Staring at Stats Won't Boost Your Podcast—Trust Me!

There is one common thing that happens to all new podcasters, and it involves your stats.

Welcome to your podcast consultant.

Small lessons with big value.

With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame podcaster is a featured speaker, author, and mentor to thousands.

Now he wants to work with you, your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

So I'm on Facebook and somebody says, I need some advice.

Please.

Has anyone seen a sudden drop in downloads?

I've been tracking ours every week, and for months, we Rarely went below 50 downloads a week.

Some weeks we even hit 100 plus, but for the last four weeks, it's been dropping 33, 25, 22, 11.

We still publish a new episode every week.

We still publish blogs for every episode with a call to action to listen.

We still send weekly email campaigns.

I'm starting to wonder if we're missing something.

Could this be an SEO issue?

Or is there something else I should be checking?

If you've gone through this before, I really appreciate hearing what caused it and how you fixed it.

All right, so here's my answer.

How much time are you spending tracking your stats?

How much time are you spending staring at the stats?

It really.

I get it.

You're new, and we all do that.

We.

Because it.

You can see they even posted the spreadsheet where they went from 113 one week to 28 the next.

Then they went to 108, and then they went to 61.

You're not McDonald's.

And what I mean by that is McDonald's has everything absolutely measured.

This must.

Ketchup, three pickles.

You know, the fries are cooked, X amount of minutes, everything.

So when you go from one McDonald's to the next, it's pretty consistent.

And anything in entertainment is not.

If you look at your favorite actor or actress, they'll have three great movies, and then they don't.

Case in point, Bruce Willis.

You know, and then every podcaster goes through this.

And then the other thing that's really frustrating is you will put out an episode that you kind of go, hmm, should I even put this out?

I'm not sure this is gonna work.

I just did this.

I did an episode about understanding rss, and I was like, wow, this is really nerdy.

And I put it out, and I normally get maybe one email from somebody that says, that was really good.

And so if you're looking for lots of feedback from your audience, at least in my travels of all the shows I do, you rarely get anybody that will email you or et cetera, et cetera.

So I put this thing out about RSS feeds and how, you know, here's why, you need to understand what they are.

And people just shoot themselves in the foot because they don't understand the workflow of a podcast.

I put that out and I was thinking, this is too nerdy.

Nobody's going to enjoy that.

I got probably seven emails going.

I thought I understood rss.

I didn't.

Thank you so much.

And so it's very hard to pick what's going to work and what's not.

And then there are other times when you put things out and you're like, this is going to go gangbusters.

Everybody should love this.

And it's just crickets.

So if you think about it, if we go logically here, the better, you know, your audience, what they need, what they like, what they don't like, etc.

The better the content.

The better the content, the better the chance that they're going to tell a friend.

And that is the one thing I don't hear enough of.

I hear people ask for reviews, Please review us in Apple.

It helps us get found.

I'm sorry, Apple has said.

No, it doesn't.

It is social proof.

Apple said that, not me.

Apple said, it is social proof.

It does not help you with the algorithm.

So I hear a lot of that.

Or I'll hear people give 15 calls to action.

Hey, like me on Instagram, do this on TikTok, this and that, blah, blah, blah, follow me there.

And you've given them way too many calls to action.

I try.

It's hard to give one call to action.

Usually it's find me at the school of podcasting.

But if you're not sure what to do and you're brand new, that should be slowly, specifically and concisely, hey, if you found value in this episode and you know somebody who needs to hear it, why not go to your phone, be a friend and share this episode with your friend and they're just going to think you're amazing for doing that.

And I'm going to get a new listener.

Or you could just send them to my website, podcastconsultant.com or obviously you would put in your website there.

But the thing that I see people do is they obsess over their stats and I get it.

I did it too.

When I first started, I. I can't tell you how many downloads this episode gets because I don't judge my success on downloads.

There are so many other ways it could be feedback.

So this could be anything, like email, voicemail, Comments, you know, active in.

If you have a group, maybe more people join the group.

Maybe it's guest offers, collaborations.

All these things are ways that show you're impacting your audience.

It could be again, lead magnet signups on your email list, just the growth of your news list.

Maybe it's affiliate links, maybe it's donations, maybe it's fun.

Yeah, there's a novel idea.

Maybe you're getting paid in fun.

That is something.

Maybe it's behavior change.

I know in that episode, I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

My buddy Scott Johnson did an episode about somebody had donated their kidney and it saved someone's life.

And because of that episode, multiple people have reached out to Scott to say, hey, I've set it up to donate my organs.

I didn't realize what a great blessing that could be.

And I have other people that are doing their podcast to leave a legacy to their children, their grandchildren and their great grandchildren that has nothing to do with downloads.

And so many times we don't see these other ways that our show, our network, our confidence behind the mic is growing.

And because we only look at downloads, we get downhearted and eventually we quit.

There are so many ways to measure your success that have nothing to do with downloads.

Now, I'm not saying completely ignore them because it's interesting when you put out something that you think it's going to be great and you just get crickets.

And then it's always a nice surprise when you put out something that you're like, I think this will work.

And it just goes gangbusters.

So it's a gauge.

It is one way to measure success.

It is not the only way to to measure success.

And when you're brand new to podcasting, you're going to be checking that dashboard every 10 minutes.

Oh my gosh, we're up to seven downloads and I get that.

And that is totally normal.

Just realize that staring at your stats does not make them grow.

Staring and working with your audience does.

Now, if you need help with this, come out and visit me at School of Podcasting.

Sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription that comes with the 30 day money back guarantee and a lot of one on one coaching with me, along with a great community and step by step courses.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I've been helping podcasters for over 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.