Wrapping Up 2022 with a 5-Step DIY Podcast Audit [ep. 73]
Click play to learn how to how to DIY your podcast audit:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher
Here’s what to expect from this episode:
Want to see more podcast growth and a bigger impact on your business in 2023?
With the new year quickly approaching, now is the perfect time to reflect on your show, celebrate your wins, and figure out where to focus your precious time and energy. So today, I'm walking you through how you can complete a quick DIY podcast audit in 5 steps.
Whether you have some time and a pen and paper handy right now or want to come back to this later (check out the show notes for the 5 steps), I want you to listen to this episode and actually do these steps. Because it's going to help you be more intentional about your show going into the new year and encourage you to actually make some necessary changes.
(And, hopefully, it will also show you that you're already doing some really awesome things!)
So let's get to it!
TOPICS COVERED:
How a podcast audit can help you, your show, and your business
The five steps to DIY your podcast audit:
Look at your podcast branding: name, cover art, show description, episode titles, category
Analyze your data (and what to do if you're not seeing growth)
Rate your audience engagement (and how to get the conversation going)
Content, content, content!
Pay attention to your unique ROI (whether you have a paid offer yet or not)
Bonus step: don't forget to celebrate!
And finally: choose areas to focus on in the new year based on your audit results
Resources mentioned:
Connect with Sara:
Related episodes:
-
Hey there, welcome back to another episode of podcasting for educators. This episode is airing the week after the US Thanksgiving. So if you are in the US, I hope you had a great holiday, and that you are gearing up for the next round of festivities in December, we're quickly approaching the New Year. And instead of doing a standard podcast resolution type of episode, I thought it would be helpful to walk you through how you can complete a quick DIY Podcast audit in five steps.
This is one of those episodes that you're going to want to listen to and then actually go and implement what I am telling you to implement. But I'm not going to tell you to grab your pen and paper because I know you're probably listening to this while you're doing something else, like going on a walk or you're in the car. And I definitely don't want you to be writing things down while you're driving.
But I want you to listen to this episode. And then when you are safely at home in front of your computer, you can go to the show notes for this episode podcasting for educators.com/episode 73 to see all five of these steps laid out for you. And then you can actually do them.
Set aside 30 to 45 minutes, get out a Google Doc and actually do it, it's going to help you be more intentional about your show going into the new year, it's going to encourage you to actually make some necessary changes to your show.
It's also hopefully going to allow you to see that you are already doing some really awesome things with your podcast. This audit is kind of meant for you to reflect and review on how your show has been doing over the last year or the last month or six months, however long you've had your show. And think about what you might need to alter a little bit in order to see more growth and see a bigger impact on your business.
So let's get to it. Step number one is to look at what I'm going to call your podcast branding. And what I mean here is I want you to take a look at the name of your show, your cover art, your show description, and the category that you are listed under.
So when it comes to the name of your podcast, the last thing that I'm sure you want to have to do is change the whole name of your show, which I totally get. But I want you to think about the name of your podcast and think about if a complete stranger stumbled upon your show, would they know what it's about?
Would they know who it's for? Maybe it's the name of your business, but maybe the name of your business has absolutely no clear indication as to who you actually help or what kinds of topics you actually talk about.
A really good example of this is I have two clients, their sisters, Heidi and Emily, hello, if you're listening to this, they have a business together called second story window. And so when they decided to start their podcasts, they thought, well, we don't we know that it's you know, good to keep your branding consistent between your business and your podcast.
But it doesn't really make sense for us to name our podcast second story window because people are going to have no idea what that means teachers are going to have no idea that this podcast is for them unless they're familiar with our business already.
So they named their show teacher approved, which I thought was super smart. I thought that that was such a great move. So if you're in a situation like that, where maybe you named your show after the name of your business, or maybe you came up with like a really, really fun, catchy name, but it doesn't really have anything to do with like what your show is actually about or who it's for, then it might be time to reconsider if you should rename your show.
Another big thing to remember here is that the name of your podcast is one of the few things that are searchable on the listening apps like Apple podcasts and Spotify. So if you are going to rename your show or if you have yet to start your show, really think about how you could incorporate a key word into your title.
