197 | 2 Things That Make Podcast Downloads Go Up

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmitland, I am your podcast growth coach and today we are going to talk about the misconception that you probably have about your download numbers. So recently I was chatting with a Grow the Show Academy student and they came to me and asked if I would review their recent podcast episodes and that's because over the past month they've published a few podcast episodes. One of them got 100 downloads and the other one got 500 downloads. So the student came to me and they said, hey Kevin, I want to find out why the 500 download episode was better than the one that got 100 downloads. I said happy to help, happy to dive in, but I knew that we were not going to be talking about episode quality in that session. And that's because this student had a very common misconception that podcasters have, which is this. Oh, the episodes of mine that got the highest downloads must be the better episode. And this is not true at all. I have seen many times that a podcast's best, most highest quality, most interesting episode has the least amount of downloads or at least not the most. Why is that? Well, the reason is downloads are not in indication of whether or not an episode was good. Completion rate is the metric that tells you whether your episode is good. Completion rate is the metric where you can see on average, what percentage of the episode did most people listen to? If your completion rates are below 65%, that means your episodes are not good. People are turning your episode off. If your completion rates are above 65%, that means you're doing a good job of keeping people's attention and they're sticking around because your show is good. So completion rate is the metric that determines whether or not your podcast is good. Downloads is actually determined by your packaging and your promotion. So there's two things that impact episodes that get a high number of downloads. And I have experienced this firsthand. This is originally actually how I learned this. Back in the day when I had a podcast about my home city of Philadelphia, there was an entire year where my most heavily downloaded episode was actually the worst episode of my show. Why is that? Well, it just so happened that the worst episode that I have ever published, it was one of those where like I interviewed the guy. He was a total jerk. I listened back and I was like, man, this episode really sucks. I shouldn't publish this, but I was like, I need to publish. I can't miss a week. I have to put something out. So I published the episode anyway. Little did I know that week, the local newspaper was going to promote my live event that was coming up in a couple months. So while the worst episode I have ever put out was on top of the feed and it was the most recent episode, the newspaper did a story about my show, thousands of people found out about my show for the first time. And what did they do? They went and listened to the very first episode on the feed, which was the worst. And I know firsthand of people who listened to that episode were like, wow, this actually is not that good and never listened to the podcast ever again. I've met some of them. Yes, that episode had the highest amount of downloads on my feed for a long time. For like a year, it was my top downloaded episode, which sucked. I hated to see it. So here you can see that in that case, promotion impacted downloads. If one episode is better promoted than the other episode, it'll be downloaded more. Another example where I see podcasters experience this and it's puzzling to them is they have two guests on their podcast. Guest number one is a huge name, a big name that they've been trying to get on their show for a long time. Guest number two is a name that really nobody ever knows. It's an up and coming person who has a lot to prove, but nobody knows their name yet. For some reason, when you publish these episodes, you'll find that the huge name doesn't get a lot of downloads and the up and comeer gets a ton of downloads. Why is that? The huge name is not going to promote their episode of your podcast. They're on a bajillion podcasts and they're not promoting the podcast that they go on. They're doing you a favor by coming on your show. The up and comeer, the person who has something to prove, they are going to scream from the rooftops that they've been on your show because them appearing on a podcast gives them credibility. So they promote the crap out of their episode of your show. You did them a favor by featuring them. So they're publishing on social, they're telling their newsletter, they're telling other people in their life, hey, listen to me on this podcast. They get 500 downloads on their episode because they promoted it where the guess that you thought was going to get you tons of downloads because it was a big name, nothing happened because they didn't promote. So that's the first thing that impacts downloads. One more example that I see all the time where I see podcasters come to me because their downloads have dropped, right? So maybe three months ago, they were getting a thousand downloads in episode and now they're getting 500 downloads in episode every single time I say, okay, what were you doing then to promote new episodes? Well, I was posting on social media. I was emailing my email list. I was going on other podcasts, okay, what are you doing now to promote episodes? Yeah, I haven't really emailed my email list in a long time. I stopped publishing on social media because it wasn't fun and I haven't been on another podcast in a long time. Okay. So you have not been promoting your new episodes. I've got news. If you've got an audio podcast, you are your own algorithm. As soon as you stop promoting your