When Do you Switch Podcast Hosts

Speaker 2 (00:02)

Hello and welcome Podcast Me Anything and ask me anything for all things podcasting. I'm your host, Ben CLOY, and I'm joined here in the studio with Matthew Passy, the podcast control. Matthew and I wanted to move the conversation beyond the Podcasting 101 topics and move into the intermediate to advance podcasting strategy. To reach your goals, to interact with the show, submit your questions to be answered live, book a podcast audio with Matthew, or find the notes from today's show. Head on over to Podcastnathing.com. Welcome back to another episode, Podcast Me Anything. We've got three topics, amazing topics, brand new topics we never talked about. And honestly, I've never really heard them talk about anywhere else. They're kind of just in the back catalog of questions that never really get good answers. And most podcasters are just stuck with trying to answer. Welcome to Podcast Today, Mathew.

Speaker 1 (00:49)

So glad to be here. Ben, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:51)

I am doing fantastic. It's a Friday when we're recording this, which always makes it a good day because you can reflect on the week and get excited about the weekend, or you can hopefully celebrate some wins throughout the week as well.

Speaker 1 (01:02)

I like that thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:04)

And today we're going to celebrate a win that we're recording on the day of recording. That captivate just dropped some interesting news for Dynamic Show Notes. So, Matthew, tell us why we should be excited for Dynamic Show Notes.

Speaker 1 (01:16)

Yeah, I have to be honest. I really do love Mark Ask with I really do love the team to captivate. They are constantly innovating, they are constantly putting in new features, and they also do such a great job of making such a big deal out of things that sometimes they do these announcements. And every so often I'm like, all right, this cannot be just another cool announcement. Like, you guys are so good at prepping yourself up. Like, one of these is going to be a little bit of a letdown. And I went into today as being like, after Amy, really? What can they do that would be so cool that Marcus, this is going to be amazing. Like, I love you, Mark, but is it? I am so wrong. This was incredible. I was blown away. Listen, it was really cool when captivated broaden dynamic and insertion, right? It's something that is a very cool tool to have lots of other platforms use it. They certainly, as usual, do it in a very thoughtful and really user friendly way. And then, of course, they added things on top of it that we talked about. We're not going to harp on.

Speaker 1 (02:20)

They were very cool. And so I'm like, really, what can they do, though? That is so new and different. When he started to explain what they're doing with this Show Notes generator, I was like, wow, so what you have going on is now inside of Captivate with all the different tools that they have available. You can auto generate Show Notes for your episodes based on dynamic Tags. So Captivate currently has a platform where you can get your guests lined up and schedule to be on your show. Some of the things you could do is you could pull information from the guest section of Captivate, right? Their background, their links, things like that. You can have your footers. Actually, they kind of have that now with what they call Snippets. So if you go into Captivate, you're entering your Show Notes. And instead of having to go back over and Retype out, find me on this, listen to us on that, check us out on YouTube. You can go to Snippets. Boom. All that text is just kind of automatically added to the bottom of your thing, which is kind of cool. But these dynamic Tags are so interesting because it's not just static content, it can literally change and update based on different pieces of information that are available all throughout your Captivate platform.

Speaker 1 (03:41)

What makes it really mind blowing? And I'm pretty sure it's the first time anybody has done that for Podcasting Show Notes. That's their claim. I'm confident that he's right about that. But what is really mind blowing is that it can attach itself to your dynamic ads. So let's say it is coming up on February. You're doing a bunch of podcast ads around Valentine's Day, right? 1800 Flowers is our sponsor. And so we say, hey, it's coming up on Valentine's Day. Make sure you go to 1800 Flowers, get your significant other really nice present. And we have audio content that is reflected at the time. And then come March, we want to take that out and put in something different. Well, with the Dynamic Show Notes, you can also include text content in your Show Notes that can update depending on the ad. So if you swap out the ad, right, maybe it says 1800 Flowers for your Valentine's Day needs. And then in March, you change it to 1800 Flowers. Get ready for Mother's Day now it will also update that copy that belongs in your Show Notes for your text. And what was so fascinating to me about this was I was literally talking to a client earlier this week who was getting ready to start doing dynamic ad insertion on another platform.

