What Does A Successful Podcast Look Like?

Do you have a successful podcast? Are you not really sure if you do or not?

While so many podcasters reflexively look at the number of downloads they have to determine their podcast’s success, it’s often not the thing they should be looking at. In order to figure out how successful your podcast is, you first have to figure out what your actual goal is.

It can be easy to get into the rat race, fretting about every download as you track the numbers day-by-day, month-by-month, and year-by-year. Downloads are an easily-measured statistic that every podcast host will gladly give you. That makes you want to compare your number against other podcasts, which is something we as humans love to do to see how we stack up. However, as I discussed on the last episode (Don’t Fear The Niche), podcast audiences aren’t equal. If your podcast is in a niche, you can still find great success that will look dramatically different from top podcasters with millions of downloads every episode. That’s why figuring out your podcast’s true goal might just be the most important thing you do in this industry.

Goals will vary from podcast to podcast and even podcaster to podcaster. Your podcast goal could be as simple as releasing episodes on a regular schedule because you love podcasting and don’t care who listens. Or you could be looking to monetize your podcast and want more long-term listeners with disposable income to boost your affiliate ads. You could be a business using a podcast to recruit top talent and will look at how your podcast is being received within those circles. Or it could be an internal podcast that measures its success by how your employee retention rates change. Notice that in each of those example cases, download numbers were never once mentioned and few podcasters would gain much by even knowing them. Of course, it’s important to track how often episodes are listened to in order to improve your podcast over time but it’s rarely the most important measurement to determine success.

With that said, take a step back and think about what you’re really trying to accomplish with your podcast. Build overall, short-term, and long-term goals for your podcast with that information in mind. And most importantly . . . Go have fun with your podcast.

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Episode transcript:

What is success? According to Merriam-Webster, there are two main definitions. The first defines success as the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame. While that might say far more about our society than we’d care to think about, I believe the second definition of success is the far superior one.

That is; success is the correct or desired result of an attempt.

See, not everyone wants to be wealthy, respected, or famous. But everyone wants to succeed at the things they do. That could be as simple or as difficult as getting a cup of water or singing opera while juggling in front of a packed crowd. Even people who are trying to fail at something are still ultimately looking to succeed at the act of failing. 

So then, if success is dependent on your desired outcome . . . what does a successful podcast actually look like for you?

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Q’d Up Podcast on Podcasting with me, your host, Matthew Stevens from Q’d Up Audio.

When I talk to clients, one of the first things I ask them is to tell me their goal for their podcast. However, not a single person has ever told me their goal was to have the most popular podcast ever. So why then, are so many podcasters determining their success by their download numbers?

Don’t get me wrong, downloads are an important metric to determine the growth of your podcast and you should absolutely be tracking them for a myriad of reasons. But growth probably isn’t your real goal. So then, we have to determine what goal you actually want from your podcast and the specific metrics the tell us how successful your podcast is.

While I urge every podcaster to create a goal specific for themselves, there are quite a few common ones that might help you get started.

For branded podcasts, we most often see requests to increase brand awareness, funnel new leads to their business, improve the perception of topic authority, and help them network within a certain niche. That means we’ll want to track things like how much press they get, listener engagement on social media, new web traffic, and how often we can book guests they want to network with.

For independent podcasts we most often see podcasters want to bring awareness of an issue to the public, help a specific group feel more accepted, or even something as simple as getting their crazy creative ideas out of their heads and into the world. 

In those cases, we’ll want to track things like audience engagement and user reviews to determine how listeners are enjoying the episodes. Are they learning new things or do they feel heard for the first time? Are people liking the content you’re putting out and are you having fun doing it? In those cases, that means your podcast is successful.

Remember, first and foremost, your podcast should be fun, no matter what goal you have for it. There will undoubtedly be challenges you’ll face along the way but if you go into each episode trying to succeed on your actual goal, you’ll see better results and you’ll likely have a lot more fun doing it.

Thank you for listening to the Podcast on Podcasting. As always, I’m your host Matthew Stevens and make sure to check out our blog at mypodcastagency.com to see more in-depth examples of podcast goals and how to effectively measure your success against them.