Data-Driven Podcast Growth

Today on episode number 980 of the school of Podcasting. Mary, Mary, your podcast is scary. How do we make it grow? With stats and views and maybe a new attitude. Hang on, I'll tell you what to do.The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in.If you're new to the show, this is why I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast. My website is school of podcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription.And so today, what we're talking about is, and this is it in a nutshell, if you get the right data, you can figure out what you're doing right. And when you know what you're doing right, you can do more of that. Thank you. Good night. It's been nice. Thank you.But this was a presentation I did at Podcast Movement Evolutions, and there's a story behind this that I will share at the end. But the first thing you have to figure out is start with the end in mind. This is from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.And it makes a ton of sense. This. If you are a person that is logically oriented. I am.I mean, not that I'm like, not, you know, emotional, but like, if you can show me exactly how something works and why it works, yeah, you'll have me all day.And so, for example, if I want to get sponsors for my show, they're going to want to know who is listening, how old they are, how much money they make, if they're married, do they have kids, etc. Etc. So if I am looking for sponsors, I need to somehow get that data. Do you get that information from Apple? Nope. Do you get it from Spotify?A little bit. I don't think they give you their age, but they do give you their. No, they do give you an age range. Right.So start with the end of my what do you need? And then let's say I am looking for sponsorships.Now, for the record, remember that if you want one of the big, big, big, big sponsors, you know, the mattress people, the better help to the world that 90% of you do not have enough downloads. A lot of times people spend that, you know, 10% of podcasters can get a big spot, yet 90% of you don't.Not to be a big downer, but I like to, I don't know, reveal reality sometimes to people. So you're Saying, I got a chance. So keep that in mind. It doesn't mean you can't have a sponsor.Means you can't have a big, big, big, big sponsor, probably, but show them the data. Hey, here's. Here's who I have. Here's what I want. And that's just for sponsors. So keep that in mind, whatever you're trying to do.If you're trying to get people on your show, then make a page that shows all the previous guests. And my, you know, podpage does this automatically. And I work for them. I'm the head of podcasting over at PodPage.It's a great way to make a website without having to learn how to code. So all sorts of data can be used to do things. But data or data, take your pick, is your superpower.It is what you can use to figure out what's working and what's not. Now, here's the thing. Here are a couple ways you can get data. Data, take your pick. Number one, Apple Podcast Connect it is.And I'll have links to all these out in the show notes. So if you're like, wait, I can't remember all these.And I am kind of giving you a list, and anytime you give somebody a list, that list should be in your show notes. So today this is episode number 980, which means I should start thinking about what to do with episode 1000.But at any rate, the links will be out there for that. And so here they are, podcasts with an s connect.apple.com so here you can see how far people are listening.And I will tell you right now, be careful what you wish for, because there are times when I've helped people get in there, the first time they go, I'm getting a 37%. Is that good?And I go, I'm an old teacher, where 100, you know, 90 is an A, 80 is a B, 70 is a C, 60 is a D, and anything below 60 is an F, and you have a 39. And then I watch them do the math and I go, but the good news is you can fix that. So keep that in mind.Podcasters, again with an s.Spotify.com will show you how far people listen, but it will also show you their demographics. So how old they are. Are they male, female, other, etc. Etc. Podcasters.Amazon.com is pretty much exactly like Spotify.They don't show you age information, but they will show you how far people listen. If you get enough people to listen on Amazon, and for most of my shows.I for whatever reason I know Amazon is huge in India but for my listeners, nobody's listening on Amazon Music, which is a bummer. I wish Amazon kind of part of that.I think the problem with Amazon is when you go to there, the first thing they do and I mean the minute you hit that page they're like sign up now for Amazon Music. And you're like, look, I'm just trying to figure it out, like how to log in and stuff. They're a little aggressive on sign up for Amazon Music.Another one is analytics.google.com better known as Google Analytics.And this shows you what is happening on your website because you might find out that hey, there's a really popular episode that you can see in your media host. We'll get to that in a second. And it's not really showing that popular on my website.Maybe you have a really horrible