Your brilliant podcast is up and running; you’ve converted casual listeners into outright fans; but the number of downloads you’re getting per episode has plateaued. What else can your show do to get its numbers up? You can take the time to get to know your listeners on an intimate, radical, numerical level!
Forget impersonal email blasts or begging for feedback on social media. Get to know your audience by focusing on the data about their listening habits via Blubrry’s hosting service. Once you know who, where and how people listen to your show, you can tailor your show’s marketing with targeted information that you can’t get anywhere else.
WHO
Blubrry offers the most comprehensive listener statistics of any podcasting hosting service. We’re also IAB certified, meaning advertisers and organizations you may deal with, such as your brand sponsors, can trust that the statistics you’re getting are accurate and comply with ethical standards.
You might assume that you already know who listens to your show based on your social media interactions, or the subscribers to your Patreon. But what about the people who listen regularly, yet don’t interact directly with your show? There can be more listeners that don’t take that extra step, than the ones that you hear from all the time.
On the Blubrry podcasting dashboard, you can find multitudes of information with “Listener Statistics.” This feature breaks down the details for your listeners in a variety of ways. You can break down your listeners’ data by episode, show (if you have more than one), and you can even find out how long people are listening to each episode.
Couple this information with your Blubrry listener survey (more on that below) and you can paint a very accurate picture of your listening audience.
WHERE
One of the more innovative features of the advanced statistics is the listener location breakdown. This feature uses geolocations to track listeners’ locations in countries all over the world. You might have fans in a country you’ve only dreamed of visiting!
You can also track this data for specific time periods. Maybe a new sponsor wants to confirm that your show has a broad appeal. You can share where people listened in the last month, six months, two years, however long your show has been with Blubrry. These stats can help you hone in on the most active places people are listening. Heck, this might even give you a great, tax deductable reason to visit that dream country.
HOW
Another very helpful piece of data that can help you not only promote your show, but also produce your show, is to find out how people listen to your show. Whether it’s on a laptop, on their phone or tablet, it’s valuable to know how most people are consuming your content. You might want to change up the length or format of your show based on the devices people are using to listen. If content is king, then how content is consumed is definitely it’s crown.
SURVEY SAYS
A very unique feature available on Blubrry hosting is an audience survey. Sending out this survey, or posting it on your own website, could not be easier. This tool could quite possibly be the biggest, most targeted means to help you grow your show’s audience.
With just a few clicks, you can send out an audience survey to your listeners. The survey asks specific demographic questions such as age, household income and what kinds of things the audience does or does not like about your podcast. The respondents do not have to identify themselves, hopefully encouraging your listeners to feel more comfortable giving authentic responses.
ADD IT UP
Compiling and examining this data as a whole, you can begin to analyze trends in your show’s popularity and reach. Perhaps a certain format or guest was more popular than others. Maybe longer, shorter or more frequent, episodes do better at grabbing new listeners. The only way to take your show to the next level is to apply the information you’ve gathered from this data, and use it to your advantage. Take what works and leave behind what doesn’t.
Now, you no longer have to wonder, “Who’s listening to my show?” Instead wonder, “Why did it take me so long to host my podcast on Blubrry?”
Written by: Tara Jean O’Brien
Tara Jean O’Brien has been a writer, actor, improviser, podcaster, and stand-up for nearly 800 years. When not producing, editing, and hosting her podcast, Single Vs. Married, or co-hosting, Cinema Craptaculus Presents: B-sides, she also writers on Medium and recently found a floor safe hidden in her coat closet.