show, it stops growing full stop. So promotion is one thing that impacts downloads. The second thing and the one that everybody can improve today is packaging. So I want you to think about the listener journey. The journey that someone takes when you publish a new episode and it's available for them to listen to whether or not they are a new listener or a subscriber or whatever. What happens? Well, they pull out their phone. They open up their podcast listening app and they see that there's new episodes available and your episode is one of those episodes. What do they do next? They read your episode title and they think, hmm, is that the episode that I most want to listen to right now because they're comparing your episode with the four other podcasts that they listen to on a regular basis. They're comparing your show to the big names. You are in direct competition with the biggest podcasts in the world. They're like, do I want to listen to Amy Porterfield show? Do I want to listen to this American life? Do I want to listen to whatever big name that they're listening to or do I want to listen to your podcast? It's going to make them choose yours over the rest, an amazing episode title that makes your episode sound better than the rest. This is another thing that happens all the time. I'll get on a group Q&A call in the Grotter Show Academy or I'll get on a one-on-one call with one of my accelerator clients and we are there to try and troubleshoot why their show isn't getting as many downloads as it could get. The person that I'm talking to is expecting me to say that they need a better premise or they need a better completion rate. The first thing I look at is their episode titles. Some of them, if they feature guests, the episode title is just the guest name, bad title, not going to do the job or they've got a bunch of crap in the title. They've got the show name, they've got, it's just like a super long title that's really really rambly or it's a title that's super vague or it's something that's really cutesy or artsy. I see that all the time. They're like naming their podcast episodes like they would name a song where it's like real abstract and you're not sure what it means and oh, it'll make sense once you listen to the episode. Not going to cut it because people, if they don't know what the title means, that means they have no idea what your episode is about and they're not going to press play, they're just not going to do it. The title has to be something that they really want and so my favorite hack for how to write good titles is actually borrowed from headline copywriting. Your title of your podcast episode is nothing but a headline, just like a headline of a newspaper article or a piece of copy, right, a sales letter, something like that. And so my favorite thing when I'm looking at titles is I want to try to achieve the four use. I want to try to achieve as many of the four use as I possibly can. I'm happy with two. I'm pumped with three, four is a unicorn. I've done it occasionally, but it's the gold standard and the four use are this useful. Is your episode going to be useful to them at the current moment they are in their life? This gets into making sure that you understand what your podcast psychographic is. What situation are they in and what is your show doing for its listeners? Is this episode going to be useful? My hope is that this episode of my podcast, you saw the title and you're like, wow, that's going to be really useful. It's going to help me understand why my downloads aren't going out, right? Number two is unique. Is your title unique? Is it something that they haven't heard before or seen before? So if you're titling your episodes, something that's like five ways to achieve your dreams, five ways to be more motivated. It's like that is the most on unique thing ever. There's a thousand podcast episodes from huge creators that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to reach an audience that you are competing with. How is your show unique? What is the unique angle or perspective or refreshing take that you're taking? So useful. Unique. Number three is urgent. Why should they listen to this today? Now this is one where you can create urgency. You see that a lot right now where it's like three tactics that you need to know right now. And it's like, yeah, that's okay. I mean, that will probably get more clicks than three tactics that you need to know. But it's kind of manufactured urgency. I like urgency that makes you just want it really, really fast. So I might title an episode. Here's how to double your downloads for next week's podcast episode, right? So like the next week kind of makes an urgent for you. And then the fourth thing is ultra specific. Now notice the difference between unique and ultra specific. By the way, what a cop out that the fourth year is ultra like how ridiculous is that. I didn't make these up. But the fourth one is indeed ultra specific. Now note the difference between ultra specific and unique. Is something that you can't find anywhere else ultra specific is something that is really specific. You know exactly what it is. So as an example, let's say that you had a podcast interviewing famous people and you interviewed the rock, a non specific title would be the rock share his his story. The rock shares how he became famous and ultra specific headline would be the rock explains how he almost got kicked out of high school and one teacher put him on the path to start him. Same episode one title's not specific one is ultra specific. By the way, I went to the same high schools rock shout out freedom high school Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Shout out the rock because obviously we're buddies. Okay. So one other thing I want to share when title your