How I Measure Podcast Success & Growth Strategies That Have Worked for Me [Ep. 118]

 
 

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Here’s what to expect from this episode:

Happy Podtober! In honor of my favorite month, I'm celebrating my birthday, podcast anniversary, and more with a fun scorecard for you to do throughout the month, a FLASH SALE, and marking it all with a reflection on my podcast's success and growth over the last 2 years.

When it comes to measuring the success of your podcast, it's definitely not black and white. Each podcaster has a unique podcast, business, and goals.

In today's episode, I'm sharing the questions I ask myself to determine whether my show is successful, what I track to measure that success, and the growth strategies that have worked for me. I also break down how I view podcast growth and the subcategories I consider.

And remember to get your Podtober scorecard below and check out the courses tab at the top of this page (and use code BIRTHDAY) for that special sale!

Topics covered:

  • Why October is my favorite month (and how I'm celebrating with Podtober!)

  • Questions I ask myself to determine whether my podcast is a success

  • The different ways I track and measure that success

  • How I define podcast growth and the strategies that have worked for me

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

favorite podcasting resources:

  • Sara Whittaker 0:01

    Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whittaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager. And I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Welcome to Episode 118 of podcasting for educators, if you're listening to this, the week that it airs, This week marks two years of having this podcast and we're going to be celebrating all month long. October is my favorite month out of the year for so many different reasons. It's the beginning of fall, which is my very favorite season. I live in Virginia. And it is just beautiful here in the fall. I love it so much. It's also the month of our wedding anniversary, and it's my birthday month. In fact, I launched this podcast on my birthday, which I highly recommend doing because if you do that you're never going to forget when your podcast anniversary is so many exciting things going on this month. So for the month of October, we are going to celebrate what I'm calling pod Tober. Cheesy, I know, but I kinda love it. Here's what we've got going on for pod Tober. Number one, I've created a fun digital scorecard for you to do throughout the month. This scorecard is just a Google sheet that has all kinds of tasks that you can choose from to complete this month, each task is assigned a point value. And when you complete a task, you'll jot down the points and it will automatically calculate your points at the bottom of the scorecard. At the end of the month, you'll send me your scorecard. And then the number of points that you have accumulated will determine how many entries you'll receive and a giveaway that I'm doing. Well, I should actually say giveaways because there will be five winners and you get your choice of prizes. All of the tasks and prizes are listed on the scorecard. And the scorecard is linked in the description for this episode. Or you can just go to podcasting for educators.com/scorecard, you do not have to put in your email address or anything like that, you'll just click on the link and it will take you straight to the scorecard. The tasks range from listening to episodes that go live this month to following the show to writing a review to filling out a listener survey. And hearing those things you might be wondering, well, what if I've already done any of those tasks like write a review, maybe you've already written a review for this show. Good news is still counts, you can just go ahead and mark that off on your scorecard if it's something that you've already done. So it's honestly pretty simple things that you have to do and you have all month long to do them. It's just a fun way to hear from you guys and for you to support this show and for all of us to celebrate podcasting together. The second thing that's going on this month, and actually I should say is going on this week, if you're listening to this live is a big pod Tober sale. Like I said it's my birthday this week, and so I am doing a flash sale on all three of my courses, the podcasting for educators prep school, my audio course podcasts like you mean it, and my mini course guesting for educators. Here's a little hint about that sale, the percentage off is how old I am turning this week. So you can use the code birthday at checkout to get that discount. But here's the catch. This is a pretty crazy discount, I think it's the biggest sale that I've ever done. So it is not going to last long. This code is going to be valid until either 10 people have purchased the courses. Or until this Sunday, October 8 comes around. So whichever comes first, the code is limited to 10 people for each course, or until it hits 11:59pm. Eastern time. On Sunday, October 8. Again, that code is birthday if you want to go and use that this week. I hope that you'll join me in all of this pod Tober fun you have all month to do the scorecard, like I said, if you participate Thank you, thank you I love celebrating this podcast and I love hearing from you all. So when you do things like this, like filling out the scorecard it just helps me know who's listening. And I know that many of you out there are very competitive like myself. So having the scorecard is just like a fun little way to compete with yourself. See how many points you can get for that giveaway that's going to happen at the end of the month. I don't think I mentioned but the scorecard does need to be filled out by the end of October October 31 All the directions and Everything like that are on the scorecard as well. All right. I know that was a lot of information. So let's move on. Since this week marks two years of this podcast being live, I thought it would be appropriate to give you some insight on my experience with podcasting, specifically, how I measure podcast success and what I have found to work when it comes to podcast growth. Now, when it comes to measuring the success of your podcast, it's definitely not black and white. And you have probably figured that out by now, your definition of podcast success is going to vary from somebody else's. And it also might change along the way. When I think about how I view whether or not my podcast is a success, or on the hard days, let's be serious, whether or not it's worth my time and my money. I know we've all had those days, I asked myself questions like, What would my business look like without this podcast? Is my podcast positively influencing my email list growth, my sales and my visibility online? And is my podcast helping people? Those are all things that are important to me and reasons why I started the show in the first place. So with those things in mind, I measure success by tracking things like the number of opt ins I get from lead magnets that I share on this podcast, the number of purchases that come from listeners, and a way that I measure this is I like to have some sort of like buyer survey or intake form, whatever you want to call it, that my customers will fill out when they join one of my courses that ask them a question like, where did you hear about this? Or why did you decide to buy this so that I can list my podcast as one of the options and I can see how much traffic is coming from my podcast. When people join either the podcasting for educators prep school, or my audio course podcasts like you mean it, you get access to my private Facebook community of podcasters. And when you join that group, you have three questions that I asked you. And one of those questions is the same thing like that intake form? How did you find out about this course. And I have podcasts listed as one of the options. So it's just another touch point for people so that I can really see, okay, how many people are listening podcast as their answer? And that's going to really let me know what kind of ROI I'm getting. I've also used coupon codes in some of my episodes that I only share on the podcast. And so if people are using those coupon codes at checkout, then I know that they got it from the podcast. I also measure success by tracking things like messages and questions I get from you all, whether that's via email, or through Instagram DM. This really lets me know the impact that the podcast is having on people, when I get messages like, hey, I really loved this episode today, or hey, I