So that that will increase the chances of people finding it because I am somebody who will search for terms on Apple podcasts when I'm listening to or when I'm looking for a new show like a couple weeks ago I wanted To find a podcast about email marketing, and so what am I going to type in, I'm going to type in email marketing.
So you want to consider those types of things when you're naming your show. So think about if your podcast might need a little refresh in that area. Same kind of thing with your show description. Sometimes when we start our podcast, it's just like, we're kind of just like checking off all the things that we need to do. And a show description is kind of like that.
Because when you start your show, it's one of the things you have to fill out in your podcast host. What's your show about and so you might just kind of like, jot down a few sentences, not really thinking about it. Your show description is something that people are going to read, when people are skimming through when they come across your show, they're going to look at two things, actually, three things, they are going to look at your show description to see Oh, what's this podcast about, especially if the name is not very clear, they are going to look at your ratings and reviews.
And they're going to look at skim through some of the titles of your episodes. So if your show description does not clearly state, what your show is about, and who it's for what kind of topics you're going to cover, then you might want to sit down, take a few minutes, rethink that and rewrite that to include some keywords so that it is very clear and engaging for people when they come across it. It's also a good place to include one call to action.
So at the end of your show description, you could have a call to action, like Come follow me on Instagram or download this free guide. If you have a popular lead magnet, that's a great place to include that as well. And then with any kind of refresh that you're doing with your podcast, another thing to look at would be your cover art, especially if you're changing your name, of course, is your cover or engaging. Is it something that's going to stop people scroll when they see it?
Is it something that gets lost in the library of other podcasts? Hopefully, you're subscribed to your own show. So go into your library and skim through does your cover art stand out? Is it engaging? Does it have the title in Nice, big letters, that's easily readable. These are all things you want to consider with cover art. So if you feel like you could improve your cover art, the new year is a great time to do it.
Of course, you can do it anytime as well. And then the last kind of thing that I mentioned, in this idea of auditing your podcast branding, is to look at the category that your show is in. With all of the categories, there are main categories, and there's subcategories and depending on your host, you can either choose two or three categories to be listed under and you should utilize all of those Apple podcasts, however, only recognizes the first category that you're listed under. So that's definitely the most important one.
If you've right now you are in a broad category in like a main category, I would encourage you to try just experiment a little bit, switch it up and try a subcategory. The strategy here is that if you are in a main category, you're going to be competing against a lot more people in terms of charting on Apple podcast than you would be if you were in a sub category. So if you are an education podcast, maybe right now you are listed under Education, well, maybe you could try one of the sub categories of education. Like there's a how to category A courses category. A self improvement, I believe is under education. I don't have it in front of me right now. But there's at least five subcategories in the category of education. So try it out, you can switch up your categories as much as you want. Try it for a little bit. See if you notice any kinds of changes and make sure that you're signed up for charitable charitable is you can sign up for a free account and it will alert you anytime that you're hitting the charts on Apple podcasts, which is always really cool to see.
Okay, so to recap about auditing, your podcast branding, you're looking at your name, your cover art, your show description, and your category. Step number two in this DIY Podcast audit is to audit your data. And I'm going to give you just some like quick things that you can do without doing too much of a deep dive If you are short on time. So number one is to go into your podcast host and I want you to go to your stats tab. And you will have the ability to filter out your stats and you can filter it so that it shows you your episodes in order of most downloaded to least downloaded. I want you to write down your top 10 episodes of all time. Look at those episodes. See if there's any kinds of trends that you can pull out any topics that are overlapping, and use that information to drive your content planning in 2023.
Along the same lines of download data I want you to then you can change your view You and your podcast hosts to show monthly overall downloads. And if you've had your podcast for at least a year, I want you to do like all time, regardless of how long you've had your podcast, I want you to do all time downloads. So you can see from the first month to where we are now, how many downloads did you get per month in that timeframe.
This is really good to look at, especially if you've had your show for a while, because I want you to then compare like six months worth of growth. And if you've had your show for a year longer, I want you to compare a year's worth of growth. So look at August 2021, versus August 2022. Instead of always looking like month to month. Look at these longer chunks of time, because that's going to give you a better idea of like really how much growth you've had. It's also going to allow you to see if there were if there are any, like really popular times of the year, and then you can begin to think okay, how can I leverage that time of year for the following year.
