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Podcasting Business School: Podcasting Tips for Content Entrepreneurs
620: Podcast Rankings and top % analytics explained.
00:26:50
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Hi, this is Tim Delaney from the Business Buying for Financial Independence podcast. I hired Adam to help me launch my podcast. This was an idea, a concept that I've had for years, but hiring Adam was the push that I needed to get it over the finish line and officially launched. What would have taken me months, if not years longer took just weeks to get going. Adam provided all of the resources, tools, and support that I needed to get the podcast off the ground and rolling. I've already seen a great success in the number of downloads I've had in the first few episodes because of his tips and tricks and look forward to growing as I release more episodes.
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What's up, pod pals? It's your buddy, Adam, and you are listening to Podcasting Business School. It's a show where I teach podcasters simple strategies to help you grow your audience and turn those audience members into new clients. I'm really excited about this topic. Today, podcast rankings and top percentage analytics explained we're gonna do a deep dive. I've never done an episode like this. I've covered this in little parts and pieces of episodes. There's so much confusion about this. So much confusion. And I'm going to set you straight. You're going to get over a decade of experience and knowledge poured into your brain region on this one. And I'm really excited. I. I think when I start working with people, they come to me saying, hey, I'm. I'm a top whatever percent podcast. What does that even mean? Or I'll get a question like, how do I get my show ranked? So we're definitely going to dive into those things today. Speaking of working with me, if you guys could use a little help with your podcast launch strategy, your monetization strategy, your podcast growth strategy, hit the link in the show notes, get on my podcast profit potential, discovery call calendar. We can talk about working together. All right, so as mentioned, I'm sure you've seen it, I'm sure you've heard it. This is the statement I see pretty much every single day on social media. I've got a top 5% podcast, or I've got a top 1% podcast, and that's just out there. And now here's the thing. I want you all celebrating every single win, small win, big win, all the wins. The problem with a statement like I've got a top 5% podcast is that you are not providing any context, as in top 5%, according to what? Downloads, episode longevity. I don't know, audience. There's a lot of different analytics and Metrics you can be a top 5% in. So we're gonna declutter that so you know exactly what you're talking about, because I know a lot of you have a podcast manager that just feeds that to you and says, hey, your show's top 5%. Or you see something somewhere, or maybe you take something out of context, even that I've said, and you go, oh, Adam says, I'm a top 10% podcaster. So let's announce this to the world. So it's my fault. So today we're gonna really clarify exactly what you are saying there, and I'm gonna give you the ability to add context. All right, I'm excited for this one. Okay, so we're gonna cover four different types of rankings and top percentage analytics. Today I'm gonna talk about the. The ranking charts, the top 100 charts on Apple and Spotify. I'm gonna talk about probably the. The thing that confuses the most podcasters and has the most kind of misleading information, which is your listen notes score. We're gonna talk about average download number, like, where you stand as far as average download numbers. I get that question a lot too. Like, what is good? I. I get. Somebody says, oh, I've got 182 downloads per episode. What does that mean? Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know. We're gonna give you some perspective there. And then we're talking about podcasting longevity and total episodes and where you rank compared to other podcasters in that metric as well. So we're gonna start with the big, exciting one that we're all kind of loosely aware of, and that's the Apple and Spotify top hundred charts. Here's the deal about Apple and Spotify. They're always changing this thing up, like it's located in different locations on their app and on their website. They change the categories. They change. Is it a top 200? Is it a top 100? Some categories, you get an actual ranking. Other categories, it's just like a grouping of. Here are 100 great shows with no specific order. So they don't do a great job of that, which is irritating for us. Here's what I know. All right, I've got four things that I 100% know about Apple and Spotify charts. First thing, getting ranked helps discoverability. If your show pops up on an Apple Top 100 chart in your category or a Spotify Top whatever chart in your category, it seems that that does whatever magic to the algorithm and the search bar. But your show has more Discoverability potential. It's going to help. All right. That's why when I consult on a podcast launch, we always try to get them ranked any way we can. We get them ranked because it helps so much with overall discoverability. So we know that. Another thing we know about these charts is that it is much easier to get ranked in a subcategory. Example, let's say you've got a health podcast. You can be listed in the health category. That's the big parent category. But let's say you talk about mostly nutrition. It's about, like, intermittent fasting or something like that. Then it's much easier to get ranked in the subcategory of health dash nutrition. And when you're in your podcast host, it should give you the opportunity to choose that as a category to be listening. So that's, that's. The next question is, okay, how do we get ranked in a specific category and not another one?
