Post-distribution podcast monitoring is important to understand the performance of episodes across podcasting platforms. It gives an idea of what’s working and what’s not, thus enabling content and delivery optimization.
- Monitor the performance of podcasts.
- Understand listener engagement and retention rates.
- Optimize content based on monitoring data.
Are you a regular podcast creator who is struggling to grow? Perhaps you might be overlooking the power of podcast monitoring. The podcast listener base and engagement rate are high. The number of podcast listeners is expected to grow from 450 million in 2023 to 619 million in 2026.
Graph 1: Podcast Listener Growth (in millions)
Alt text: Podcast listeners are growing at an exponential rate.
If you are still not seeing growth, maybe it’s time for post-distribution podcast monitoring. Keep reading to know why it is important. This article will also guide you with the podcast performance metrics you should monitor.
As a blossoming podcaster, the feeling of hitting the “Publish” button for the first time is an exciting prospect. It implies that you have finally moved a step closer to achieving your goal. However, you might want to stay tuned even after publishing your podcast.
Almost 15% of podcast listeners feel that they cannot find the content they like. It also means that creators are potentially failing to retain and engage a significant proportion of audiences. Monitoring the podcast after publishing can help understand what audiences like the most and the least.
Podcast monitoring is what you would need to stay tuned for. It is important to help you understand your podcast’s performance on the wide web. Feedback, mentions, and quality of the podcast are things to note that you can implement in the future.
This blog explores why monitoring your podcast after publication is key to ensuring sustainable success. You will learn:
- Why post-distribution podcast monitoring is important.
- What performance metrics to focus on when monitoring.
- How you can use podcast monitoring data for content optimization.
What Is Podcast Monitoring?
Podcast monitoring represents the practice where you are keeping track of key performance metrics of your podcast. These metrics can include number of downloads, audience retention and engagement.
Here is a breakdown of the crucial metrics that you need to keep track of when monitoring your podcast’s performance:
- Download numbers & unique listeners
- Performance per episode
- Audience devices and locations
- Mentions & reviews
- Technical aspects
Also, it is important to note that monitoring of podcasts is not the same as podcast promotion or podcast analytics.
Podcast monitoring is more about assessing how your podcast is performing, while promotion helps your podcast reach the right audience, and analytics looks into the data relevant to your podcast. Post-distribution podcast monitoring matters because it helps understand podcast performance. So, you can make informed decisions on content optimization.
Here is a comparative table to explain the differences better.
| Task | Monitoring | Promotion | Analytics |
| Track platform issues | Yes | No | No |
| Collect reviews | Yes | Yes | No |
| Push on social media | No | Yes | No |
| Measure audience growth | Yes | No | Yes |
| Identify audience trends | Yes | No | Yes |
Table 1: Podcast monitoring metrics
If, as a podcaster, you are looking for a podcast monitoring platform, Hubhopper has a built-in system that can be of great aid. It helps you keep track of streams and listens, which episode has been listened to the most, locations of the listeners, and so on.
Why is Podcast Monitoring Important?
Podcast monitoring’s relevance comes from the key insights that you can get from monitoring your podcast’s performance. These key insights include episode performance, reviews and feedback, consistency, and podcast mentions and shares.
Understanding What Works
One of the most relevant metrics to keep in mind is what your podcast works with the listeners. Which podcast episodes are getting the most listeners to tune in, which episodes are being skipped by the most listeners and which episodes have the highest rates of completion, are the questions that you need answered.
Answering these questions will give you the relevant insight into what each episode worked and what did not. Spotting trends will also help you in this context, such as what topic or format of podcast is working the most for the listeners, or if more listeners are tuning in to some specific guests or collaborators.
The following charts show the listening preference of podcast audiences in the US. Performance results like this clearly reveal what genres are working with the followers.
Image 2: Listening hours on podcasts
Alt text: Graph of listening hours across podcast domains
Audience Engagement & Retention
After podcast distribution, listener engagement is the first and most important thing that a podcaster needs to keep track of. Podcasts can tell a compelling story to the listener. Thus, to keep the listeners hooked, engaging them is what a podcaster should strive for.
If you want to be aware of the engagement levels of the listeners, you can start by monitoring the types of ratings your podcast episodes are getting, and what types of reviews and comments the listeners are leaving.
A way in which you can turn audience engagement into retention is by responding to the feedback. Responding to feedback leads to your listeners directly communicating with you, and thus, a feeling of community is built between you and your listeners.
Finally, identifying loyal listeners will also be extremely crucial. Loyal listeners will engage with your podcast the most and are likely to spread the word about your show with enthusiasm.