Speaker 1 (05:04)

And they said in the ad, check the Show Notes for a link to this thing. I said, well, if you do that, that text is always going to live in the Show Notes, even if you pull the ad later or change the ad or whatever. And like, oh, that's a really good point. We won't conclude it, but now you can include it and it can change and it can update. It can be done by now. I think the possibilities here are limitless and are breathtaking. And once again, they are doing such a good job of being thoughtful, innovative, and making it easier for podcasters to do their job in less time.

Speaker 2 (05:41)

I absolutely love that. For one, you gave me the idea for an affiliate because I'd never considered adding 1800 flowers as an affiliate to my podcast for Valentine's Day or any other special occasions throughout the year. So you gave everybody a Breadcrumb there, which we're just using them as an example. And the other thing that kind of really struck me, the way you described it was RSS feeds have been kind of a very published and then it's kind of done. It just lives out in the ecosystem of the internet and it's not something that ever gets more life to it. It just exists. It's born and then it's it what you're actually describing is like a living, breathing RSS feed that will change and grow as this RSS feed grows almost like a child growing up into an adult. And when you're a child, you often don't have a lot of big things going on. But maybe as you get older you want to add other things to episodes. In the beginning, it allows you to dynamically change the age and maturity of your podcast on the fly without having to do a lot of VA type work or outsourcing it, or just mind numbing work where you're just like sitting down with a giant cup of coffee and hoping to get through it the next 3 hours.

Speaker 1 (06:43)

Yeah, I have a lot of clients who are constantly thinking about making changes to their show. And then what are we going to do about the back catalog? And I usually kind of talk not that I talked them out of it, but they're always like, can you do that for me? I'm like, listen, I can. It's going to take a lot of time and that time is not free. So can we do it? Sure. But it would probably be cheaper to find somebody who could do it at a much lower hourly rate and have them dedicated to doing it and get it done. I'll kind of push them in that direction and give them the option. But now to think that there is a way that you can update all of this content, your text content, your audio content with a couple of clicks of the button is really just incredible. Like you said, it keeps your RSS feed evolving, living and breathing. Now listen, the truth is, if you go and you make a change to your RSS feed now, it will proliferate out there. It means opening up your hosting platform, finding the episode, going to edit, making the change, hitting save, and then watching it happen.

Speaker 1 (07:48)

The fact that you can go and say, oh, you know, in our footer, we currently tell people to go check out our other show called Pods. Right. And maybe in a year from now cost doesn't exist. So what are we going to have people look at in the footer? Maybe we want them to look at this or maybe we want to add another service, or maybe we've launched another show. And the fact that I can update that footer so that my entire back catalog is still helping me is really smart and really thoughtful.

Speaker 2 (08:16)

There's a couple of different things that we don't leverage currently with your podcast, but I've learned along the way since I've switched to Captivate is their WordPress engine. So I integrate their WordPress engine into my website and Captivate dynamically creates a page on my WordPress site automatically. And now with this idea of being able to update it, I'm actually going to be able to dynamically update my web pages, which previously was a static idea that once that web page was there, I'm going to have to go back into all those individual web pages. So even if you update your show notes, you'd still have to go get your information back into the web page and updated. Now, the integration with Captivates, WordPress engine. With this dynamic, I can easily see myself updating the 200 plus episodes that I have in my daily podcast very quickly because of how the integration and also picking the right platform, which leads us into our next question is, lots of times we hear great things coming out of Captivate. When I first met you, I'd never heard of Captivate until I met you. And then I was like, Man, I just really like this editing podcast for you.

Speaker 2 (09:18)

I was like, I want this. But I was currently on another platform and I was just like, Do I want to make the switch? Is it worth the headache? Is it worth all the rewrite? And eventually I just got over it. And essentially what pushed me over the edge was when they updated the UI, I was like, this feels like 2021. What I was currently using or previously using felt like 1995. And I was just like, I'm done. I'm going in because I get frustrated when I go to publish my podcast, and I get excited when I go to publish your podcast. So for the person out there in that similar moment, how does someone reconcile podcast platform guilt or podcast platform envy? And when do they pull the trigger?

Speaker 1 (09:59)

Well, a couple of things I would say to that. One is, listen, we are not saying everybody should use Capsivate. Although I agree with you, I think it's a great platform. They're constantly adding features and we like it. And we'll have a link where you can click and sign up. And yes, we'll get an affiliate fee for doing so, but either way, I still think it's a good platform. But there's a lot of different reasons why people will want to switch platforms. One is that maybe you sign up for a free hosting site and they shut down because that's what happens when you're giving away a product that costs money to make and produce. And if you follow, I think it's Dave Jackson or Rob Greenley, one of those guys. They keep like a running list of all the platforms that came out there as free hosting and then had to shut down or start charging and people who have been stuck or lost or whatever. So that's one reason you want to switch. Two is right? You might be using a platform that is limited in the features that are available to you and listen.

