Why Listeners and Consumption Matter More Than Downloads

Listeners and consumption percentage are the two key analytics every podcaster should focus on to gauge their podcast's success.

While downloads are important, understanding who's actually listening to your episodes provides a clearer picture of engagement. 

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
I'm Danny Brown and you'relistening to One Minute Podcast Tips,
the show that helps you be abetter podcaster in just a minute
a week. If you enjoy the showand want to support it, you can do
that with a donation of yourchoosing at OneMinutePodcastTips.com/support
and thanks so much forsupporting. And now, this week's
episode. When it comes topodcast analytics, there's a lot

(00:27):
of data points that you canlook at. These include downloads,
followers, subscribers, andmore. But there's two sets of analytics
that every podcaster should belooking at, and these are listeners
and consumption percentage.Now, the first part is tied into
your downloads, but for me,listeners are the more important
metric. The reason for this issimple, because you can set podcast

(00:48):
apps to auto download that canoften result in episodes being downloaded
without actually beinglistened to. However, listener data
shows you who's actuallylistening to your podcast, and that's
what I look at when it comesto gauging the growth and success
of my podcast. After all,engaged listeners make your podcast
more attractive to potentialsponsors and advertisers. Following
on from listeners, consumptionpercentage shows the stickiness of

(01:09):
your podcast. Also referred toas listener drop off, this shows
you how much of your episodeis being listened to and by what
percentage. Again, this is keyinformation that you can share with
potential sponsors and adpartners, but it can also help you
tighten up your podcast too.If you've got an episode that's forty
minute long, but you find thelisteners are dropping off after
thirty minutes thenexperiment with a shorter episode.

(01:31):
That way any calls to actionyou have in your episode or sponsor
messages, etc. aren't beingmissed. So for me, listeners and
consumption percentage are twoanalytics that every podcaster should
look at. Until the next time,happy podcasting. Thanks for listening.
If you enjoy One MinutePodcast Tips, be sure to share with

(01:51):
your friends and otherpodcasters so they can enjoy it too.
Until the next time, happy podcasting.