Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast
for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.

I'm Neil McPhedran.

I'm founder of Podium Podcasts, an agency for higher education podcasters.

Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee Gunson, the founder of Jpod Creations.

We want you to know you're not alone.

In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there and we can all learn from each other.

Please also join our community at higheredpods.com.

Neil McPhedran: Jen, just you and me today.

Jennifer-Lee: That's it.

Just the two of us.

Neil McPhedran: Here we go.

Jennifer-Lee: Building castles in the sky.

That's all I know of that song.

Neil McPhedran: I like that.

So, Jen, this episode came out of a conversation that, I had with
another higher ed podcaster that I've known for a couple of years.

And we got a little bit deep into talking about some Apple analytics and Spotify
analytics and some of the things that have changed, as well as some YouTube analytics.

She was like, oh, that would be a great thing for you guys to talk about on Continuing Studies.

So that's what we're going to do today.

Jennifer-Lee: I'm really excited about this because something that everyone talks
about is analytics, but a lot of people don't know how to understand the analytics.

Yes.

Podcasting is still very young and there's certain metrics that people look at more than others.

So I'm really glad that we're going through this.

And I, another big question that I get asked all the time is
obviously you have your hosting platform that shoots to audio only
platforms like Spotify and Apple, Amazon, all those, and many more.

And then, of course, you got YouTube.

And YouTube is kind of out on its like separate thing, but their analytics are important.

So I think a lot of people get confused, like, why are all these on this one?

And then YouTube is out in the ether.

What does this all mean?

Why should I care?

How does this affect my podcast growing in the future?

That was a lot of important questions.

Neil McPhedran: That was good, Jen.

I like that.

Jennifer-Lee: And you answer them all now because you're the expert.

Neil McPhedran: Here we go.

You know, I think you're right, Jen.

In our hosting platforms, and then there's other things, if we've subscribed to
Chartable or we, you know, we talked a couple of months ago about OP3 for analytics.

That's all looking at downloads.

Jennifer-Lee: But downloads, what I want to say, because this is controversial,
is a lot of people are starting to crack down on download numbers.

Because everyone's like, oh, I got a million downloads.

That doesn't mean that the people listen to your podcast though.

And that is the controversy that's going on.

It's people say, what do we care about downloads?

But a lot of people are like, no, it's how much is listened.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, you're right.

So there's two sides to that download conundrum, which
is, you're right, a download is not necessarily a listen.

And we know that Apple, for example, is an app that automatically shoots through a download.

So there's a whole bunch of people walking around there with downloads on their phones.

And they haven't actually listened.

The other side of that though, is YouTube isn't in those numbers.

So as you were saying, it's a completely separate platform.

Jennifer-Lee: It's still important too.

Neil McPhedran: It's hugely important.

It's like for all the podcasts we work with, YouTube is in the mix of the top three.

Apple, Spotify, YouTube, not always in that order, I should say, but those
are the top three apps for almost all the podcasts that, that we work with.

So the other one, that's the sort of a new plot thickens, Jen, is, Spotify.

So you can now in Spotify, oh, I should say we're going to put in this
episode, 'cause we're talking about stuff that I'm showing Jen on a screen.

So we're going to either try to put this into a video or we're going to put it in as chapters.

So we're going to try to grab a lot of these images to show.

Jennifer-Lee: Not only I get the secrets you get the secrets.

Neil McPhedran: That's right.

So in Spotify you can now add video.

And for the first part, it was like, you have to be invited and, or you had to use,

Jennifer-Lee: Or you had to be using their account,

Neil McPhedran: Megaphone.

Yeah, that's right.

That's, now you can do it, literally you look, you go into the episode level.

So we're not going to get into today, how to log into your Apple
Podcast Connect, Spotify for Podcasters or your YouTube Studio.

Those are the three platforms you got to get logged into.

Reach out to me, I can help you access those if you don't have access already.

So we're assuming you've got access to all three of those
and you're looking at your podcast in those three platforms.

Back to Spotify.

So once you go into Spotify and on the left hand rail, you've got home, you've got your analytics.

Then you got episodes, comments, I'm going to talk about all those, but episodes.

If you go in, you can hit the little three dots on the right and you can actually upload your video.

So you upload the video version of your episode and now it's a video version.