Speaker 1 (10:59)

When you first started it was okay. But as your podcast grows and evolves and develops, you find that there are going to be some other features that you're going to want to need. So it's okay. What I would say is I wouldn't go crazy switching my hosting platform every time a new shiny object comes along and like, that's pretty let me switch my hosting platform yet again. That's probably going to be a recipe for disaster. But if you do it, it is a big decision. It takes a little bit of work and if you do it incorrectly, your show will suffer. So what are the steps to do it and to do it correctly? Number one, the first thing is when you're choosing a new host, make sure that they will import your old content either very easily or ideally for free. Some platforms charge a one time fee for it. It's moderate and that's okay. But if they're charging you for it, then it better be really easy, like pushing my RSS feed, hit submit or don't worry, our team is going to take care of it for you and it better be done right.

Speaker 1 (12:11)

Two, make sure that whatever platform you are picking and this is from the beginning, but also at this point, make sure whatever platform you're going to pick allows you to do a redirect. They don't put up huge hurdles or in some cases, they don't even know what a redirect is. If the company who you're going to work with doesn't say that redirects are possible, do not work with them. If you can't redirect your feed from one show to the other, you are going to be in trouble. So what do you do? You sign up for your new hosting platform, you import your show, right? And when you import your show, it's going to bring over your title, your artist field, your artwork, your description, all of your episode audio, all of your episode titles, all of your show notes, all of your links. All that stuff is going to come with you. And basically it's going to replicate your show from old feed to new feed. Okay? In this case, just to make it easier so that we know what we're talking about, we're going to say that the old show is on SoundCloud. Right?

Speaker 1 (13:12)

If you're still using SoundCloud, this is one of those times where like this isn't a joke, like start to migrate off the SoundCloud. But you were on SoundCloud. Now you're going to move over to let's call it. I've been way too nice of them. Let's call it Buzz Sprout, just so we're not too salesy for captivate, even though I love them. So now you go over to Buzz Sprout. You import your show, all of your content, all of your files, your entire show comes over. And now you have a brand new show replicated directly on Buzz Sprout. Great. The next thing you're going to do is you're going to take your brand new RSS feed that you got from Buzz Sprout. You're going to go back to SoundCloud and you're going to insert that code into your Redirect feed. Now, depending on the host you're going to find in different places. Sometimes you do have to email support in order to do that, but you should be using a host that will allow you to redirect your feed. Once you plug in your Buzz Sprout, your new RSS feed into your old podcast SoundCloud host within a few minutes, maybe an hour.

Speaker 1 (14:18)

If you were to pull up your old SoundCloud RSS feed, it should automatically open your Buzz Sprout feed. This line of code is basically a thing that says, I see you're trying to read your SoundCloud RSS, stop it's over here. And so if you did this correctly, you should pretty much instantly be taken to your new BuzzFeed feed when you do the redirect. Now, here's the key. After you do this, don't immediately shut down SoundCloud. I'd say keep SoundCloud open for about maybe three to four weeks, at least a month, or at least until you've dropped about three to four episodes. The reason why is what that redirect does is it's going to tell the platforms Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, right, everyone that your feed that used to be hosted on SoundCloud can now be hosted here on Buzz Sprout. What it's also going to do is it's going to tell all of your subscribers the same thing. Hey, you were getting the show off the servers that were on SoundCloud. Now you're going to start accessing that show off the servers here on Buzz Sprout. The nice thing is nobody's going to know, right?

Speaker 1 (15:28)

Your users are not all of a sudden to wake up one day to a notification that says Podcast me anything. It's not being hosted by Buzzer out. They'll have no idea if you do this correctly. They will just get their next episode like clockwork. And so it'll be great. But the reason why you leave your SoundCloud open for three to four weeks is what if somebody skipped an episode? What if somebody hasn't opened up their podcast app for a little while? Like you don't want them opening up their app looking for SoundCloud and not be given the instructions that they need to go over to BuzzFeed? So if you do the redirect correctly, you keep the old one open for a while. All of your new content is on Buzz Sprout. Your users who you currently have your subscribers, followers, whatever you want to call them will quickly follow you over and you won't lose anything. What will you lose? Your stats. We'll get a little bit more into stats later, but basically SoundCloud was measuring your downloads. Buzz Sprout doesn't grab that information from SoundCloud. You are starting with zero from Buzz Sprout. If you did your redirect correctly though, when you release your next episode, you should get the same amount of new downloads per episode that you were seeing over there.