Next, I want you to look at your number of ratings and reviews. This is on Apple podcast, it will be two separate numbers. Ratings are like how many times people have done the star ratings. Reviews are the number of actual written reviews on Apple podcast.
To be clear ratings and reviews do not affect like whether or not you're charting on Apple podcasts, it doesn't affect your download numbers or anything like that. But it provides social proof just like when you go to buy something online, you're going to check out the reviews and see if other people liked it hear about other people's experiences.
And that's going to kind of sway whether or not you're going to purchase the thing. Same with podcasts. If somebody stumbles upon your podcast and there's then they scroll down and they see that you don't have any reviews, or maybe only one or two, it's time to beef that up a little bit. And most of the time, you are not going to get reviews unless you ask for them.
There are those wonderful people out there who leave a podcast rating a review for every show that they love. But for the most part people are not unless they are repeatedly asked to and that they understand why it's important.
So make that a call to action for several episodes in a row on your podcast at the beginning of your episode, ask people to go and leave a rating and review let them know how much it means to you. Let them know that it's a way for other people to decide if they want to listen to the show. And it's a great way to show their support of your podcast for free.
So after you look at these things, you look at your most downloaded episodes, you look at your monthly downloads and you see the growth that you've made, or maybe you see that you're not making much growth at all. Now it's time to really think, okay, how can I change this? And 2023? How can I start seeing growth? Or how can I continue to see growth?
And I want you to think about are you promoting your episodes in an engaging way and consistently? Or are you just kind of releasing an episode every week and hoping that people are going to go listen to it, we want to make sure that we are doing some sort of promotion, whether that's on social media, or through email marketing. If you are somebody who has had your podcast for at least a year, especially, this is like I'm talking to you, and you are not seeing any growth.
I want you to have a really honest conversation with yourself and ask, Am I really truly making this a top priority in my business? If the answer's no, it's okay. And I'm glad that you're being honest with yourself. But I want you if you haven't already to go listen to the episode that I did with Sara Murray, Episode 66.
Because you're gonna get a lot of great advice when you hear how she really made her podcast, the central focus of her business, and how it paid off in her growth. A lot of us start podcasting because we don't want to be on social media. And yeah, it's great, podcasting is the best because you don't have to be on social media 24/7 to connect with people and to provide value for people.
However, you still have to put in the work you have to do the time to build up and to retain your listeners. It takes time. Honestly, the first year of having your podcast, forgive my language, but you are figuring your shit out. And that takes time you are tightening up your messaging, you are figuring out how you want to like weave it into your business, what you want your calls to action to be how to plan your content.
There's so many things to figure out and often, it takes that year, years time before you really get good at it and you feel confident in it and you feel like it's affecting your business. So, if you are a new podcaster, give yourself some time. And if you've had your podcast for two years, and you're not seeing any growth, let's change that, let's figure out how we can really start making this the core piece of your business.
Once you have built up a good listenership base, and your show becomes more established, that's when you're going to have more and more people who will then share your show with other people. And it just it starts to be a snowball effect. And that's when you're really going to see that growth, but it takes some time to get there.
All right, podcasters, that you know how many details come with producing just a single episode and using the right tools is the key to creating high quality episodes in the most efficient way possible. One of my absolute favorite tools, I use Zen caster, I have tried so many different platforms for recording my guest interviews and Zen caster is the one I've stuck with for so many reasons, it always gives me the highest quality audio because there is nothing worse than recording an episode that you can't use because of bad quality.
It's so easy for you and your guests, even the not so tech savvy ones, all they have to do is click a link and we start recording boom done. Plus, the video is crystal clear. So you can repurpose your solo and your guest episodes on social media, and on YouTube.
Oh, and it gives you a transcript of your episodes, you can go to Zen caster.com/pricing and use my code educators, you'll get 30% off your first three months of Zen caster professional, I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all of my podcasting and content needs, it's time to share your story. So go to Zen caster.com/pricing, that ZENC a s t r.com/pricing. And use my code educators for 30% off. That's educators all lowercase letters, the link will also be in the show notes.