So if someone's listening to it, then they're not looking at the video.

They're going to hear it, going to be an audio version.

Or if you're looking at your screen, you can look at the video.

But if you upload that video into Spotify, and we've got an example here for Think Fast Talk
Smart, where we've uploaded our last two episodes, as video, those are no longer downloads.

So this is the other end of the spectrum.

So not only is there a whole bunch of downloads that are bologna, not really listens.

If you upload your video into Spotify, no matter if someone
listens to it or watches it, it no longer counts as a download.

So now all your Spotify downloads go away.

So for a show like Think Fast Talk Smart, a third of our quote unquote downloads are from Spotify.

These last two episodes have zero downloads.

But they have all the listens.

So long rambling way to say why downloads are less and less and less important.

Digging into these platforms and seeing as Jen, as you said, real listens,
real views, and a bunch of this other stuff we're going to get into.

Jennifer-Lee: This is super new still, because like, you weren't
allowed to upload video unless you were a member of the platform.

I think I know the answer while I'm looking at it, but I'm going to let you
look at it and answer me because I'm sure everyone has the same question.

Is, with the video, do we know if people are watching the video or
listening to the audio only version, or is it counting it all as one?

Neil McPhedran: Good question.

So when you're in the episode section and you click into an
episode, you actually see the analytics for that episode.

And what's really cool is, it's the overall, they call
it listeners just to keep their verbiage less confusing.

You see starts, so people who've started the episode.

Streams, the total number of times that's been streamed and a stream is over sixty seconds.

Then you have listeners starts and listener streams.

So those are more individuals.

So the total listeners number below it, you see the video stats.

So of the five thousand and six, what they call listeners, the streams,
one thousand six hundred and seventy-two in this case are viewers.

So it does show you the percentage that are viewers.

It breaks it out.

You see the total number listens and views.

And then you see the viewers and the views numbers below it.

So you can then extrapolate, okay, well, that was like what?

thirty-five or thirty-four hundred audio listens and
sixteen hundred views for a total of five thousand streams.

And then you got your total consumption hours.

So, this episode, the most recent episode, which was just Tuesday.

So it's a couple of days in, it's already had one thousand
six hundred and ninety-seven hours of listen time to it.

And then you can see how much of that is watched.

So twenty-one percent is watched, thirty-three percent is overall.

So that's pretty cool though, to see that.

Does that make sense, Jen?

That's pretty neat, hey.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, it's really neat.

And I was just gonna say it's interesting because
I've seen popular podcasts that have a lot of listens.

And they use YouTube as a search format and maybe the
watch time is not as high as the listening of the episode.

So it's really interesting to see that on Spotify, there
was quite a few views, but still listening won out.

So it's just interesting to me that it's important to have these videos and
not all podcasts that, but I've just noticed that some massive podcasts,
you'll go on their video YouTube account and they don't have that much watch.

And so it's just interesting to see how they're still going hand in hand.

Listening is still the key, but it's important to be on video for searching.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, very much so.

I think the other really interesting one is the episode performance.

So you can see sort of how far people get along in it.

And another one to look at there is in Apple, they've got something very similar where you can
dive into episodes and Apple's version of that same similar metric is called average consumption.

So on their side, and this is a really key one to look at, you can look at what's the average that
people are getting through a certain episode before they're bailing, before they're jumping ship.

I like to say anything sort of in the seventies and up is good.

Anything below the seventies something's broken.

Anything in the fifties and forties is really broken.

But this is a good way to see an episode's performance.

There's an episode here, 161 back in September, it's at a seventy-eight percent consumption.

So of the people who start listening to, of this engaged listeners numbers, people
are getting on average, at least seventy-eight percent of the way through the episode.

So content is interesting.

This is a really key analytics number to look at.

So if we looked at our own podcast on this one, let's just flip over to our podcast.

We've got way less data.

Jennifer-Lee: I know a lot of people when they're first starting out get discouraged.

Of course, we were looking at a very successful podcast,
Think Fast Talk Smart, who's been around for a long time.

A lot of people aren't sure what to look at.

They'll just look at the numbers and obviously a lot of numbers aren't
very high yet when you're first starting out, and then you get discouraged.

But there is some good data to look for that can help you really shape your
show in order to grow and get up to the level of Think Fast Talk Smart one day.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, I think that's a good point.