Speaker 1 (16:31)

So while you are starting at zero, your momentum shouldn't decrease because you switched. Maybe a little bit again, because some people who were not really actively subscribing falloff, but very, very small difference. Or maybe your old host was not measuring your stats accurately using IAB and so right, you might see your numbers topic because now you're getting more accurate stats. But for the most part your momentum should continue if you do it correctly. So that's what's going to happen to your stats. The other thing that's going to happen, and this is where it's a little bit more work and a little bit annoying. If you have a website and your process was to go to SoundCloud, grab the embed code from SoundCloud, paste that embed code onto your embed code onto your website, and that's what users are using. All those embed codes are going to break as soon as you shut down your SoundCloud account. So now you have to manually update all of your embed codes on your website to use the new Buzz Sprout embed codes. Even if you have a third party embed player, you still have to update that MP Three link that you were getting from SoundCloud because the file no longer exists on that server.

Speaker 1 (17:43)

So that's where there's a little bit of work that has to be done. And why switching hosts might be a difficult consideration for people, especially for talking hundreds or thousands of episodes on a website. But if you're doing it in the early stages, it's a little bit of a headache, but it's worth it. The last thing is, if you've been sharing links to your content on SoundCloud, right? Either a direct MP Three or your SoundCloud page that's generated for the link. Keep in mind all those links, they're dead. So some of your old marketing material may die when you're doing this. But that's why we always say share links to your content, to your website, not to your hosting platform. Because we don't need to give the hosting platform anymore traffic. They're already getting it by you using them as hosting platform. So those are like the big considerations when you are switching from one platform to another. Did I miss anything along the way that you think I might have skipped?

Speaker 2 (18:39)

I don't think so. I think you had all the things that I ran into in that process and a measurement of a good platform. This process of migrating RSS feed and a good platform should be about five minutes. I think when I migrated to Captivate, it was maybe three and I had 200 episodes that it imported automatically. So it's not a very intensive process. The clean up maybe can be, but the actual most critical part, getting your MP three on this new hosting server, that should be very seamless and a good test of wind to switch. There was another thought that kicked into my mind of how do you know maybe you're on the wrong platform? Or if this is the question you actually should wrestle with a little bit, how much do you feel the platform understands your why? Because some platforms, they create a podcasting platform for the sheer sake of business. And you may feel that business transaction either through the lack of communication, the lack of effort, the lack of design, lack of upgrades. But one thing you should feel, and I've felt this from Buzz brought when I've met them in person at different podcast conferences.

Speaker 2 (19:41)

I've met and seen it with Captivate as well, from the way they orchestrate different launches like you mentioned, and just the way they're always bringing value and understanding, this is why you do it and they're trying to enhance that process. Like Buzz, Broadcast is a good example. They pick like ten people in their podcast catalog to get free tickets to go to podcast movement because they understand how good and important that is to get to those types of events. When you see a company do that type of thing when they don't have to, those are good indicators that you're getting in bed with the right company who's invested in making sure that you grow your podcast. And there's one other thought that I would put on top of that if you're really struggling, like if you're 50 50, this could also be tied with a good time to update a website because for example, had you married with Pod page and your website, pod Page has a simple button in the background refresh web pages from content and it would regenerate all your web pages based on the new RSS feed or even in the context of what we just talked about, dynamic ad insertion and the dynamic show notes.

Speaker 2 (20:42)

So your ability to update and thrive could just be like, you know what, my website hasn't been that great, my link structure, my design hasn't been that great. We did that with Causepods about a year and a half ago and Causepods previous website, the current website, nine day difference. And it was all kind of tied to the same idea. It was like we need to upgrade the website. We didn't change from posting platform, but it still allowed us to create a much better experience. And those two thoughts, it can be a good time to refresh not just your RSS feed and your hosting platform where you upload, but the entire experience on what you're able to offer different customers.