podcast episodes is I want you to watch out for some common mistakes that I see all the time. So I'm just going to list them really, really quickly. Number one, don't put the guests name first unless it's a really famous person unless it's somebody that you know a lot of your audience is going to know their name. If a decent amount of your audience is not going to know the name of the guests, put it at the end. Reason being, even though your title is only one line long, you can lose people's attention halfway through the title. So the first words that people read are really, really important. And if it's the name of somebody that they don't know, they would disengage right then and there. If you make the title, what it is that they want and the way that I like to do it is thing that you want come with guest name. However, if you go back on my feed, on my audio feed, you'll see that my episodes with Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn, who are really, really well known podcasters in the podcasting space, I did put their names first, right? So there's kind of this like headliner echelon of guest name where on the grow the show feed only select a certain amount of people have their name first. No offense to the people who's name is later hopefully is cool to just be on the show. Okay. That's number one. Number two, I guess I get asked all the time about episode numbering. I actually do recommend episode numbering. I do it on the grow the show podcast feed. I do think it's helpful for easy navigation because people say all the time, like, oh, I loved episode 163 of the grow the show podcast. I'm like, that's great. That helps me understand which one that you're talking about or I can say like go listen to episode one, two, five to learn certain thing. So it helps with navigation. That's a do. I do think episode numbering is good on audio, but not on YouTube. Do not put the episode number on YouTube. The next thing you want to avoid is just adding a bunch of stuff in the title. So there are some really big podcasters who have titles that are like three lines long. Tim Ferriss is an example of that. He will list like all of the things he and his guests talk about and that works for Tim. But for those of us who are trying to build an audience now in the current really crowded landscape where Tim started podcasting in 2014 when there was very little competition and he already was a New York Times bestselling author, we are not that. So we don't have the luxury to do stuff that the big people do. So you need to pick make your title one line and in fact, you want the best part of your title to be within the first 56 characters because beyond that, some apps will cut off the title. Finally, I guess one tip I would share about your titles is to focus on one single compelling aspect of the episode one specific thing rather than trying to summarize the whole episode in one go. It should be the one thing that people really, really want to want and extra pro tip that one thing that you mentioned in the title. If you're going to put something really juicy in the title, make sure it is mentioned within the first five minutes of the episode, it gets starting talked about. I see some people will put like something really juicy in the title and they don't get to that thing until like 45 minutes in and you've lost everybody by then. They feel like you've baked and switched them. Okay. So this was a little bit of a Ramley ADD episode where I kind of covered a bunch of things overall. I want you to understand that your podcast downloads are not affected by the quality of your podcast episodes as much as they are affected by your promotion and your packaging. And if I had to pick one of those two things to improve, I would start with the packaging because if you improve the packaging, you're going to get more of your current audience to tune in. So let's optimize the people you can already reach and getting them to listen before we worry about getting new people to comment. So optimize packaging first, then promotion. If you want my help with optimizing your packaging, I am actually going to be doing a live masterclass within the Grow the Show Academy. The masterclass is going to be held on Monday, November 11th. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to go into more detail on how you can craft really great titles for your episodes. I'm going to workshop some titles with live attendees. So you could have your podcast titles workshops by me. And I'm also going to share with you the AI chatbot that I use to write my episode titles. I'm just going to give that to you. Again, that's only going to be for Grow the Show Academy members. It's on November 11th. If you are consuming this before November 11th, hop into the Grow the Show Academy. It's just 99 bucks a month. If you don't like it within 15 days, let me know and I'll send you your money back. I think you're going to love it. Hop in. We'd love to have you there on the live masterclass. If you're hearing this after November 11th, guess what? You can go access that masterclass right now because the recording is available to Grow the Show Academy members. So we'd love to see you there. If not, that's cool to make your podcast titles better. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now I have a quick favorite ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests and it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment. Leave us a five-star rating. Maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post-produced with quality, really freaking fast. And if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode. And neither should you. All right. That's going to do it for Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidtlin. I'll see you next time.