceafter I got married because, uh,
my wife kit was like, oh yeah,I'll do this with you, and she
got certified.
We scuba dived one time andshe's like I'm never doing it
again and that was probably thelast time we did it did she do
it again this time?
no, no way okay, so right, allright yeah so that's why I

(01:05:32):
haven't scuba dived in so long.
And it was funny because I'mtrying to figure out where my
certification is.
And so I FaceTimed my daughterand ended up finding it in the
drawer right next to my bed.
So apparently I thought it wasimportant enough to keep right
next to my bed, but I didn'tknow it was there.

Alban (01:05:47):
So it's been there 20 years You've been saving it for
this moment.

Tom (01:05:51):
More than 20 years, yes, been saving it for this one
moment where she could take apicture and send it to me, so I
could provide it to the SandalsResort, so they could let me go
scuba diving.

Jordan (01:06:00):
And they did let you go scuba diving with it.

Tom (01:06:02):
They made me jump in the pool and run through some stuff,
but it was fun.

Jordan (01:06:07):
I'm surprised you passed that with like I don't know.
It seems like one of thosethings where, if you don't have
your driver's license for likeso long, you have to retake the
test.
You know what I mean.
And scuba diving seems likepretty high stakes, so I'm
surprised that they would justbe like all right, you're good,
it's a sandals.

Tom (01:06:23):
You know it's a sandals.
They want you to.
They want you to have a goodtime.

Jordan (01:06:27):
Safety is not a priority .