Speaker 1 (21:18)

And going back to what you're saying, I think we tackled how to choose a podcasting Host in one of our early episodes together, but right one, how invested are they in the community that they serve? The other thing that I would check is what is their core focus. There's a lot of big players entering the space, like Kajabi or Sub Stack, like companies that are very well suited to do what they do are just kind of also adding podcasting. Soundcloud is kind of the same thing. We do music, but you can also do a podcast. And what I find with those companies is that they don't do it well. They do it enough. They have a minimally viable product, but they're the kinds of platforms that won't allow you to do a redirect or won't be doing IAB statistics or whatever. And those are things that can impact the performance and stability of your show in the future and lead to some headaches. Either a check the features of the hosting platform to make sure they have what you need, B Check and make sure that the company is invested in podcasting, the community as well as the space itself, and also check the reliability.

Speaker 1 (22:36)

There are some of the older podcasting companies that the reason why they are older podcasting companies, and the reason why they are still so popular and still so well used is because they know what they're doing. They have relationships with all the right people in the space. They are up to date on what is the requirements of podcasting. And they are reliable. Lipson, Blueberry, Buzz, Sprout, Pod, Bean, Castle. These are players that know how important it is for your podcast to work when people need it, and they do, they just work. I will never tell a person not to use Lipson because 99 times out of 100 Lipson works. And that's a very important feature. By the way, Libson just updated their interface again, officially for everybody. So yeah, go check them out. They're looking a little bit better every day.

Speaker 2 (23:31)

Yeah. So let's pivot into a different question, but we already kind of flirted it and you hinted at it as well as a podcaster. The first thing that you start looking at after you launch a podcast is the statistics. It's the one thing that's shared it's the one thing that people talk about who's got bigger downloads. And also it's the first time where you might also start questioning where Pod Fade can kick in before you reach past your like the critical Ten episode where most people give out on is anybody listening. And it can be one where it can be a mind mess as well, like trying to use the statistics to validate, like should you keep investing energy? And so it's a multifaceted sword that isn't necessarily just an easy black and white answer, but necessarily it's still an important question for indie people. And brand podcasts because marketing people are looking to measure the ROI, and statistics aren't necessarily the best ROI for a podcast until you've got traction, until you've got time in your RSS feed within almost like a year, I would say. Then you can maybe start using your statistics to maybe leverage something.

Speaker 2 (24:31)

But what's your opinion on it? When people come to you and like, how do I understand my statistics?

Speaker 1 (24:36)

Well, in this question, we decided on this question because that first piece that we talked about when switching hosts, right? Oh, no, I'm going to lose all my downloads from my windows to the other going to start with zero. Who cares? The total number of downloads that you have for a show is 100% of vanity metric. Now, that said, it's a great feelgood. Vanity metric shows that reach 100,000, a million, 10 million downloads feel good about themselves. But I ask you, how good is a million downloads if you've put out ten episodes? Amazing. 100,000 downloads per episode. How good is a million downloads if you put out 100,000 episodes? Not very good at all. So total downloads overall is 100% a vanity metric. And so the fact that you might lose your legacy downloads from one host to the other should not be a factor in switching one. A good host allows you to download your old stats, right. So you want to know what your total legacy downloads are. Great. Before you shut down SoundCloud, hit download, keep track of that number. I had a million downloads from SoundCloud and just add whatever you get on your new platform to that and you have your legacy downloads.

Speaker 1 (25:48)

Not a big deal. But when you are talking about important metrics, the metric that is probably the most important this is the one that most advertisers are going to look at is your downloads per episode. And it's mostly the downloads per episode within 30 days of release. That's how a lot of ad rates are. Based on how many downloads does an episode get within 30 days of release? Now, it's hard to say what should be a good number for you. Everybody is going to have a different target audience. Listen, if you have a general audience, you should be getting lots of downloads. If you have a very niche audience, maybe a couple of dozen downloads does the trick for you. But that's the number that you kind of want to be looking at and tracking and charting. Is my downloads per episode number going up on a regular, consistent basis. Now, how many downloads per episode is good? Well, a few years ago, and I apologize. I know they've updated these numbers. They haven't changed too much. But the one that I always find very easily, there's this a 16 Z Andreessen Horowitz report on podcasting from 2019.