So a few things to look at is one, your follower growth.

And I like to look at that month over month.

What's happening there, month over month, and watch that grow.

And look at that in Spotify, in Apple, in YouTube, and you can look at
that in Amazon and there's a bunch of other platforms you can look at.

So that's one thing.

And even if they're small listener numbers, like just sort of seeing how are those moving forward.

But I think a really good one is what we were just talking about, which is this average consumption.

Because even if it's only two or three people listening to an episode, that's
still going to give you a percentage of how far they're listening through.

So for example, a couple of ones that are resonating on
ours was we had Sam Sethi on talking about Podcasting 2.0.

We've got an episode where it was demystifying Yale admissions.

Those had seventy-four and eighty percent consumption.

So, you know, that was a forty-three minute episode and a thirty minute episode.

So that's pretty good.

Even though it's not a whole bunch of listens, we can
go like, this content resonated with the audience.

Versus we did our Best Of, maybe this is something for
us to consider Jen because we're talking about our 2024.

So we did our Best Of last year, and it was forty-six percent listened through, average consumption.

That's not good.

You know, our other episodes are like seventy percent or whatever.

So, so obviously that didn't resonate with the audience.

Jennifer-Lee: So what I just learned was that they don't like episodes that we don't have a guest.

So does this mean this one's going to tank?

Neil McPhedran: I hope not.

Or it just means that putting an episode out around the Christmas holidays, that's a best of where
you and I are just talking about what we like the best, is not what people are interested in.

So maybe now that we're thinking about what we're going
to do for our year end, we don't do the same thing again.

Jennifer-Lee: I thought maybe it's just people would
rather us have a guest instead of listen to the two of us.

Neil McPhedran: Well, you know what, we're going to go
back and we're going to get that data from this one too.

Jennifer-Lee: But that is an important, uh, thing that you were talking about is time
listen, because I know people that have like small audiences of fifty, which is good.

And they are getting like ninety percent of each episode listened to.

So that's huge.

Like how many people listen ninety percent to your episode?

So I think that is an encouraging stat.

And that's what people have to look at.

Yes.

If you have a small audience and they're listening to zero
percent of your episode, then maybe you want to rethink it.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, totally.

So let's keep talking just about this percentage consumption
because YouTube has something similar that we can look at too.

And you can see that percentage consumption in YouTube as well.

And they call it the average view duration.

And you can see that there.

So those numbers aren't going to be as high because I think just the audience is a bit different.

People jump ship a lot more on it, but you can see in YouTube as well, a similar
percentage of which episodes are performing better with this notion of like, well,
what's resonating with the audience more and how, how far are you listening through?

So YouTube gives you total time listened and then that percentage as well.

So you can compare episodes in Apple, as we just talked about.

Average consumption, you can compare that same episode in YouTube with this
average view duration, and then you can also look at the episode performance.

In Spotify, they have a similar thing where you can sort of see in the first seven
days or whatnot, sort of how far people streamed along kind of a thing there, too.

So that's a great one to look at.

So going back to Apple, there's some other really interesting
stuff, Jen, I think to look at sticking on episode performance here.

There's actually what they call performance.

It's one of the tabs.

And what that one is doing is you're comparing episodes.

So you can look at your most recent ones, or you can go back
into your catalog and you're comparing it to what's the median.

Apple does a performance median.

It grabs that, and then graphs the other recent episodes or whatever you choose.

You can toggle around and you can pick the ones to see like which ones
are performing above the median and which ones are performing below.

What you're looking at is listeners.

So this is good.

This is not downloads.

This is listeners.

So the number of people that listen to those episodes.

This is another one where you can look at and compare episode performance, from episode to episode.

And which ones are performing better, which ones aren't.

And I think this is great for podcasts in this category, higher education
podcasts, because really we're not here to push downloads to sell ads.

We're here to make sure that the content that we're putting out there is working.

And I think really what we want to use these analytics for then is to go like, well,
what were the subjects and the titles and the guests and the themes that did well.

And which are the ones that didn't do well.

So we can do more of the stuff that did well and
less of the stuff that, that didn't do quite so well.

So that's another way to look at it from an episode performance and compare episodes overall.

Jennifer-Lee: It's something that a lot of people don't do enough.