    Sara Whittaker 8:09

    have a follow up question. From this episode, it lets me know that people are engaged enough to reach out and let me know those things after listening. And it lets me know that these episodes are helping you in some way. Another way that I am measuring success is by keeping an eye on my Google Analytics for my website. The only quote unquote blog posts that I do on my website are my show notes for my episodes. And so I can see, I get this monthly update from I think it's monthly from Google, that tells me this, many people found you in search results from this show notes page on your website, so it can kind of help me to see okay, is my podcast content that's on my website, leading more people to my website and helping my visibility. And then the last thing that I would touch on in terms of things that I track would be reviews, that you all right for this podcast on Apple podcast, that is just another really clear indication of what you all are thinking about this show how it's helping you who's listening. Okay, so those are all things that I use, those are all indicators that I use as to whether or not this show is a success. Am I getting these messages? Am I getting these email subscribers? Am I getting people purchasing? The products that I'm talking about in my episodes are people reaching out? And when I asked myself that question that I had mentioned before, what would my business look like, if I didn't have this podcast? Well, it would look really, really different. And I wouldn't want my business to exist without this podcast because it plays such an important role. Now let's talk about podcast growth. I think that when we hear that phrase Podcast growth, we automatically consider that to be podcast downloads, am I getting more and more downloads each month, year to year or however you want to measure it in downloads are definitely part of podcast growth. But they are not the only way that I think about whether or not my podcast is growing. And I really, really hope that you take into consideration more than just downloads when you think about your podcast growth as a whole. If I had to create subcategories for podcast growth, here's what I would include. So if we think of podcast growth as like this big umbrella term, the things that I would include within that would be number one ROI, am I seeing an increase in my ROI, my return on my time investment, my financial investment in the form of email subscribers, purchasers, and online visibility and brand awareness. Number two would be opportunity is my podcast leading to new opportunities. For me, this might include speaking opportunities and things like virtual summits, and Kalat other collaborative opportunities, like guest interviews, and oftentimes, when you connect with a guest on an interview that I have on my show, that even then leads to more opportunities down the road, when we can collaborate in other ways. So essentially, this idea of growth in opportunities is because of an increase in authority as a result of hosting a podcast. Another category within podcast growth is my actual content that I'm creating is the quality of my content increasing as a result of my podcast, podcasting is a skill that we are all constantly improving upon, I don't care if you've had your podcast for one year, five years, 20 years, we are all constantly figuring out ways that we can do better. And I think a sign of podcast growth is the quality of the episode content that you're creating. Okay, and that starts with your episodes, and then it trickles into other places like your social media and your email. And then lastly, your downloads. Okay, of course, part of podcast growth is your downloads, am I seeing an increase in downloads over time, more downloads equals more listeners equals an increase in the potential size of people that you can help and that you can sell to through your podcast. Okay, so, again, when I think about podcast growth, I'm thinking about, Am I seeing an increase in ROI in opportunity in content quality and in downloads. And I can confidently say that in the last two years, I have seen growth in all of these areas. So I wanted to share some strategies that have led to growth in those areas. Number one will not be a surprise to any of you because it talks about all the time, but that is podcast guessing. I'm not going to go too far into this. I have several episodes on the benefits of podcast guesting and how to go about it but podcast guessing it leads to authority building a brings new listeners over to your podcast. I've also used coupon codes on other podcasts that I've tested on so I can measure my ROI there as well. Other things that have led to podcast growth is participating in virtual summits. Virtual summits are a great visibility strategy and a great way to build more awareness around your podcast. Another strategy that has helped lead to podcast growth is creating a series around a particular topic. An example of a time that I did this was when I had my organic podcast growth series. I did this back in January of 2023. I've since put all of these episodes into a free Spotify playlist that I'll link in the show notes for this episode. But that really built a lot of buzz around my podcast, I brought in a lot of new listeners during January and February. And I really think that it is because of how I structured that series. My best advice if you're going to do a podcast series is to zone in on a topic that you really know that your people want more of and then kind of come at it from various angles to keep this series really fresh. Because a lot of times when people do a series, it can get really repetitive and people will kind of start to drop off as this series goes on. So if you're considering doing a series and to be clear, when I say series, I mean a series of back to back episodes that relate to a similar