title like episode 16, name of show, something like that. But Google Analytics can show you what is working on your website. And I have an exercise you can do with that.I'll be talking about a little later that I was amazed at how well it worked.If you have your show on YouTube you can go into YouTube studio and see again how far people listen, how far people or how people found you what you had for lunch last Tuesday when it was a full moon. I mean there are tons of stats in YouTube studio and then your media host and most media hosts will give you access to your downloads.So you can see what's the most popular. You can see where your audience is.So how many people in Stan are listening to your show and things of that nature, which is kind of handy if you plan on going on tour, you can say because some of them you'll actually see the cities.And so if you plan on doing a live tour or if you just want to drive around the country and RV and talk to your people like my buddy Glenn the geek did many moons ago with Horse Radio Network. You know, why not go where people are? That would make sense.And then the last one and I do not understand why every single one of you is not doing this. And that is an audience survey. Whether this via Google forms. Again, it's building the pod page tally. So you know, gee, my show isn't growing.Wouldn't step number one be ask the people that are consuming it? That that doesn't seem like that far of a stretch to like how can we make this better?You know, if you were a restaurant and you kept giving people bread and nobody ate it Wouldn't the first thing you do go, hey, how come you're not eating the bread? And they'd go, oh, there's no salt in it. Oh, we can fix that.And I realize the biggest reason I think, is there are two reasons why I think people don't do audience surveys. Number one, you are deathly afraid that if you ask for feedback, you will get zero. And that's a thing that happens. But that in itself is feedback.When you think about it, that's feedback. It's not the feedback we want. But if you're like, I asked for people to fill it out, and I waited two months, and I still had zero responses.Well, I would say we need to change something with the show, because we can't even get one person to tell you, hey, this isn't very good, or, hey, I really, really love this show, but those are the different ways right now that you can get feedback. Now, there is one other one, and that's going where your audience is.So, for me, because I do a podcast about podcasting, I go to podcast events, and occasionally I will bump into somebody who said, hey, I listened to your show. And I go, oh, thank you so much. And then I'd give them a quick survey. What do you like about it? What do you wish I would change?And the key to that is to shut up. Like, so, what do you like about it? And then shut up. And they will tell you, and then go, is there anything you wish I would change?And they'll go, no, I love the whole thing. And then you. You just embrace the awkward silence and hope that they'll give you something. But those are all the different places.Now, I know you're like, dave, that is eight different places to go to get the information. Ugh. It's so much work. I have to click a mouse. Dave, you want me to click a mouse and click a mouse again. Are you kidding me? I get it. Do you eat?I eat food. You know, the food stuff. Do you do that? I do that. And. And it is so annoying when you go into a grocery store and you've got your list. I need bread.I need ice cream. I need hamburger. I need, you know, whatever. Potato chips, eggs, et cetera. And it is so annoying that they are not all in the same aisle.Have you ever been there? You're like, wait a minute. I got to go to the dairy aisle to get eggs, and then I got to walk all the way over here to get green beans. Ugh.And yet we do it. Why? Because we want to eat. Eating helps us live. If we don't eat, we tend to die. Most of us, I believe.So this is data that can help you live, that can help you wait, not waste your time, help you figure out what's working. You just have to go to a few places to do it. And I know that involves clicking on a mouse, or you could just waste your time. Take your pick.So think about this. You want to make a good first impression on your website and you can do things like feature episodes on your front page. Why? Why would you do that?Because you want to make a good first impression. Why not go into your media host? I like Captivate, Buzzsprout, blueberry, Libsyn. Those are those. I know you're like, but what about Spotify?Yeah, not my favorite at all, free media hosts. But you can go in and find out what really worked. And why not put those on the front page? Because now think about it.Somebody finds your show and you have a little featured episode section and they click on it like, oh, this is really good. And how do you know it's really good? Because a lot of people clicked on it. And again, this is where maybe you go into Apple and.And see what has the highest completion rate. The idea is this is the first impression and you want it to be good.And look, I know right now I want this to be the best episode ever, but sometimes