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It's.
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It comes down to what you list your show as in your podcast host. So I host Inside of Libsyn, and when I go into Libsyn, it will ask me, like, what category is your show as you're, you know, loading up a new show? And I have mine listed in business, parent category, subcategory entrepreneurship. Because I know it's much easier for podcasting business school to get ranked in in the subcategory of entrepreneurship. It's a smaller pond. Business is the big pond. Entrepreneurship is the smaller pond. Health is the big pond. Nutrition or fitness is the smaller pond. So in your podcast host, the first category you are listed in is the one you will get ranked in. So go into your podcast host. Even if you have to pause this episode right now, make sure you come back to it, because I got a lot more tips like this. But look at what the first listed category is. Some hosts only allow you to be listed in one. Other ones will allow you to be listed in multiple. But make sure that the one you're really trying to get ranked in is the first one listed. All right. Really important to make sure that's a subcategory, not an overall big category. Now, the nice thing about having that subcategory is you can get ranked in the subcategory and the big category. I had a client that did this, has done this with two shows in a row. I. I have a lot of podcast coaches that I coach, and I show them how to do this with their clients. A lot of podcast managers and people like that shout out to Ryan, he's crushing it. He's got a, a, he helps dentists and he two in a row got ranked in subcategories and the, the big categories like top hundred rankings, I think two of them are in top 50. So he's doing great. So this really works. All right, but make sure that you have that subcategory that you want to get ranked in listed first in your podcast host. Really important. All right, Another thing we know about these charts is that a, a bolus or a big increase in downloads or subscribers in a short period of time helps you get ranked. Now will it keep you on the charts? No. Those shows that are always like top 10, top 20, top 50, they're like always ranked. They're doing big numbers. It'll be a little bit different for each niche. But you can get your, a smaller show ranked if you have a whole bunch of people hit that, that subscribe button and downloading episodes in a short period of time. Example, when I launched one of my shows back in the day, I owned a fitness studio. And when I on launch day, I stood in the front of my fitness studio and everybody that walked through my the door, I grabbed their phone and I subscribed them to my show and I downloaded the four launch episodes and that show debuted at number two in my sub niche category. All right, so did I have millions of downloads? No, but I had, I probably grabbed 100 phones that day and subscribed them all to my show within a 10 hour period. One of my friends had a show that was ranked in the 150ish range on Apple podcasts. He spoke at an event and he said, let's do an experiment. Raise your hand if you do not currently subscribe to my show. There's about 30 people there. And he asked those 30 people to go ahead and subscribe to his show. And let's see, by the end of his presentation if he jumped up in the rankings and he jumped up into the top 100 by the end of his hour presentation. So it took 30 people to go from 150 to top 100 and just that bolus of activity. All right, so that's a way you can kind of gamify your podcast launches. When I'm, when I'm helping people with a launch, when I helping some of my podcast coaches with their clients launches, we really focus on circling the wagons. Do you have 20 people that will hit subscribe on your podcast on launch day? Even if they aren't ideal listeners, Maybe it's family members, friends, coworkers, Whatever it helps you get ranked. That will help your ideal people find you. All right. Last thing I want to mention on Apple and Spotify charts is that ratings and reviews do not seem to help at all with rankings. They're help. They're good in other ways with social proof and things like that. But that's why during a launch protocol, I tell my clients to not even ask for a rating or review. That's a wasted call to action in my opinion on launch week if they only, if most people only do one thing. So I don't want them writing a rating review. I want them hitting subscribe. I want them hitting download on the episodes and sharing it out if possible. So rating and reviews are kind of down the road. Will ask for those later, but they will not as of the time of this recording. As far as I can tell, all the information I have, all the experience I have, they do not help you with getting ranked. Right. Those are a few notes with Apple and Spotify charts. Now, what