Okay, step number three in our DIY Podcast audit is to audit your audience engagement. I want you to give yourself a quick rating from zero to five on the audience engagement scale on how much you're hearing from your listeners. Zero being like you've literally never heard from a listener ever, to five being you hear from listeners every single week, where are you on that scale? If you are a zero to three, it's okay, there are things that we can do to change that. And a lot of that goes back to the point I just made about like, You got to give your show some time to build up a good solid, loyal listenership base.
And I'm just gonna let you know that it is very normal to not hear from listeners every single week, even these big big podcasters don't hear from listeners every single week. But that doesn't mean that that has to be the norm for you. We can change that. Think about how could you get this conversation going? With your listeners, I'm gonna do an episode in the new year all about this topic on strategies for how to increase audience engagement. But you really need to think about who your audience is.
What is the best way to get that conversation going with them to hear from them? How could you represent their voices on your show? Do you give them anywhere that they can continue that conversation with you after listening to your episodes, and that might be in the form of a Facebook group community.
Or it might be in the form of a free virtual meetup that you could do with your podcast listeners, or creating a Slack channel for all of you to collaborate, or to have people send in voice messages to you like there are so many things that you can do to get this conversation going. And to really get that audience engagement to the next level.
Or even started if you're somebody who's just totally hearing crickets. Step number four in this DIY Podcast audit is to audit your content. Think about your audience. Are you delivering the right content for them? Or is it too broad?
Are you talking about a million different topics, and they are topics that are not going to resonate with all of your listeners. And a great way to kind of go about this is to think of your ideal listener get very specific with that.
And if you haven't already come up with content pillars that you can form episodes around. So for me that is you know, starting a podcast, podcast growth strategies, marketing your podcast, and using your podcast as a business tool.
So those would be some of my content pillars, and most of my episodes can fall into all of those different content pillars. If you are very unsure of whether or not you're creating the right content for your ideal listener, then my very first step for you is going to do a listener survey.
And if you've never done a listener survey before, you've got to do it, it is like it gives you gold in terms of information, it gives you so much good stuff. I'm not going to get into the specifics of how to do that, because I have a whole nother episode specifically for creating a podcast survey for your listeners. That's episode 41.
So go check it out, if you are interested in doing one of those. But that would be my first recommendation to really get some good insight as to what your people want.
And then make sure that you are delivering on that. The other ways that you can kind of check in to see if your content is on track with your ideal listener, do your keyword research and then also go into your apple podcasts Connect account.
And if you go into your analytics tab, you can look at your average episode consumption rate. And you might find that that data is actually like your highest consumed episodes might be different than your most downloaded episodes, but your highest consumed episodes, that is such good information because that tells you which episodes, people actually listen to the longest like stayed there and listened to the whole episode or most of the episode, those are going to be topics that you are definitely going to want to do some follow up episodes on.
Okay, and then step five is to audit your ROI. Are you seeing your show making an impact on your business, I've talked about this idea of podcast ROI in this show before many times, it can be kind of tricky to measure the ROI of your show. But it is possible if you pay attention to it. So think about this past year with your show has your podcast, brought in more email subscribers, more purchases of resources in your TPT store more members in your online course or your membership more clients if you are somebody who offers one on one services and coaching.
And if you're not tracking this at all, then you should be and there's some ways that you can do this. So as far as I think it's one of the easiest ways to track your ROI with your podcasts is to track email subscribers. So one way to do this is you could either have like a podcast specific opt in, or you could take a an existing opt in, and you can duplicate that landing page and set up its own tag and your email system.
And that would show you which subscribers joined that opt in from your podcast, or because they listened to your podcast and heard it on your podcast. You can also use I mean, if you really want to get into tracking, you can use UTM codes for TPT product links in your show notes or not just to beauty things but anything that you're promoting or selling.
I recently did an episode on how I switched to captivate and one of the features in Captivate includes the ability to track links, so it will actually like create a trackable link for you. That goes into your episode description. And you can use that link to see how many clicks it got for things that you're promoting in your episodes, which is pretty cool. Another way that you can measure your ROI is if you have a Facebook group, make sure that you're asking people when they join how they found you.
