Measuring the Success of Your Podcast

How do you define “success”? Money? Fame? Rockin’ abs? The look and feel of success is different for everyone, as it should be. But if you’re feeling frustrated because your podcast isn’t “successful,” I’d recommend looking at it from a different angle.

The success of your podcast isn’t about vanity metrics…how many downloads you’re getting for each episode or the number of people who subscribe to your list because of a freebie you mention. Sure, those might be important, but they aren’t what determines the success of what you’re doing.

What does demonstrate success? Well, it depends. And you’re going to have to tune in this week to find out!

And no matter how you measure success, you have to do the work to get each episode out there first. And sometimes it’s a challenge to carve that time out of your schedule. Let me help you with that!

In Podcast Ease Membership, you’ll spend 90 minutes a week in coworking time and 60 minutes a week asking me all your questions. We get started September 27 and you can join right here for just $99 a month with no time commitment.

Mentioned In This Episode:

Transcript:

Abby Herman 0:11
Hey there, and welcome to episode 199 of the content experiment podcast, a podcast for podcasters that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing it. All right all of the time. This is the ninth episode of a series all around bringing more ease into your podcast, podcasting can be really time consuming. And it can also feel challenging, especially if you are DIY using most or all of it. Originally, I had the series tapped to run for 10 episodes, but I am enjoying it so much that it’s going to continue until at least the first weeks of November, I promise I will host some interviews again soon. When I look back on the early days of this podcast, I did have some help. And that allowed me to launch with some confidence. But it was the weeks and months after that, where I really struggled. I didn’t feel like I had to go to resource to help navigate some of the early challenges. And to answer some of those early questions that I had as well. Thankfully, I have a background in content marketing. So I was able to work through a lot of those challenges with ease. But I know that not everyone is in the same situation. So I wanted to bring you this series to help leading up to the three three year anniversary of the podcast