does this mean for us if your show pops up on one of the charts? I want you to celebrate that. Like I would recommend screenshotting it when I'm doing a launch. And if I've launched a show and I've had it kind of climb up the charts. Like I launched a limited series podcast called Podcast Monetization Tips. You should definitely check it out. Did that a couple years ago and it shot up in the top 50. I think it was like 54, 55 is right behind Russell Brunson's podcast. I was trying to pass him. I couldn't get past him. Dang it, Russell. But I was taking screenshots as I was climbing the charts and it's great for social proof, it's great for sharing. And you can forever say that my show, like Podcasting Business School, pops in and out of the rankings and the entrepreneurship sub niche rankings. I can always say like, hey, this is an Apple top 200 entrepreneurship ranked podcast. It's actually been in the top hundred. So I can always say, hey, Apple top 100 entrepreneurship podcast. You know, is it currently, it may or may not be, but it has been and I've got the screenshots to prove it. So th those things can be shared on social media, your website, et cetera. And it's good social proof. So what does that mean in top whatever percent it means nothing. But it does. Like you can honestly say I have a top whatever ranked Apple or Spotify podcast. And that's cool. And we can, we should be sharing that out all right, let's go to the next area that we can kind of analyze some, some analytics, rankings, et cetera, and that is Listen Notes. Now, I would say with my audience, probably about 50% of you know what Listen Notes is. If not, go to listen notes dot com. All right? And this is a valuable resource, but I'm gonna challenge you to look at it in a different way because most people are misguided when it comes to Listen Notes. So when you go to listennotes.com, enter in your pod the name of your podcast and you're gonna see two things. A Listen score and your global ranking. I think this is where a lot of podcast managers are going to their clients and going, you've got a top 1% show. And I would say that's largely untrue, or a top 10% or top whatever percent show that is misleading. That in my opinion is not true. So the Listen score. First let's. I went on their website and I'm going to read verbatim what they say the Listen score is. So what is listen score? Listen score is a metric that shows the estimated popularity of this podcast compared to other RSS based public podcasts in the world on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher, the more popular. This is calculated from first and third, first and third party data updated monthly. All right, So a Listen score. Also notes that podcasts that publish episodes regularly over long periods tend to score higher. I like this as a metric to look at and try to improve. All right, that's where to me, Listen Notes is valid. Where each category, each niche is gonna be different as to what a good listen score is. But if you have a listen score of 30 and it goes, you know, in the next quarter it goes to 40, you're like, okay, improvement, that's good. Now what I have a problem with is this global ranking. It's misleading because the global ranking doesn't mean a lot of people assume like, oh, like podcasting business school. My listing score right now is 47 and my global rank is 1%. What that global rank does not mean is I have a top 1% podcast. What it does mean is that my Listen score is in the top 1%. All right? So that's where we add that context. So if you want to share something out about this, you, I wouldn't go on and say I, I've got, according to Listen notes, I've got a top 1% podcast. I feel like that's misleading. But I can go according to listen notes. My listen Score of podcasting business school is in the top 1%. That is factual. All right, now here's the kind of misleading thing about the global rank. All right, I'm gonna read verbatim again. What is Global Rank? This podcast is one. Talking about my show. This podcast is one of the top 1% most popular shows out of 3,761,510 podcasts globally ranked by listen score. Now, here's the problem. This is factoring in shows that are inactive because we know that there are only about 600 ish thousand podcasts that can say yes to they've released more than 10 episodes in anything in the last 90 days. So really, there's only about 600,000 episodes. Active podcasts. I did the quick math. 600,000 divided by 3 million. Whatever. The. The big number that I just mentioned, that quick math tells me that we should. If you're releasing, if you've released more than 10 episodes and you've released anything in the last 90 days, you should automatically be in the top 16% on this listen score on the global rank. All right. Just by having an active podcast. So that's where the global rank is really misleading. So I would not go out