And even if they are successful in getting a lot of listens, is
looking all the time at what's doing well and doing it properly.

Because all of a sudden one day you don't look at it and then
you make a wrong move and then your listens start going down.

Or maybe you're missing something that could really lead you
to gold and you're not paying attention to the analytics.

I think a lot of people get confused by them and they just don't want to look at them.

And then when they do, they're like, okay, but there's other things you can do with them.

And what you said earlier too, it's about your goal because higher education
podcasts are going to be different than business podcasts or celebrity podcasts.

I know you and I work with our clients really trying to figure out what your
goal is, because analytics shouldn't be scary and they shouldn't be devastating.

They're a tool to help you get better.

Neil McPhedran: Agreed.

Agreed.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

So I mentioned followers.

Followers is one that's really good to watch month in month out.

That's who's following.

Obviously, um, location.

You can get location, countries and cities from all three of the apps.

Spotify is the one app, well, YouTube to a certain extent gives you age and
whatnot, but Spotify gives you audience data that you can't get from Apple.

So that's one of the things that you get from Spotify that's unique and different.

So you can look at your audience.

You can look at gender.

It gives you a gender split, female versus male, unspecified, non binary,
as well as an age breakdown, and it breaks it down by male, female.

So it breaks it down by gender on, as they stack on top of each other.

So you can sort of see that.

You can look at that and see trends, one month, way more
of a male skew versus the next month is more female skewed.

So that's some interesting stuff to grab as far as getting to know your audience in there too.

One other really good one that's across all three platforms, I think is
really good to pay attention to is, in Apple they call it time listened.

And you can see month over month, how that is trending.

Is it going up?

Is it going down?

What's your total time that has listened.

So I think this is one that's really good to sort of see if you're trending.

I think a caveat here is if you're a weekly podcast and it's a month, that has five episodes.

'Cause if you're weekly, there's a couple of months that you're
going to have five episodes versus the other months that are four.

Obviously that time listened is going to be a little bit up as a result.

So that's just something sort of pay attention to.

In YouTube, that same idea is called watch time.

So again, you can look at that by month and you can see, is that trending up, is that trending down?

Think Fast Talk Smart, there's a bigger story here.

We've just rebuilt the channel so we've kind of been starting from scratch, so our numbers
are down a little bit, and we're seeing some really good month over month increases.

And then you can get a similar thing out of Spotify at
the episode level, which is called consumption hours.

That gives you your total time people listened or viewed.

So across those three channels, you can look at those
numbers and you can stack them on top of each other.

We like to do that with some of our clients.

We'll stack those three numbers on top of each other and then compare it month in month out, going
up, going down, which platforms are performing better, which platforms are we seeing things in.

So another really good one to gauge as well, that total listen, total consumption time too.

I really like that one.

And I think more and more marketers are talking about that one too.

Jennifer-Lee: For people that are doing their own look into analytics.

I know you did a deep dive for clients.

For people that are just starting out, what would you say would be the best thing to focus on?

Because this gets pretty overwhelming if you're new to this and you're doing this for yourself.

Neil McPhedran: That's a good question, Jen.

I think that I wouldn't throw the download number out entirely.

I think it's good to sort of keep an eye on that.

Big moves in either direction can be a telltale.

But it's just spending a little bit of time digging into
these three platforms and looking at some of this stuff.

And just even as simple as the front overview screen in Apple, you can choose a month.

And it tells you right there, a whole bunch of stuff across the board and it's all green or red.

It's like, is it up?

Is it down?

And I think that those are really good just general ways to sort of look at it overall.

Like where are things trending?

Same within YouTube.

There's an overview screen to look at and similar in Spotify.

You can look at the last calendar month.

Spotify doesn't give you sort of at a glance, that up
down percentage number, but that's easy to calculate.

And we do that.

And you can look at what your follower was at the
beginning and the end to look at what that percentage is.

I think the answer to your question is, is really like just digging
into these platforms at all is going to be, I think, super helpful.

You're going to start to see some things.

Focus on the platform, like initially when things are just
sort of trickling in, like, just look at the platforms.

If Apple is where you're seeing most of the downloads and probably that's where you're
going to see most of the data as well, too, if you're seeing hardly any downloads on
Spotify, probably a bunch of this stuff is not going to come up for you on Spotify.