your latest episode is not your best episode ever. How do you know? Go into these places and find out what's the best stuff.And if you want to have a featured section, base it on what you know works and put that up front. Now there are a couple different places you can see stats, and we're going to talk about Spotify. I know I just said to Spotify.I don't mind them where, you know, if you want to listen to me on Spotify, I just want to host my show there.They're run by the music business and they're kind of a bunch of weasels and they like to do things that benefit Spotify, which makes sense because it's a business. But anyway, so first of all, we're going to talk about show stats. There are. There's show information and there's episode information.So right now we're talking about your show and you can go into Spotify's dashboard and you can see how many people have downloaded and then they have a bunch of weird words. And this is where John Spurlock, who's a big giant nerd, and does Opie 3 stats, which is free.And he's kind of saying, hey, can we all get on the same page? Kind of a podcasting 2.0 thing, so that we could all kind of get all this information in one place. John's a great guy.I met him briefly at Evolutions and very tall. And I was like, okay. And it's a great idea.He's got a long road to get this to work, but I like it because he's approaching it from an app standpoint. Because a lot of times the app people kind of get lost in the shuffle here. But when you look at your stats, you'll see one stat called Starts.Well, as you might imagine, that's how many times somebody pressed play. And then you see streams, and you're like, wait, what's the difference between a start and a stream?A stream is how many times somebody listened to 60 seconds or more in Spotify. So, for instance, I'm looking at a screen and this is where we go with numbers in an audio podcast. But I had 121,000 streams, but 259,000 starts.So that means a bunch of people click start, but not all of them made it to the 62nd mark. You also have a listener stat. That is how many actual people. So you could have a number of people.And then some of them click start more than once, obviously. And then some of them made it to 60 seconds, and then followers is the number we really want. We really want followers.Now, in Spotify, you can see how many people are male, how many people are female, how many people are really confused, not sure. Not there's one. Just. I don't know. So whatever it is. And then you can go in and see their age groups. And so it's 0 to 17, 18 to 22, 25 to 27.I'm sorry, 23 to 27. Apparently, Dave needs new glasses, et cetera, et cetera. So you get that. And that's for the show. All of your episodes put together.And then in Spotify, they have a cool thing. We just did an episode of Ask the Podcast Coach, talking about, should you have episodic artwork? And I am of the camp. Yeah.Because it's, I don't know, a minute and a half to make.Make yourself a quick little template that has your logo and your colors, and you go in and you add a new background, you change the title and you're done. And it just, you know, it kind of catches your eye in a way.And so in Spotify, and that's the only place you can get this you can see how many people your podcast was put in front of. So on the screen that I'm looking at right Now, I had 131 people in 30 days. Then how many people showed intent? That means they clicked on it.And that in this case was 19.And then how many people actually clicked on play was 14, which is again sometimes dismal because you're like, wait, this got in front of 131 people and only 14 people clicked on it. Yes, that's exactly what that means.And that's where you go, maybe it's the title of your episode, maybe it's the description of your episode, maybe it's the artwork, but it's something that you can measure, which means it can be something that can be improved. You just have to watch it.But you have to be careful with that because if you spend all day looking at your stats and not looking at your audience, although in a way you are looking at your audience, you can really get lost in the numbers. So be careful with that. And then in Spotify, you can see, where did people find your content? Was it on the Spotify home?In my case, it was way more in Spotify Search. That's where titles come into play again. And nobody's searching for episode 16 and then the Spotify library and then other Spotify features.And so I saw in mine where I had a big old Spike on March 18, and I looked at the title of the episode and I was talking about video shorts versus video longs on Ask the Podcast Coach, and that caused a bit of a spike. So you can see what's working. So you can do more of that. That's all in the show stats. We're not talking episodes yet.You can then click into an episode and you get the same exact stuff. How many people started it, how many people went 60 seconds, how many unique listeners you had.And again, be careful because you can see how far people listen. Now, when you look at these kind of graphs, it looks like a big giant hill.And at the beginning of it, people are just diving off left and right, so it looks like Niagara Falls, this huge just slope.And that's because this is where seeing how many followers you have, your followers are going to skip your intro because they've heard me a million times say, podcasting since 2005, I'm your award winning, blah, blah, blah. So they skip that. And so that's kind of normal. But you will see how far people listen. And again, I'm an old teacher.I am almost happy with 70%, because that's a C. I'm really shooting for 80s and 90s.The other thing you want to do, and I'm just throwing this in as bonus, kind of because we're talking about Spotify, but this also applies to all the other apps, and that is, Please, for the love of God, quit saying find me wherever you find your podcast.This week on Ask the Podcast Coach, I did this live by accident, but it proves that, that when you search for a podcast in Spotify, Apple's a little better, but there this still happens. And I searched for the future of podcasting that show.So I went to Spotify, and call me crazy, I typed in future of podcasting, and you know what came up? Nothing. A bunch of stuff that wasn't future of podcasting. And I was like, ugh.So if you're, you know, there might be somebody in, you know, my listening realm, and I said, hey, find me wherever you find your podcast. They type in future of podcasting nothing. And then they. Well, that's. Maybe I do that. No, you know, and guess what? They've already left.And you go, but maybe they tried again. No, they didn't. They left. They left because there was too much friction. And so I went back because it was my show. I'm like, what the heck?And I typed in the future of podcasting, and it came up. So please quit saying find me wherever you find your podcast and instead make a page on your website.I would make it slash follow, because, you know, that's what the kids call it and have a link to Apple and Spotify. And I heart if you want to look cool. Although I don't get much traffic over there. Probably overcast. And Pocket Cast.Pocket Cast right now is my favorite app. I love that. If I have time, I'll tell you about that. If not, we'll talk about that in the future. But I'm just here to tell you.And while we're at it, I heard somebody say this today, and so I'm just going to let you know. Ratings and reviews do not help you get found in Apple. They are social proof, but they do not help you up the charts. Per Apple. Per Apple.Apple said that, not Dave Jackson. I'm just repeating it. Ratings and reviews do not help you move up the chart. So please quit saying that. Anonymous podcast guru. I don't know, man.I can't take it anymore. Some other things you can do if you need your link, because I just said it's hard to find one.Well, when you find it, you can go into these places and get the link to your show. And again, not making this a giant pod page commercial, but you'll understand why this is in here.You can basically go into pod page under settings and go to podcast player links and copy and paste the link in there and then we make a slash follow page for you. All right. Podcast connect.apple.com as I've mentioned again, they do make some really cool marketing stuff for you.They make a QR code so if you want to promote your stuff on that. But they, they give you a bunch of analytics. So followers again, are those people that. You guessed it. I know. Shocking.Follow your show A listener is the total number of people that listen to your show. Engaged listeners. Now this is a stat that I want to watch.This is people who have listened to at least 40% of your episode or at least 20 minutes, whichever one comes first. So yeah, that's the people we want. Plays is the total number of times people press play on your episode.So if you have a listener and it takes them three times to get through your episode because they had to go to the dentist, that's one listener, three plays. Then they show you your top countries again, I guess if you want to go on tour and the top cities. So keep that in mind.You have followers, Listeners, engaged listeners and plays. Now you can also see how, how many people are following your show. Not so much how many, but the percentage.It's 86% in the slide I'm looking at and that's not too shabby. Again, that's a B. It's almost an A. I want that 90%.So if you're listening to this in Apple podcasts, hey, go up and click on the plus, sign the plus button and take a peek at that. But you can go in. And again, Apple likes things very pretty. So they make great looking graphs.So you can say, hey, show me a graph over this month and show me how my followers went. Is it going up or is it going down? You can go in as well and do that for listeners. You can really dig into your stats and see what's going on.But you can also. So that's for the show. Again. Remember, there is show data and then there's episode data.And you can go into the episodes and I can see where just on the front page of this, I have a lot of 70s, 72, 75, 79. I do have 169, that's a D. But I also have a couple 88s. I got a 92, I got a 77. I'll take that. And then you can also go in.And if you're an Excel nerd, I'm an Excel nerd. I taught Microsoft Excel for a decade. And if you are a person that wants to really go in and crunch the numbers, you can download that.And so I can see how many people were engaged. And again, your mileage may vary. Be careful because it might kind of kick you where it counts.But what I love is you can go into a graph and again, just like in Spotify, it shows you how far people listened. And what's interesting is, again, you're gonna have a huge drop off at the beginning from all your followers.And you can also see the minute you say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in, people are gone. Like, you don't even get a chance. That's why if you ever wonder why I do my advertising for me in the middle of the show, why do I do that?Dave, you interrupted an interview to talk about you. Ugh. Well, I know I appre. I know it's not the best place.I have been waiting till the interview was over as of recent, but it's usually around the 20 minute mark. Why? Because I feel like it. That's really the science behind it. Dave, why did you pick the middle of the show? I felt like it.It's my show, but I always try to tease up an ad. So I'll be like, hey, in a minute I'm going to tell you how to turn dog poop into gold right after this. And then I play the ad.And I'm hoping you will stick around to hear that. And thank you, Steve Martin. And you can go in.I can see in this graph where I ran my ad because there's a little dip where those people who don't have the phone in their pocket go, hold on. And they hit the old 62nd skip. So I can see that and you can see how much of your audience is doing that. So again, what does this mean?Well, if that number was drastic, now on mine, it's not. It's. It's, you know, it's. It's down a little bit, but they also come right back up. That's the beauty of it.But if I had a big old people just skipping everything, I would then look at, hmm, maybe I need to work on how I'm delivering ads. Or maybe my ads are, I don't know, zero relevant to my audience and they're all like, I don't do this. And they're skipping.So these are things you can do with that. You can also go into Apple Podcasts and see the median. Yay. Fun with math. That's the midpoint.That means 50% of items get more than this and 50% get less. The average is. You guessed it. Yeah. Huh. The average. And then you can see your top episode. So I can go into Apple Podcasts and say, show me the median.And then show me this episode. This episode and this one. And ah, yeah, that one too. And then you can see how do you measure up to that 50% mark?And again, not always a happy time to look at those kind of stats, but that's why we're looking at them. It's not that we like rejoice in bad numbers, but it is a thing to go, all right, I've got some work to do.And then you can come back later and look at these. If you compare it to your top episode, that is a bit of a kick in the pants, but you want to see how it compares.Again, the best way to find out how you're doing is to ask your audience. So keep that in mind. This one really hurts. If you're an Apple podcast and you see the information. Not enough data or data. Take your pick.Message and analytics. Not enough data Message in analytics, your show has not met the data threshold for the time frame specified.At least five unique listeners must play content for your show within the selected time frame for analytics metrics you selected. Which means you don't even have five people listening to this.Now this is one of the things you want to do when you go into these different places to look at stats, there's usually a little dropdown where you can pick last seven days, last 30 days, last 90 days.And so in some cases, if it's not five listeners, if you're a brand new show, that might be normal for seven days, but it's when you go all time, like show me all time stats and you still get the not enough data. That hurts. I'm not going to lie.Like, I haven't really had five listeners, but you know, depending on where you're at now when we look at Amazon, it is. I'm not going to repeat it. It's the same stuff I just said plays listeners, people that listen longer than 60 seconds. But here's some things.If you're on Amazon Music and your audience is older and they like the woman in the tube who I will refer to as Lexi, so we don't trigger yours, you can say things like, Lexi, play the podcast and then give the Title. Now, that does not always work. There are many times when I ask Lexi to play the school of podcasting, and she will play the school of nursing.And I'm like, where did I say nursing? You can also navigate between episodes. You can say, lexi, play the next episode, play the latest episode. All sorts of fun. Lexi, fast forward, rewind.It's pretty handy. Keep that in mind if you're on Amazon Music. They will do that on Amazon Music.Now, one of the things I love about pocketcast is you can install the Pocket Cast app on your device from Amazon and say, hey, Lexi, open. Oh, I almost said it. Pocket Cast. And she will say, would you like to continue listening to the latest episode? Whichever one is there. And it's.It's beautiful. But that is something. If you're not on Amazon Music, it's Amazon wouldn't hurt.Now, the next place that we've talked about, different places you can get stats, is Google Analytics. And here's the beauty of Google Analytics. It is free. Absolutely free. You copy and paste a bit of code onto your website. You do have a website, right?I had some people this week I was working with, and I was like, oh, if I want to send people to your stuff, like, what's your website? And their answer was, I don't have one. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yep, don't have one. And I'm like, but like, how do you.And they're like, oh, we go by word of mouth. We do a lot of business just by referrals. And I'm like, well, that's great. But just think how much more you would have if you had a website. You.You got to be kidding me. What year is it? And I don't mean a link in bio link tree.No, but anyway, Google Analytics, you've heard of them, Google, you can go in and I'm here to tell you, you can see some insane stuff. And I can see. Here's the one. You guys ready? This is something you can do today. And I'm here to tell you it works because I thought, really?And then I did it and it was like, oh, now it's not again, bazillions of people. But if you're used to getting zero people to your newsletter, do this. You ready? It's easy. Go into Google Analytics.Now, hopefully you've had it on your website this whole time. If not, put it on your website today. You're looking at, I don't know, 20 minutes because you're learning it, but it really is just copy and paste.And now Google will start standing, sending you stuff, and you can go in and say, hey, show me the top pages on my website. And you can even say, give me the top 10. And so my one of my top ones is still me. Bashing anchor.Before it was Spotify for podcasters because it's horrible, in my opinion. And then I had other things about how to take phone calls on a podcast and blah, blah, blah, whatever your list is, find them and make a lead magnet.Now, a lead magnet is something that is quick, it's short, it's to the point, and it solves a problem. And so I have one about how to take phone calls on a podcast, which basically says, what are you, Phil Donahue, who takes phone calls on a podcast?Use these other tools. Because if you actually want to take phone calls on a podcast, it's a little more complicated. But I made lead magnets, little ones.And, and the one, I think it was that one, the. The one about taking phone calls on a podcast. But I just remember thinking, I can't come up with a lead magnet for this.I don't understand what problem I'm solving. And so I just simply put, would you like a PDF of this post? Click here and download the PDF today.Now, you know that I know that you know that I know you could simply bookmark that page and come back to it anytime you want. But instead I had a handful of people that said, yeah, I'll take the PDF.And I'm like, okay, so that's an easy one with Google Analytics is to see what's working on the website. What are you can also see in Google's dashboard, not in analytics, but the actual Webmaster dashboard. So that would be source number nine.You can see what people are searching for to find you so you can do more of that. And so Google Analytics can be really handy in terms of what is working on the web so that you get another data set to go.Huh, I didn't realize that I have a really popular page on blog talk radio that still gets traffic. And blog talk radio has been dead for the better part of six months, maybe longer. But you get these pages and it can help see what's doing.And I'm here to tell you, do that. Find your top five then on Google Analytics and make sure that you have a lead magnet on that. Why? Because you're playing in traffic.I know mom said don't play in traffic. I'm here to tell you, no, play in traffic. Make a lead magnet for that episode.And you will get more people on your email list than you did before you did that. Guarantee it. I was really surprised when I did that. So find your pages and do that. Now.Another thing you can do with Google Analytics, and I'll put a link to this is I did an episode a while ago on Utms. This was way back on episode number 896, back in the day. And URL stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Utm. Excuse me.URL is your website and you can easily make these. It's a piece of cake. And I'll put a link to the UTM maker from Google.It is ugly, it is gray, but you basically can go in and put in the website that you're sending people to. They ask for a campaign. So that could be really anything you want. That one is optional. But they have a campaign source.So this could be like newsletter, website, whatever.And so a lot of times I will put podcast, then an ask for the medium, and I will say, you know, there are all sorts of different ways you could do this. I could put podcast there. It is a little confusing. I will not lie there. I'm like, hmm, what do I put there?And I kind of go, take two minutes and figure out how you're going to fill these out and make a note and then just be consistent. So maybe the campaign source is the episode number and the medium is podcast.And then the campaign name, and then you're like, oh, wait, is the campaign name the same thing as the campaign source? And that's where I always get a little confused.And so I have a yellow sticky note that I will make and put on my computer so I can fill these out consistently. That way I can see where my traffic is coming from. The old joke is 50% of my marketing works. I just can't tell which 50%.And this will help you see, this is where I did episodes a bit ago about how my newsletter is driving more traffic than social media. A lot more. And how do I know that? Because I started using these. And the whole point again is to find out what's working so you can do more of that.So do I spend more time on my newsletter now than I do on my social media? You bet. And when I did my audience survey, I spend a lot of time on Facebook and X because I'm old.And it turns out a lot of my audience is on LinkedIn and I, I am trying to get into LinkedIn. Every time I log into LinkedIn, somebody wants to shoot me to the top of Apple charts, sign here.And I'm like, ugh, it's just not a great experience on me. But I realize that's where my audience is.And how do you grow your audience, figuring out who your audience is, finding out where they are and you go there and make friends and then you tell them about your show. And so I was able to see where I got more traffic from Substack right now I have a newsletter on that. I got 10 people from Chat GPT.I had 10 people came to my website from my signature. So there's something you can do right now that again, I'm 10 is better than a poke in the eye. Most things are.But put a link to your website in your email signature because somebody will read this and even if they skip by what you said, they see that link at the bottom, they will click on it. And if you want to learn more about Google Analytics, they have an Analytics Academy.So if you just Google the phrase Google Analytics Academy, it's a free course and you can take that. So keep that in mind. And I've kind of been hinting at the last one.And again, I will just beat this dog, which is a very weird saying, or beat the horse or whatever. I'm just here to tell you, do an audience survey.If you don't know how to do an audience survey, I strongly urge you to read the book the Audience is Listening by Tom Webster. It is an amazing book. The tagline A little guide to building a big podcast. And I'll have links to that out in the show notes.And if you have PodPage, you will see where the built in audience survey in PodPage with Tom Webster's approval is using many of the questions in that book.But you do have to be aware of the mom test, right There is a book by Rob Fitzpatrick and I just heard about this book and it talks about how even when you ask your audience, this is where I kind of like it to, where at the very end they can remain anonymous because if they've really just pooped all over your show, they may not want you to know it came from them because you know it was your cousin Ernie. But you can leave them anonymous or you can have them if they want to optionally sign in.And there are people like mom that will say, oh, this is amazing, it's awesome. And they're saying that to your face. Whereas if you let them be anonymous, maybe they'll be a little more honest.And that gives you again the opportunity to better your show when your show is better. Then you get more downloads, you'll have more. You're. You're more likely. I'll give you an example I had, and he's such a nice man.But I went to a church and the pastor was old. There's no other way to say that.And it's going to happen to me someday when I'm behind the mic and I'm not making any sense, because, you know, there's a hole in the marble bag. It's going to happen to all of us.And consequently, you know, when you go to a church, the message part of the service is a good 20 to 30% of your service. And if that's awful, the likelihood of the people attending that service saying, you need to come here. Our pastor, he's amazing, is pretty low.And so we replaced him and with his kind of blessing and attendance is up because the value delivered at that church is more than it used to be. And people are more likely to recommend something that is good.And that doesn't mean your show is awful, but you do need to be better than average, maybe if you really want people to stand out.My favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney, said, if you want to be remarkable or no, if you want to be memorable, you have to write songs that are easy to remember, because back then they couldn't just record it into their phone. So when he and John Lennon were writing songs for the Beatles, the way they remembered them was writing songs that were memorable.And so if you want people to tell their friends about the show, you know, you have to make things that are remarkable, meaning your friends will make remarks about your show. And that's not as easy as it sounds. So we went over all these sources. We saw what they can give you, right?So your media host can give you downloads and see what's popular there and where it's coming from. Your Apple and Spotify can show you how many followers you have and how far people listen.Your Google Analytics can show you what's working on your website because that may not always be in tune with what's going on with your media hosts and Apple Podcasts. YouTube Studio can show you how far people view. And keep in mind, you got to go review what is a view on YouTube. I know YouTube shorts.If I do this, I'm going to tap on the mic. You ready for this? If I do this, that long counts as a view. On a YouTube short, there is no small like you. Like zero is a view.If somebody presses the button on YouTube for. For a millisecond, it counts as a view, which I think is kind of silly.So you have to be careful with that, because there are times when people like, man, I got a hundred thousand views on my YouTube short. Yeah, that's. You really want to go over. And from what I understand on YouTube, a completion that's good is 50%.Now, does that mean I feel good when I get 50%? No. Why? Because I am Dave Jackson. I want 90s, I want 80s, 70s. I'm like, but 53 to me is an F. And I said, there was a story behind this presentation.And I'm going to tell you the behind the scenes of how this came about right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that presentation was supposed to be delivered by the one and only Brennan Mulligan, the founder and lead developer at PodPage.And I was there working the PodPage booth, and he called me about two days before the day that presentation was.He's like, hey, my kids are sick and I may not be able to leave because leaving two children, very, very young children sick with your spouse is not going to go over well with that spouse. I was like, okay. He's like, so we might need a plan B. He called me the next day and said, yep, we're going with plan B because now my wife is sick.And I said, that's great. Just send me the slides. And he had not finished them yet.And I said, can you send me an outline and just do your presentation into, like, a video, like a loom video or a tele video? And he did that. And I grabbed an old presentation I had with some stats, Frankensteined it together, and there it was.And I had people, which was nice. Gave me some great feedback at the end of this presentation. And I'm here to tell you, number one, I wasn't really freaking out.If somebody had said, oh, by the way, you're doing a presentation tomorrow and you find out like a half a day beforehand, I would have been freaking out. But because of my background, number one, I was a teacher for many years in the corporate world.And because I've been making content on a weekly basis for 20 years now as a podcaster, that I was like, okay, what's the outline? How many minutes do we get? 20 minutes. Great. And I timed it, did this and that, threw in a couple things, came up with the grocery store analogy.I was like, that's not bad. I like that. Okay. And off we go.And so one of the benefits of podcasting, that isn't money, that isn't growing your network, that isn't all the other things is just the fact that you get pretty good at making content or you. You do not freak out in the face of, hey, guess what, you got to do something quickly and it's going to happen now.I've had to do that a couple times where people are like, oh, you're speaking in 15 minutes. I'm like, on what? And I don't freak out because 15 minutes is nothing when you're used to making content. So you can always go to Toastmasters. Right?That's a great way to practice on your speaking. And if you're new to it, I would recommend that I went to a meeting once. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool.But again, being that I'd been teaching for 10 years, I was like, maybe not really for me, but that doesn't mean I can't improve. I'm always open for criticism and comments because I am of the mindset that there's always room for constant improvement.But that is a benefit, and that's the story behind that. So what you just heard was something that I put together based on Brennan's concept.And his concept was if you look at the data, you can find out what works so you can do more of that, which will grow your audience. And so that's what that presentation was based on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, it is on its way. I mentioned this months ago.I interviewed Steve Stewart about running your podcast as a business and I've hit a bunch of snags and I think now that Easter is over, hope you had a great Easter, that I can kind of get back to normal and pound that episode out. I'm always open to ideas. So if you're like, Dave, I wish you would talk about this, I would love to hear it. I really am.And if you're like, ah, you probably already talked about it. Nah, I'd still like to hear it because sometimes I can come up with a different angle than the last time I talked about it. So keep that in mind.You can always go out to schoolofpodcasting.com, you'll see there's a contact option there, along with the ability to sign up and take advantage of that 30 day money back guarantee, where if you don't like it within 30 days, yeah, I'll give you your money back. And it's not that much money because you use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription. I'm Dave Jackson.I help podcasters. It's what I do. And I can't wait to see what we're going to do together. Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.