topic. When I did this organic growth series it was a mix of solo and get episodes, I think it just really depends on the topic at hand. But they I will say they were definitely very like strong and compelling guest episodes so that for sure helped. But think about how you could do this on your podcast, how you could really pick a topic, break it apart in a way that's going to hold people's engagement over the course of a few weeks. Kind of Similarly, another strategy that has helped is I put out a yearly podcast listener survey. And it's not the act of doing this survey that has served my podcast, but it's actually using the results. So not just skimming over the results, but actually like deep diving into it, and then taking your answers and forming content around that, because there is no clear way to know that you're creating content that your people want then to actually ask them and use their answers. Rather than just letting it collect dust in your Google Drive or wherever you have your survey. So I that organic growth series was actually one of the results of doing a deep dive into the data that I got from my listener survey. Another strategy that I use this year was I did try out Facebook ads. It was the first time that I had used Facebook ads for my podcast. And specifically what I did was, I used that organic growth series, I turned it into a playlist. And I ran a Facebook ad to that playlist. And it did really well. And I definitely brought in new listeners. Another strategy that has led to growth is to try different things that will give like a quick injection of buzz around your podcast. And I've done this through gamification. So last year, I did this with a bingo card that I had created. And it turned out really great a lot of you participated and part of that bingo card was to share my podcast. And that helped to get new eyes on my show, it helped me again, see who was listening, and just be able to start some conversations with you engage with you. And I just I loved doing it, which is a big reason why I'm doing the scorecard this year, I wanted to see how I could use gamification in a different way, I didn't want to do a bingo card again. So doing something similar, but in just a slightly different format. If you've never tried gamification on your podcast, definitely try it out. You really need to think about who your audience is, my biggest piece of advice when it comes to gamifying anything is to just try and keep it as simple as possible. And then the last strategy I want to touch on. And I don't even know that I would consider this a strategy, as I would say that it really should be best practice for all of us. And that is talking about my offers on this podcast. And in the anticipation. And the lead up of launching a new offer, really being intentional about the types of episodes that I'm creating and aligning my content to my offers. So making sure that I'm talking about the things that my offers are going to solve. So that by the time this offer is available, do you know what kind of solution that it's going to give you. And I really think that most of us do not talk about the things that we offer enough, or in a way that is effective for our listeners to actually take action. And I will say if that is something that you have a hard time with, when I when I'm talking about aligning your podcast content to your offers the things that you're selling, if that is a struggle for you, I would really recommend checking out podcasts like you mean it, which is my audio course because I do a big chunk of that course is really kind of mapping out your episodes leading up to a launch or leading up to the sale of a specific resource versus just saying, Hey, I have this thing, go buy it, but instead really planning your content around the problems that your audience has and the solution that your resources offer.

    Sara Whittaker 19:35

    Okay, so to wrap up this episode, I would love for you to take a few minutes to think for yourself. Number one, how do you even define success for your podcast? Like what does podcast success mean to you? Is it downloads is it email list growth? Is it direct purchases? Is it that relationship building with your listeners what would have to happen In order for you to say my podcast is a success, and number two, what has worked for you so far? In the past to find this type of success? Think about, okay, when have people actually opted into that freebie that I shared? Or when have people bought that TBT resource that I shared on the podcast? Or when have people shared a particular episode on social media? What was working to get those results? And what is something new that you can try to really continue that success and increase that success. And do not forget to grab your pod Tober scorecard today, you can click the link in the description or head to podcasting for educators.com/scorecard. Like I said, you don't need to put your email address, then you will be asked to click to make a copy, add it to your google drive somewhere that you won't lose it. And guess what, you've listened to this episode, which is a task on your scorecard. So you can head on over and mark that off a word yourself those points. And if you have been eyeing any of my three courses, head to my website podcasting for educators.com. At the top, there's a tab that says courses. And all of those are listed right there for you use that code birthday for that special sale. Whether you've been around since the very beginning two years ago, or this is your very first episode or you're somewhere in between. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting this podcast. I appreciate you so much. I'll see you here next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

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!

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Sara Whittaker