Basic podcasting analytics

I was recently asked on Twitter about what podcasting analytics you should pay attention to. Let’s look at a handful to see what’s important.

First, podcasting is a medium, just as social media is a medium, just as television is a medium, just as radio is a medium. That means that it fulfills the function of attracting and retaining new audiences for you and your business (if you’re podcasting for business purposes and not just as a fun hobby). Fundamentally, we want to understand the answers to three questions about the audience:

1. Who is in the audience?

What does the audience look like? How many personas are in it? How large is the audience? One of the most effective ways to get this data (besides flat out asking them) is to use something like LinkedIn Groups or a Facebook Page, as that will give you basic demographic and professional data. That’s one of the reasons Marketing Over Coffee maintains an active LinkedIn Group.

2. How engaged is the audience?

If no one’s listening, why bother? Services like Libsyn can give you download data, which is helpful. Services like Stitcher and YouTube can give you insight into how far people listen or watch.

If you’re a sponsored show, as Marketing Over Coffee is, then we know based on this information that we need to deliver the paid ad in the first 25% of the show, when attention is highest.

3. How valuable is the audience?

This is the ultimate question. What does the audience do for you in exchange for the value you provide them? You won’t find this in your podcasting analytics. You’ll find this in your web analytics or your marketing automation system/CRM. How many people signed up for the mailing list? How many people filled out a lead form? How many people bought the book? How valuable is that audience in doing the things that matter to you?

Measure your podcasting efforts along these three categories of metrics if you want to understand what the value of your podcast is. Oh, and subscribe to my podcast that I do with John Wall every week, Marketing Over Coffee.

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