saying I've got a top 1% podcast only based off of listen notes dot com. What I would say is, hey, my listen score is 47. If I can get it above 50, that's great. All right. And you know, and you can kind of dive in on listen notes.com and look at the listen score and what it's comprised of and all that seems like the more episodes, the more regular episodes, the more they're consumed. There's some different things that go in there. I'll let you guys, if you want to deep dive on that, it's cool. But the key take takeaway is what is your listen score now? Track it, check it every 90 days. Does it go up? Does it go down? Try to improve it. Improvement is good. All right, that is listennotes.com. all right, next metric, average download numbers. I feel like this is where you can really say, I've got a top whatever percent podcast. But we should still add context according to what? So, you know, I've got a top 50% podcast according to downloads per episode. It never hurts to add context to that statement. All right, so this is where, when I'm working with people especially, they like to know, like, okay, Adam, I've heard you talk about different metrics before about top 50%, top 20% according to downloads. Where's my show stand. Help me figure this out. So I'm going to give you five numbers Now. These are. I get these from Rob Walsh, who's been on my show a couple of times, and he was with Libsyn forever. Now he's with Captivate fm, and with his old podcast, he would kind of update these once a month. And this is just kind of a loose representation of the current metric. All right? Let's put it that way. But these are close. These are always really close on the average downloads per episode. So the first one that we always shoot for is 125 downloads per episode. Now what does that mean? That means that if you release an episode today and you measure it 30 days from today, it's at 125 downloads. If your downloads are always hitting that episode after episode at that 30 day mark, 125 downloads per episode is top 50%. 5, 0. Top 50%. You're doing better than half of all podcasters. All right? I love that metric because it should give you all a lot of hope because a lot of you are like, oh, I'm doing 48 or 82 or 99 downloads per episode, and you're sitting there beating yourself up about it. And now you go, well, damn, 125, that's not that far away. And I'll be a top 50%. I'll be doing better than 50% of active podcasts out there. All right? Now the next metric we shoot for, that I feel like is achievable for any, any podcast in any niche, is 1000 per episode. I feel like anybody can do that. If you really work at it, this is possible and it's a great place to be with, especially when it comes to listener to client conversion. 1,000 downloads per episode measured at 30 days is top 20%. Are you doing better than 80% of podcasters? Now past this, I'm gonna give you three bigger numbers. Not everybody can hit these numbers. If you're in a tiny sub niche of a niche, you know, hitting a thousand per episode is. Is really good. And maybe you go above that, but really, like, I don't feel like it's hitting 20,000 downloads. An episode is possible for every single podcast. It's just not. And there's a lot of things that factor into that. Your niche, your. Your experience, your. Do you have a team? Do you have an ad budget? All right, so the two I mainly focus on are the top 50% at 125 downloads per episode and top 20% at a thousand Downloads per episode. I feel like anybody can achieve that. All right, the next three, if you do 5,000 downloads per episode, top 5%. Show, according to downloads, 12,000 downloads per episode, top 2%. Still not giant, though, you know, still not millions per episode. 21,000 downloads per episode, top 1%. Now, I can tell you that some of you are doing that. I 100 know I got a client that's got millions of downloads, and. And she's crushing this. All right? But when you. A lot of you look at, oh, I've got a top 1% listen score. This is where I don't like the listen score, because people say, oh, I've got a top 1% podcast. People will assume you're talking about downloads, but if you. If you're talking about listen score, you might be getting 40 downloads an episode, but an average download top 1% is 21,000 downloads per episode. That's why that listen score can be misleading. Hopefully you're starting to get that now. So according to downloads, I've got a. Whatever, top whatever percent podcast. All right, so that's. Those are our five numbers that you can use as kind of goal post benchmarks as you go down your own podcasting growth journey. Now, last thing, I'm gonna give you a couple metrics that are in line with total episodes, or what I call podcasting longevity. And this is another statement that if. If you're gonna share this on social media, you gotta add the context. All right, so the first stat is getting to