Having a Podcast is one of the most powerful and efficient ways to authentically promote your brand and business in 2023. 

You build a connection with your audience by giving them real value. You have months where you feel that you have reached new levels, and those are taking turns with months when it feels like you're back to square one again.

But you start wondering how you can know if your show is doing REALLY well. You feel that it's time to reach more people out there.

You want to have a real insight into how your Podcast is performing and use that to your advantage, so you can create more of the juicy content your audience loves the most.

That's why I picked 3 quick ways for you to utilize your Podcast analytics in 2023!

Content quality is the golden key to your Podcast analytics.

You feel like what you're doing has a purpose and meaning. That's why you started your business in the first place.

That's also the reason you started your Podcast.

Quality of content is key for improving your podcast analytics. Don't ever forget what the reason for starting it was because that will keep you inspired to create more valuable content for your listeners.

If you want a little help in creating valuable content, you might want to try out Answer the Public. 

It is a free online tool that helps users generate content ideas by providing insights into the questions and phrases people search for on Google and other search engines. 

It works by aggregating and visualizing search data to give you an overview of what people are searching for related to a particular topic. 

You can use this information to create content that is relevant and useful to your audience and to optimize that content for search engines. 

You can also use Answer the Public can be used for content marketing, SEO, and social media marketing!

Another sneak peek into improving your content quality and giving your audience more of what they REALLY love is to pull out information from some stats from old episodes.

If you go to your podcast host, you can look at how many downloads you got per episode. 

You can see 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days. What you need to concentrate on is tracking the 7 days stats. 

You will see what your most popular episodes were, and you are going to establish what your audience wants to see more of. That way, you will have a heads-up of your audience’s preferences!

For example, if there is an episode about How to build a podcast, and everybody is listening to that specific episode, you should make more content based on that.

Optimizing Your Podcast's Success - How to Leverage Listener Retention with Analytics on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

When you visit Spotify and Apple Podcasts, they will display your listener retention, including the number of listeners you had and a graph showing whether you're losing or gaining listeners. 

This information can help you determine if your podcast is experiencing growth or if you need to focus on what’s not working. This is an efficient way to analyze your podcast's analytics and assess its performance.

By observing listener retention, you can identify a common drop-off spot in your episode, such as when someone stops listening at the 20-minute mark. It's crucial to analyze the content around this point to determine why listeners might not be enjoying it. 

By identifying when listeners tend to drop off, you can gain insights into what changes you may need to make in your podcast episodes. 

For example, some people will ask a question at the end of their episode. Maybe that’s a segment people are not enjoying.

The length of time a listener stays engaged with your episode is another form of listener retention or audience retention. 

Where you notice a decline in your audience may be an indication of a change you made that your audience didn’t like. On Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you can also see how many people listened to the first 60 seconds or less, and if you’re seeing this, that means you need to change that first minute of your podcast because you are not getting people to stay.

Listener retention is the quantity of listeners, the growth mode. 

Let’s say that this month, you had 100 listeners, the next month, you gained 5, and so on. Pat yourself on the back and know you are doing a good job!!

And last but not least, always compare yourself to no one else but yourself.

Podcast numbers are not to be compared with Social Media numbers. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. 

If you Google a specific topic, the average audience numbers that you see are truly arbitrary. 

The amount of engagement you can expect is based on so many variables that there is no industry standard. 

And at the end of the day, it’s also quality over quantity.  If you have 50 listeners, that’s like 50 people showing up in a room regularly to hear you speak.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Don’t compare yourself to others.

The reason being is you can’t compare your topic to Joe Rogan’s topic, nor can you compare yourself as a person with Joe Rogan as a person. And your show format will differ.

Each one of us is a different tonality and different personality. 

It is different subject matter, it is different things you are sharing ABOUT the subject matter, it is the way YOU share the subject matter, it is the format of your show. 

It is the person’s personal taste, and even in those personal tastes, even when they overlap with another person’s personal tastes, there are still nuances that make each one of us unique, and that is making it impossible to ACTUALLY compare to others. 

For example, maybe what someone likes, you don’t offer, but then you give your listeners something else they truly identify with that others cannot give them.

There are so many variables that there is just no industry standard.

So, keep your head up, be consistent in tracking your analytics, and apply this knowledge to the best of your possibilities with the most passion you have in your heart, and I PROMISE YOU, you will see results you haven’t even dreamed of!