Speaker 1 (27:00)

And they include this chart from Lipson of the podcast download distribution. And what this says is that if you get 124 downloads per episode. You are in the median of podcasters, meaning 50% of the podcasters out there get more than 124 per episode and 50% get below 124 per episode. If you are getting one 10 downloads, you're in the top 20%. So now 80% of podcasters get less than 1100 downloads per episode, 300 downloads, the top 10%, 5000 downloads, the top 7.1%, 70. I think it's 7800 top 5%, 20,000. The top 2%, 35,000 downloads per episode, the top 1% of all podcast creators. But again, this is a general market all podcast number. That's not to say that you are not successful because you're only getting 124 downloads per episode. I have plenty of clients who are very happy with 124 downloads per episode because two of those clients pay for all their podcasting expenses for the year. Right. So don't look at your total numbers compared to other shows total numbers. But you do want to see that download per episode number creeping up every single time you release an episode. It's going to take time in the beginning, right?

Speaker 1 (28:32)

Don't expect it to happen the first day or the first week. The first time you put out a show, there's going to be people who come in for the excitement, then they're going to be like, this is exciting, I don't really like it or this is exciting. I don't really need it. So give yourself that three to six months to kind of let the chaos of launching even out and then see what your real trajectory is. What I would say on top of all of that is if you put out an episode and you routinely get about call it 30 to 40 downloads per episode routinely. While those should be filtered out my senses, a lot of that is like bot type traffic traffic. That just happens because you put out a podcast. Certain platforms are caching episodes or collecting are just scouring the web and seeing what's out there and collecting episodes. And so I'd say if you're in that 30 to 40 download per episode range, unless you are actually seeing 30 to 40 people comment or rate review or reach out to you on social media, you're not telling enough people about your content.

Speaker 2 (29:44)

I like what you said there because it highlights the importance of the present with statistics that what's happening right now is the only thing that matters. So whether you're on your old platform or your new platform, you still always understand what's happening in the present. And captivate does that really well for the last seven days, last 30 days on your overall downloads, and it's always showing you what old content is being downloaded. So from that point of view, it really does add it. And also something I like within the captivated statistics that you don't always get on the other ones is unique listeners. So it's actually taking a snapshot of IP addresses that are coming across with the RSS feed. And trying to actually gauge how many unique people are out there looking at your content. And I almost enjoy that number more than the overall downloads, because those are actually people's lives that you're helping and you're not just like someone like the Binge watch Netflix. That's the number of people that are being impacted, and it has a little bit more of a do good feel to it than just the statistics.

Speaker 1 (30:44)

I would also say that if you want to get a little bit more granular, because this also comes in a lot is like, how do I find out who's listening? What's the listener make up? Most of these platforms will tell you your downloads. And remember, all plays are downloads. Not all downloads are plays. So if you go to the website, you hit play on the embed player even though you're streaming it. Technically that content is being downloaded to play it. But I subscribe to a podcast and the kids are sick and haven't listened to an episode in a few weeks and there's like ten of these episodes sitting on my phone. That show got ten downloads, but I didn't get to play any of them. Now, survey suggest most downloads, 70% to 80% of downloads do turn out to be plays, but just know that's how it works. And all of your hosting platforms should be able to tell you roughly what countries are your downloads coming from, what kind of devices? Mobile, desktop, what platforms Apple, Google, Spotify, Chrome, Safari, blah, blah, blah. And in the overall share of podcasting, if you're following what the average is, you should be seeing about 60% of your downloads coming from Apple, 20% coming from Spotify, and then the rest a different amalgamation of Google, your website, things like that.

Speaker 1 (31:57)

If you're seeing a ton of downloads that are purely coming from like Chrome or Safari or Firefox, that means you're not getting subscribers. That means people are somehow being driven to your content on a web page. And for one reason or another, there's a chance that they might not really be listening or intending to check out your content. You really want to get those downloads coming through platforms. But the other thing to think about is you can get more granular data about your podcast from the platform specifically. So if nothing else, make sure when you set up your podcast, or if you haven't, make sure you claim your podcast. We've probably talked about this before, but make sure you have access to your show on Apple Connect, their podcast Connect from Apple, Spotify, Back, End, and now the Google Podcast Manager. Apple gives you a ton of more granular information about listeners, unique listeners, how long people are listening for, right? If your audience is dropping off 20 minutes into a show, you're doing something wrong. 20 minutes into a show, and you probably need to look into that. Or if people are leaving after two minutes, like not doing a great job.