So focus in on those platforms that you're seeing this data.

And even if you're on a monthly basis, just set something in your calendar and
go in and look at that, just at the overview screen for all three of those.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.

And if you are using a hosting platform, like I started back in the day on
Anchor FM, which is now Spotify for podcasters, they are really easy to look
at and they grab all the data and put it into bite sized pieces for you.

So you don't have to go onto every single platform and look at it.

So don't get overwhelmed, I think is what I'd say.

And get yourself a Neil if you want to take a deep dive in.

Because I know this stuff, but it's nice to have somebody that
can really nerd out for me and tell me where the podcast is going.

Neil McPhedran: Totally.

And I'm happy to talk to anyone, anyone listening out there, just
reach out, my email is in the show notes and I'm happy to chat.

I just want to leave with one thing here 'cause we could keep, I could keep going.

The one thing I would say I'll leave you with for Spotify is download the app.

So you can get the app on the phone, which gives you kind
of like a bite sized chunk of it, but also the comments.

So comments have started, I think about a year ago.

They started on Spotify and they're sort of coming on more and more.

But go in and look at those because you can publish and
you can unpublish, there's an automatic way to do it.

You can also now reply.

So it's like social media.

You can heart a comment, you can reply to it.

What we've seen with shows is by publishing the comments
and replying and liking them, it begets more comments.

So if you get a comment, pounce on it, reply to that person, make sure it's published, make
sure other people can see it in the app because then other people are seeing it in the app.

So I'll leave with that, that the comments are really an interesting
thing that have recently started to be pushed by Spotify.

And I would encourage you all to lean into it and to go into it and look at them in the desktop.

But download the app too, because what it'll do is it'll ping you
when a comment comes in as one of your notifications on your phone.

And you can write then and there, you know, like it, make sure it's
published, and if someone's asking you a question or whatever, reply to it.

Jennifer-Lee: I have one more question now because you just sparked something before we go.

And I was just having this discussion with a client the other day and they
said, why is Apple the only one that you can do reviews on, like written.

And the other ones have engagement like this one's got
comments and hearts but not only that you can do stars.

Which, you know, a lot of podcasts, you'll see that we're like, we got
fifty-five stars on Spotify, but why are there not enough written reviews?

Is that a feature that you think people are going to adopt more or they're going
to stay away and do more engagement type things like comments, hearts, stars?

Neil McPhedran: That's a good question.

I think the big difference is just Apple has decided and focused on reviews at the show level.

So almost like a movie review, TV show review.

Spotify, and then I would say, I'd put YouTube in the mix too, instead of at the
show level, well, to your point in Spotify, you can give it a star at the show level.

Jennifer-Lee: And YouTube you can give it a like or a follow or,

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that's right.

But what Spotify and YouTube is doing it at the episode
level, more of a comment, more of a social media stream.

So think of Spotify comments as reviews.

at the episode level.

So really, a lot of these comments are coming in that
are reviews of the episode versus reviews of the show.

So I would say that's the big difference.

Jennifer-Lee: It's just interesting.

It was a conversation we were trying to gather, successful podcast reviews.

And they were like, why aren't there not other platforms that allow you written ones?

And I was like, I never thought about that because,

Neil McPhedran: That's what Spotify is doing, but
they're just doing it at the episode level instead.

And a lot of these things that come in, even at the episode level are really about the show.

Like I've been a loyal fan of this podcast for a long time.

I really enjoyed communicate techniques you share.

I'm so happy that now in Spotify, I can not only listen, but watch the video.

So.

That really is a show that is a review.

Yeah, that's a show review.

A lot of times that's what it is.

So in the comments in Spotify, they're kind of a mix of comments about that
episode or the guest, but a lot of them are really about the show too, right?

That's just sort of, I think a platform decision.

Spotify is really leaning into this.

Like I think Spotify is really wanting people to use this
more and to be more like a social media, YouTube competitor.

Jennifer-Lee: Well, and we'll leave on this Spotify is
the only one that is a hosting platform and a player.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, and they bought a whole bunch of
analytics tools and now they're gonna sunset some of them.

So there's that too

Jennifer-Lee: Anyways, on that note, talking about how Spotify owns everything.

Well, so thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies
podcast, a podcast for our higher education podcasters.

We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring, not scary at all.

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