episode 10. I know setting the bar low here, y'. All. But only 17% of podcasters make it to episode 10. It's sad. All right, out of all the podcasts that have been launched, only 17% get to episode 10. There was 83% in the graveyard. And that sucks, but it's something to be celebrated once you get past episode 10. Bam. Now, does that mean you've got a top 17% podcast? I would say no. But in terms of longevity, hey, I'm the top 17% according to podcasting longevity. I made it to episode 10. So I would not encourage you to go out there and screaming to the hills. I've got a top 17% podcast. No, no, no, no. But be excited that, hey, I've made it further by. Here's the statement that I want to see on social media. By hitting episode 10, I've made it further than 83% of all podcasters. That's correct. All right, next one. Making it to episode 105%. So I've. By making it to one episode 100 of my podcast. I'm now, in terms of podcasting longevity, I'm doing better than 95% of all podcasts that have ever been launched. Factual. That's correct. All right, so those are just a couple metrics you can look up once past that. But really, like, once we get that, if you get past episode 100, now we're cooking. I talk about this all the time on threads. Like your first hundred episodes are when you learn how to be a podcaster and what your voice is going to be. And, you know, it's a pretty curvy, windy road even past that. But as somebody that's released and created well over a thousand episodes now on multiple shows and multiple niche topics, you know, getting. I. I can tell a huge difference from every show that I've done. I've taken multiple shows past 100, three shows, in fact, past 100. I'm very proud of that. Most people don't get past one. One show past 100. I've done it three times with different shows. And I can tell you that there's a big difference. Episode 101 plus. Right. So that's just something you need to strive to get past. And that's when that, you know, that light at the end of the tunnel of podcasting starts to shine a little bit brighter. All right, so those are a few areas that I hope that I just add some clarity with this one. Again, I want you celebrating, but, like, you know, I understand that we all get hyped up. We hear from somebody, I got a top 5% podcast. We shout it out, but I'm that guy on social media that I will kind of pull you over quietly in the corner and go, hey, we gotta add some context to this so that other people will just call them out. You know, B.S. you don't. You've got 12 people that follow your account. You don't have top 5% podcast. Like, you will get called out by the mean folks. I'm the nice, kind, gentle big brother, Adam. I'll kind of pull you over, say, hey, let's add some contacts to this. Where'd you get this? Oh, it's a listen note. So you should. You should say that you got a top 1% listen notes score. Not a top 1% podcast or whatever. But this is just. These are things that we can celebrate. You should be celebrating if your show gets ranked Napple Spotify charts, that's a huge accomplishment. You should be celebrating if you improve your listen score. Celebrate it. All right. You should be celebrating for every average download per episode metric and benchmark that you passed. And you should for damn sure be celebrating podcasting longevity. All right, so these are four different ways you can celebrate and add context and correctly share the good news out there on social media and to your own podcast audience. I hope this has been helpful again. If you could use a a little bit of Big Brother Adam time and you need a little help with growing your show, getting a clear plan in place for your monetization strategy, for attracting clients with your show, for expanding your audience, hit the show notes and get that link for my podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call. We'll chat for about 20 minutes, talk about how it can help you out when it comes to working together and see if it's a good fit. Pod Pals. I hope this added some clarity and with that I'm gonna send you out into the world. Wishing you health, happiness and many downloads. I'll see you on the next episode. If you need a little bit of help with your podcast launch, growth or monetization strategy, head on over to my website, www.podcastingbusiness.school and get signed up for a free Podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call. During this free 20 minute discovery call session, I'm going to analyze your podcasting brand and tell you where I think you're missing on an opportunity for profits. Next, I'm going to tell you exactly what I suggest that you do as your next step. If I've got an offer that would help you accelerate the process, we can discuss working together as well. So head on over to my website, www.podcastingbusiness school and click on the Discovery Call button to schedule your free.