Abby Herman 1:36
and the 200th episode and beyond. But there is only so much that I can cover on a single podcast episode. And I know that your business and your podcasts are unique, you might have more questions after listening. I’ve been hosting weekly q&a sessions in August and September. And those podcasters who have been attending have been asking for more. And I love being able to connect with listeners and clients on a different level. And the feedback I’ve gotten has been amazing. So I am going to continue but in a slightly different capacity. So I’m still going to host podcast E’s weekly q&a sessions at 8am. Pacific every Thursday. But I’m also going to add a weekly co working session every Tuesday. And both of these calls are at 8am Pacific. The goal of this co working time is to help you block out time in your calendar to sit down and get some of that podcasting work done. Consider it your podcasting accountability. Now you’ve heard me talk about how important consistency is and it is true, your audience expects to hear from you on a regular basis. They look forward to your episodes. But it’s also so hard to prioritize our own work. We’re really busy making sure our clients and families are taken care of. But the work on our own podcast isn’t going to get done unless we make the time and I’m going to help you with that. This podcast is membership is a month to month commitment. And you can join or cancel at any time. We’re gonna get started on Tuesdays September 27 at 8am Pacific, if you join now, you’ll get one or two bonus pop up q&a sessions or co working sessions between now and then. And if you’re listening in real time, I am currently traveling and moving. So I can’t commit to a time right now. But I’ll make sure that you are taking care of the investment is $99 a month for weekly q&a sessions weekly co working sessions and I’m also going to pepper in some additional support and trainings here and there. So make sure you join us at thecontentexperiment.com/ease. My guess is that there are two different kinds of business owners who are listening right now those who really would love to start a podcast but wonder how to determine if it’s going to be successful or not. Or there are the business owners who have been hosting a podcast for a while, and they might be feeling burned out. Or maybe they’re considering taking a break or letting it go entirely because it’s not quote unquote successful. And I get it I get where you’re coming from. I’ve said it before that podcasting is a labor of love. It takes a lot of time, effort and depending on how you’re producing it money to publish each episode, and if your download numbers aren’t steadily growing with each episode, it can feel like a thankless job. I have been there too. I look at my own downloads and I think I should be getting more downloads each week by this point. And honestly, my downloads have taken a hit since I’ve started the solo series, but I’m okay with that. Because no matter what the download numbers are I know that Download numbers are a vanity metric just like the number of social media followers you have, or the number of people on your list. So it’s fun to look at those numbers. And I do from time to time, and they’re a tangible reminder that people are at least subscribing to your list or podcast. But they’re not how you should measure measure your success. So what is well, I’m going to share your unconventional list of measuring the success of your podcast. Before I get into the four things that can help you measure your success, I want you to think about your goals, the reason why you started the podcast in the first place. Now, I really hope you don’t say it was because you wanted to make sales or you wanted to grow your email list or something like that. Because that is not what your podcast is for. Your podcast is about nurturing the people who have already found you not acquiring new audience members. I talked about this a little bit more in Episode 191 and 177. I recommend listening into those. And I know I’ve mentioned it on many more episodes that I’m not going to list here. So I’m hoping that the goal of your podcast is to get your message out to nurture audience members to grow their knowledge of what you do versus gaining more audience members. Of course, yes, we do want more audience members. But that shouldn’t be our ultimate goal. Okay, so the four things that you can do to measure the success of your podcast are the four ways that you can determine whether your podcast is successful or not. The first one is connections with guests. One of the things I love about podcasting is that I get to talk to and connect with guests. And I know that I’m pretty deep into the solo series. But eventually, like I said, I’ll start interviewing guests. Again, I really look forward to those conversations. Because connecting with guests allows you to create partnerships, you can potentially do a podcast swap where you’re on their podcast, too. And you can create joint offerings together, you can get in front of their community, especially when they’re sharing their episodes, which hopefully they’re sharing the episodes that they that they guest on. But you really have to ask when it comes to these partnerships. If you’ve know that a guest has their own podcast, or an upcoming guest has their own podcast, ask them if you can be on it. Now you of course, need to make sure that it makes sense make sure that their audience is something that you can provide value to. But make sure that you ask. I like to have a few topics handy that I can mention at the end of their interview for my podcast. But in order to do that means I have to do my research, which I should be doing anyway, you should know in advance when you’re interviewing a guest that they have their own podcast. And you should be finding ways that you can connect with their audience, whether it’s the podcast, whether it is a joint offering, or maybe they have a membership community that you can get in front of. But connecting with your guests allows you to grow your own audience if you connect with them in the right way. Alright, number two, on measuring the success of your podcast, you can measure the success by the actions your audience is taking. So think about whether or not you see your audience doing the things that you talk about on your podcast. Now I follow a lot of the people who listen, I like to try to engage with them on social media. I don’t do nearly as much engagement on social media as I know I should. But looking at what your audience is doing is one of my favorite things because action can create momentum for them. There’s a reason why you’re talking about the topics that you’re talking about. And it’s so cool to watch them take action and create momentum for their own businesses. often one of the attendees of the podcast use q&a calls will share what they’re working on and how the podcast or those q&a calls have helped them out. It feels so good to watch that action happening. Number three. The third way to measure the success of your podcast is by looking at reviews in emails from your audience. Of course hearing about the action through written reviews. It feels really good, especially when they’re posted live for others to see this is free promotion. Your ratings and reviews tell you that people are listening and loving what they’re hearing and the emails from your audience. I love you so much. It’s funny that it’s usually the people who I don’t know who will send emails about how the podcast has impacted them. And who doesn’t love kudos from strangers. When I get these emails, it truly renews my drive to continue putting out the podcast, even in like seasons when I’m feeling really discouraged. And the fourth way to measure the success of your podcast is the impact that it’s making on you and on the industry. So your podcast has impact no matter the size of your audience, I don’t care how big or small the audience is, you are making an impact. It has impact because you’re talking about topics that matter. If they didn’t matter, you would not be talking about them. Your content ideas likely come from questions that your clients and audience members have been asking. Or maybe there are mistakes you see people making, and you want to be a voice to create change, whether it’s that or something else entirely know that you are making an impact on the industry every time you publish a new episode. And your podcast also has an impact on you the host. This has been so huge for me, it’s been three years now, since this podcast first launch, and I have not missed a single week. In fact, if I was hosting a weekly show, I would only have 156 episodes right now. So add 199 There were times when I was publishing two and three episodes a week, for one reason or another. Hosting has just taught me so much. And I’m actually going to get into that more in next week’s episode, Episode 200. I would love to know where you stand on the success of your podcast. If you’re only looking at download numbers, or the number of sales you’ve made from your podcast, or your list growth and you’re getting really discouraged. My advice is to shift your priorities and stick with it and get some accountability and support. Remember that you can join the podcast is membership at any time for just $99 a month. It includes weekly q&a sessions on Thursdays and weekly accountability calls on Tuesdays. Both calls are at 8am Pacific. And yes, the q&a calls are recorded. If you can’t make it live. You can join us anytime at thecontentexperiment.com/ease.

Abby Herman 12:36
If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. And you can tag me at the content experiment and this goes back to one of the ways that I know that the podcast is successful is by hearing from you, your reviews your emails, those tell me that you are listening and getting a lot out of the episodes. And of course the more you share the more we can get the podcast into the hands and earbuds of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai