Measuring Your Podcast’s Success

A couple of weeks ago, Jim Cosco wrote a great post about how to make your podcast a success. We produce a podcast every week (well almost every week), and we’re really proud about the audience we’ve built. Within three months we hit the 20K downloads marker, and we’re chipping away at the next 20 thousand. But how do you know if your podcast is really successful? How do you measure its reach? What can you infer from the stats you’re collecting?

BluBrry stats delivers for us

BluBrry.com Stats Shot

We used to use PodPress (a wonderful WordPress plugin) to handle the dirty work of easily deploying and delivering our podcasts to our blog — but also to iTunes. Sure, PodPress was great, and their basic statistics helped us keep track of how many listeners we had. But we really wanted to know more about our audience’s listening habits. What tools do they use for listening? Are they using AppleTV or even downloading it to their BlackBerry?

PodPress worked great, but unfortunately they haven’t had a new release since December of 2007, and I started to get concerned about its long-term viability. I did a lot of research and happened on BluBrry.com.

BluBrry PowerPress WordPress Plugin

BluBrry also offers a great WordPress plugin that works very much like the PodPress plugin and even helps you migrate your old PodPress podcasts to their tool. I also was excited to see that BluBrry has its own podcast community.

What stats add value?

What really differentiates BluBrry’s model is their stats — these are far better than what I used to get with PodPress. I can look at trends for any specific episode, see the overall traction for our weekly podcast, look at what tools our listeners use to access the podcast. It’s great stuff.

I’m also really happy to see that BluBrry charges for an enhanced version of their stats. It’s only $5 a month (if you sign up for a full year, you get two months free) and it’s worth every penny.

Channel stats from BluBrry

Now, we’ve only been using BluBrry for a little over a month, but already I’ve learned some great things. The two most useful pieces of information I’ve gleaned already are that iTunes is the number one place our podcast is downloaded, and that the BlackBerry is a close second. Immediately, I can assume that since we’re targeting high-level CMOs at large companies (many of whom choose the BlackBerry as their enterprise-wide connected device), we might actually be reaching this audience when they’re on the road. Exactly as we’d hoped.

Start measuring today

If you’re blindly producing a podcast and promoting it heavily, I suggest you start using a deeper analytics tool than PodPress today. We spend a lot of time producing each episode, and we want to make sure that our podcast is gaining traction and reaching the right audience. You’ll be surprised at the kind of data something like BluBrry can deliver.

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."