Same thing, even with like new followers on Instagram, you could send them a quick message and say like, Hey, thanks for following me. I always love to ask people how they found my page. Do you mind letting me know where you found me? Was it through my podcast or through somebody else's page like you could even give them some options. And if you are a podcaster, who doesn't have any paid resources yet, then you should be focusing on building up your email list by having one to two lead magnets that you are consistently promoting on your show and focusing just on measuring how many new email subscribers you are getting from your podcast.
And if you do have paid offers, but you're not really seeing an ROI from podcast listener to buyer, think about how you can really come up with a plan to make your promotion more of a focus in your show and also just come up with a plan on like how you are going to actually track these things. And often that just that just involves talking to people because, again, like people could listen to your podcasts and hear about your online course.
And then they follow you on Instagram, and then they get an ad on Facebook and like maybe the ad link is the one that they actually click to join. But they learned about you, and they've built trust with you because of your podcast. So it's just not always like a super clear line like we'd like it to be. Oh, okay, so to review, what I'd like you to look at for this DIY Podcast audit, is to look at your podcast branding, look at your data.
And that included your top 10 episodes, total monthly downloads, and number of ratings and reviews, your audience engagement and coming up with a plan on how to increase that. auditing your content, and auditing your ROI. After you have sat down and done this podcast audit for yourself, I want you to think about three things that you can celebrate about your show this year. And listen, I am just going to shoot you straight here. I am somebody who talks about celebrating your wins all the time.
Do I do it? No, I don't. But I'm doing it right now to hold myself accountable. And to model this for you so that you can do it too, because I know the importance of actually like writing down celebrations and giving yourself that win letting yourself be proud of what you've accomplished over the last year. So here are my three celebrations.
Number one, I didn't miss a single week of episodes, I am patting myself on the back. And I'm very proud of myself for them. Number two, I have been intentional about promoting my online course on my podcast, I launched my first course this year. And I feel like I have consistently talked about that I've also had students from my course onto the show, I've done ads, I have it in my outro I've taken a lot of steps to be sure that I'm consistently talking about it. And number three, I am proud to say that I have increased my audience engagement with my podcast, I feel like when I first launched my podcast, I did get good feedback.
And then I kind of hit this law. And then finally over the last like few months, I've really started seeing that engagement pick up. And I'm really proud of that. And I just, I just hosted my first virtual speed dating podcast speed dating event the other week. And it was a huge success. And I had a great turnout. And I was just so happy to be able to connect with a lot of you and have you connect with each other.
So that is something that I'm looking forward to continuing in future. And then I want you to think about three things that you are going to work on growing on in the new year. And again, I'm going to share my growth goals with you. Number one, I want to see my downloads continue to grow. My specific goal is to increase my monthly downloads by 500 per month by June 2023.
Number two, I'm going to send out a new listener survey in January 2023. And I want to really do a deep dive into the results I get from that, and have that drive my planning for the new year. Number three, I am committing to staying a minimum of two weeks ahead in my podcast recording schedule.
My awesome podcast manager brandy, she requires my episodes be to her, I believe it's 10 days in advance, which I love because it keeps me on top of things. And so I'd like to be even further ahead than that. Because it helps me to be a lot more intentional with my planning.
And of course, it gives her the time that she needs to produce that episodes. So those are my three celebrations and my three goals for growth. And I hope that you do the same. I would love to hear yours. I really, really would love to hear if you actually sat down and did this five step podcast audit, as well as your celebrations and growth goals.
So send me an email, send me a message on Instagram, wherever you prefer to communicate. But I really really would love to hear from you. All right, my friends. That is all and I'll see you next week.
More about Podcasting for Educators:
Podcasting for Educators is the podcast for TpT authors and other online educators. It's a show that will help you get your podcast in front of those who need it most - teachers, counselors, literacy specialists, SLPs, parents, and more! Each week, Sara Whittaker and her guests will share top tips and actionable strategies that you will need in order to launch, manage, and grow your podcast. You’ll learn how to leverage your show to build long-lasting relationships with your audience and promote your TpT resources, courses, and memberships, all while providing valuable and accessible content!
Some links on this page are affiliate links. This helps to support this podcast at no additional cost to you.