Speaker 1 (33:07)

Right. So there's good data on Apple to check out. Spotify is great because people have to log into Spotify so they can give you a little bit more in terms of demographic, male, female, age breakdown, things like that. And so you can get a sense of like, oh, look, this show is being consumed by mostly 99%, man, 35 to 45, right? We're not very diverse. We need to work on that. So Spotify is kind of good for that. Google is the most interesting out of all of them, in my opinion. Now, the only problem with Google is most people aren't using it. I don't think it serves as a great sample size, but because Google's Analytics are connected to Google, the world's largest search engine, they'll tell you plays, plays in the first 30 days, average how long people are playing the episode for. They'll tell you the kind of devices. But more importantly, they'll tell you, how do people find your show? They'll give you the top search terms. They'll give you what episodes were discovered by impressions, by clicks, by click through rates. And that can be super powerful in helping you plan out future episodes and in how you market your podcast to reach your target audience.

Speaker 1 (34:19)

So I can't stress it enough. Work with the platform that's IB certified and gives you the right download numbers for your overall picture. But then make sure you also have access to Podcast Connect from Apple, your Spotify podcaster dashboard, and get yourself the podcast manager from Google because they're giving some interesting information. Amazon is going to have that stuff, too. I don't know what they're going to provide, but keep an eye on it. Some of the other ones, Stitcher does it. I don't know how many downloads people get on Stitcher. It's probably not too important. But yeah, those are some things you should also be looking at.

Speaker 2 (34:54)

Get Stitcher after your podcast platform tells you that Stitcher is blowing up and figuring out what's going on over there.

Speaker 1 (35:02)

That's a good example.

Speaker 2 (35:03)

And what you're also talking about here and to kind of get wrapped and put a bow on this whole thing is it's not one number, it's a holistic picture. And one thing that I've often always kind of look at or even when I'm looking for guests or looking for other podcasts to go on, that's more nuanced or less nuanced and more just kind of granular and less based on downloads is listed. Notes provides a global ranking and a listener score. Like both are proprietary numbers of how they truly calculate it. But it'll tell you, is your podcast in the top 2%, the top 5%, and it doesn't take very much to look at. And like, for example, my podcast, I get about 100ft downloads an episode, and I'm in the top one and a half percent. And you can also Google like Joe Rogan's podcast. It'll tell you what his global ranking is it could tell you what other big players in your podcast network arena or your niche area, what they're getting. And you're like, wow, this person is just only a few strokes ahead of me and you might think they're miles ahead of you when the reality is you're in the same ball court of actually ranking in the 3 million downloads.

Speaker 2 (36:04)

Now you have to season it with there's a lot of downloads or podcasts that never get downloaded so it's very easy to get in the bottom, but it also just kind of gives you a good comparison of what's working and what's not.

Speaker 1 (36:15)

I agree with the sentiment, but I disagree that listen notes information is factual. I've been seeing a lot of posts lately about people laughing like listen to it says I'm in the top 10%, blah, blah, blah, blah and it feels like everybody's in the top 10% or everybody is this and everybody is that. So I like the idea. I don't know how many people really listed, I don't know what kind of sample size it is and if it's an accurate enough. But also I don't know if it is just a way to stroke your ego so that you continue to use listen notes. So I mean, yeah, it's good information, but I would definitely take it with a grain of salt.

Speaker 2 (36:56)

I agree. Again, it's the holistic. And for me the number one thing I look at is when I'm looking for other podcasts, it's going to give you an initial gut feeling. Is this guy just getting started? Has he never been able to get traction or does he have some type of traction? And that kind of just gives you that calibration and that gut feeling because podcasting is a lot of walking in the dark and not knowing where you're going sometimes. And so again, it's a holistic process of understanding the whole picture and figuring out where to make the right decisions to go forward, which is what the entire episode has been about is strategically and holistically. Looking at the entire big picture of your platform and figuring out what do you need to change, what do you need to modify and what's the best approach to keep going forward?

Speaker 1 (37:32)

I like it.

Speaker 2 (37:33)

Well, Matthew, this wraps up another episode of podcast amazing. If you want to go check out and try a seven day trial for captivate go check out podcastmazing. Comcaptivate where you can get your seven day free trial to check out that platform, test it out before you ever actually decide to migrate your podcast. Well, Mathew, this does it for another episode until next week.

Speaker 1 (37:54)

Great to talk to you, Ben.