Platform Consistency
If you want to maintain consistent performance for your podcast, one of the most important tasks to ensure is that you try to connect with as many listeners as possible. Now, how would that work? You just have to ensure that all your podcast episodes are live on multiple platforms.
However, that is not where your role ends. You have to monitor the quality of your podcast distribution on every platform. Detecting any errors such as broken links, incorrect metadata or glitches quickly across all platforms can be essential to maintaining a smooth record of viewership.
Audiences have varying levels of preference for different podcast platforms. Some may spend more time on Apple Podcasts, while others like to use YouTube and Spotify more. So, it’s important to check if podcasts are performing consistently across platforms.
This chart, in the context of listeners in the US, will give you an idea of the gap in the number of audiences across platforms.
Graph 2: Audience gap across podcast platforms
Alt text: Podcast audience
Mentions, Shares, and Reposts
Another factor that a podcaster needs to monitor is how the audience is engaging with your podcast. Mentions, shares, and reposts can be exceptional sources of attention for your show. For example, the podcast 2 Hungry Girls was aimed at promoting the products of Jacobsen.
The success of the podcast was evident by organic distribution to more than 550,000 listeners on social media. The podcast was also downloaded more than 82,000 times. So with performance metrics like this, you know that it is the type of content getting high engagement at present.
Although not monitoring these can also be detrimental to your podcast’s growth. Unauthorized reposts, misuse of the podcasts, or misdirection through misinformation can create negative publicity.
Here is a table reflecting the areas of monitoring focus based on time after publication:
| Time after publication | Focus area for monitoring |
| First 24 hours | Platform issues, number of listeners, and reviews |
| After 3 days | Mentions and reposts on social media |
| After 1 week | Trends in episode performance |
| After 1 month | Subscriber growth, listener retention |
Table 2: Areas of monitoring required post-podcast publication
What are Some Notable Podcast Monitoring Tools?
There are different platforms and tools that you can use for podcast monitoring. And here are some of the notable tools along with their use cases:
| Tool | Function | Best For |
| Chartable | Cross-platform analytics | Per episode performance |
| Podkite | Review aggregation | Tracking feedback and reputation |
| Listen Notes | Mentions, searches | Guest sourcing |
| Podstatus | Global tracking of Apple reviews | International reach |
| Hubhopper | Hour and day-wise episode performance tracking, listener demographics analysis | Reach maximization and content optimisation |
As you may have observed from the table, all of these tools have different functionalities, and for each statistic, you need to use a different tool. However, managing multiple tools of performance measurement can be a challenging prospect.
Instead, you could find that Hubhopper, with its integrated approach, is a one-stop shop for all the aforementioned metrics. Hubhopper offers both brand and media solutions. You can effortlessly monitor every metric on this platform, right after podcast distribution.
The user-friendly and practical features of Hubhopper have satisfied more than 40 brands by amplifying their impact. As many as 20,000 creators trust Hubhopper for the distribution and monetization of their podcasts. Hubhopper has also crafted the best podcast monitoring tools based on its 10+ years of experience in the industry.
What Monitoring Tells You?
Podcast monitoring is not just about performance metrics. Instead, it effectively helps you evaluate the impact of your podcast on the listeners:
- The tone of feedback in real-time, you can understand the sentiment of the users towards your podcast.
- Bugs or glitches hamper the full experience of a user.
- The trends of how listeners have come across your content and how they have perceived your content.
Hubhopper understands this. The platform, therefore, takes a holistic approach to helping new podcasters achieve their dream of success. Different services offered, such as content creation, media buying, and performance marketing, create an environment of complete support for a podcaster.
Almost 24 million hours of content have gone live on Hubhopper. The platform also helped host more than 1,100 million global listeners. Also, you will find over 742 million listens waiting to be explored through Hubhopper. Try the monitoring tools of Hubhopper and view the statistics for your own podcasts.
Ready to Try Podcast Monitoring Tools?
As an up-and-coming podcaster, monitoring will be essential for you to ensure the first steps to success. It is a key to creating an interactive environment, engaging with viewers, knowing which content is being watched more by the audience, and which content is not working, all leading to a level of sustainable growth.
Monitoring can, therefore, be an essential tool to ensure the growth of a podcaster. And post-distribution monitoring is not even a challenging task. Not if you are using a comprehensive platform like Hubhopper. So, the podcast monitoring tool, like the ones available with Hubhopper, will help you do the following:
- Check episode performance and audience engagement.
- Track viewer actions and behaviors for different content.
- Measure the consistency of performance across podcast platforms.
- Optimize future content based on what works and what doesn’t.
Join the 20,000 creators on Hubhopper. Sign up for free today, migrate your podcasts, and start monitoring.