16 Podcast Analytics: Engagement & Retention
This episode of Geelong Podcasters breaks down engagement and retention metrics, explaining how they can shape your podcast’s success.
Topics Discussed This Episode:
0:00 - 1:00: Introduction to podcast engagement and retention metrics.
1:00 - 3:00: Key metrics: average listen time and completion rate explained.
3:00 - 5:00: Analysing listener behaviour: returning listeners and drop-off points.
5:00 - 5:55: Tailoring content based on analytics to retain your audience.
Engagement and retention are key to podcast growth. This episode of Geelong Podcasters covers how to analyse average listen time, completion rates, and listener behaviour to keep your audience coming back for more.
In this episode, we explore the analytics behind podcast engagement and retention, diving into the importance of metrics like average listen time and completion rates. These insights reveal how long listeners stay with you and highlight moments that might need a tweak to keep them engaged. For creators, these numbers act as a compass, guiding content to resonate with the audience and ensure episodes stay relevant and captivating.
The episode also delves into listener behaviour, including returning listeners and drop-off points. By identifying patterns, you can refine your episodes to meet your audience’s expectations while still experimenting with new ideas. Ready to take your analytics game to the next level? Dive into your metrics and start crafting content that keeps your listeners hooked!
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0:00
We're continuing on podcast analytics with engagement and retention. Let's talk about staying in power.
0:07
Welcome to Geelong podcasters, your weekly podcast for tips and tricks to grow your audience. We are a group of passionate podcasters located in Geelong and the bellerine in Victoria, Australia. If you're down our way at the end of the month, why not come to one of our free monthly meet up events, and also find the booking links and more in the show notes.
0:28
Engagement and retention, essentially how long people are staying with you and if they're keen to come back to your future episodes, these golden nuggets of analytics are crucial to your podcast growth. But before we begin diving in, I did get a couple of people asking where to find your podcast analytics depending on your hosting platform. Now, of course, you can easily research this yourself, but what I mean is when you're looking for your analytics, you're looking at the back end of your hosting platform. So when you log in to upload a podcast episode, usually you are logging into what is known as the back end of your hosting platform. You have to provide your sign in credentials, both your login and your password, and maybe even two factor authentication if you have it. And then from there, you get details about, say, general analytics about your podcast. Make some basics, and then on either the menu side, which is usually located on the left hand side, sometimes on the right hand side, depending on which platform you have you are looking for something called insights or analytics, or data or reports, depending on which platform that you're on, this is where you get a really much better idea of the type of data that we're talking about, as opposed to the surface level data that is usually shown on, say, the home page or the welcome page of your back end. So I'm glad to been able to cover it up for everyone. So essentially, we're going to talk about engagement metrics and retention. You know, some really fancy words that everyone loves to sound of but we're talking about podcast analytics today, so understanding your engagement metrics. So essentially, the following two items I'm going to talk about are very crucial regarding the type of people that download and listen to your podcast. These can be so the following two things I want to talk about is average listen time and completion rate. So starting off with the top one, we've got average listener time. Now, as you can imagine, this is how much of each episode people are actually listening to. So this helps you figure out if they're loving it or leaving early, or maybe they're really engaging with, say, the first part of an episode, and then after the ads, they are losing interest because maybe it's the interview, and maybe they're not finding that as engaging as, say, the setup to the interview, for example. There are plenty of examples that we can go through, but this is only a five minute podcast. The completion rate is the second term I want you to have a look at specifically within your engagement metrics, and this completion rate shows you the percentage of listeners who stick around till the end of an episode. It's like checking out who's hanging out to last drinks at the pub. Essentially, what you want to do is be able to look at these numbers. Now, of course, sometimes, depending on the platform that you're using or the listeners that you have, some people don't stream podcasts. They don't watch them on YouTube. They download to a podcast player that they have on their phone or another device, and then they listen where they can listen offline or listen later on at their own convenience. You may not be able to have all of this data, average listen time and completion rate at your disposal, but most of the time, depending on the different platforms of people listening to your podcast, you may have some of these metrics filled out. Other thing you need to check on in your engagement and add it and your engagement and retention area is specifically your listener behavior. The two things I want to talk about are returning listeners and drop off points, very much in relation to average time and completion rate. Your returning listeners are not just newbies. These are people who have the, you know, same downloads and same AP, who are the faithful listeners to your podcast. These are important for building loyalty in your audience, but also loyalty to the work that you do drop off. Points are specific points within each episode or within episodes as a whole, that turn that people end up tuning out, and maybe something that you need to work on. So say, for example, if in your most recent, say, five episodes, everyone seems to be dropping off at the halfway mark at the same point at each episode. All right, let's have a look and see what's happening at that halfway point across all of those five episodes. Now, of course, depending on the type of hosting platform you have, you may not be able to get this granular of data, that's why, usually people pay more to have those more expensive hosting platforms. But sometimes the free platforms can provide you basic analytics that we just talked about that can give you an idea of where to go next. The thing I want you to keep in mind is keeping an eye on which parts work best and build.
5:00
Link from there, tailoring your episodes to what your listeners stick around for, will help them keep will help them keep coming back to you, and also you to keep a hold of your audience as you grow,
5:11
because they are there to listen to you and you are there to help serve them. Keep an eye out for our next episode in a week where we talk more podcast analytics.
5:24
This podcast is sponsored by me, Zoe video confidence coach, connecting the dots of your personal brand with the power of video. See more in the show notes. Speaking of show notes, see all the show notes, including links upcoming events and details for this episode and many more in the episode description. Or just go to vcc, dot training, slash Geelong dash podcasters, make sure you tune in for next week.
The above episode description and transcript were generated with ai.
Who are Geelong Podcasters?
Geelong Podcasters are a lively group of both professional and hobby podcasters based in Geelong and the Bellarine in Victoria, Australia. We release a weekly bite-sized podcast every Friday, exploring the wonderful world of podcasting, and host in-person catch-up events in the Geelong CBD on the fourth Friday of each month. Committed to community support, we regularly donate to local charities and use our podcasting efforts to make a positive impact.
Who is your Host?
Zoë Wood, your Video Confidence Coach connects the dots between personal branding and video marketing. Helping women and non-binary folk in small business, find their way in the world of marketing their passion without the energy drain.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
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