This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
In this episode, we're tackling a pressing issue in the podcasting world. Now, a couple months ago, there were some big changes by Apple. You know, Apple, they make the phone that most of us use, or at least many of us use, let's say, I don't want to exclude everybody else. But in the podcasting world, Apple has always been this huge company because so many people have listened to podcasts because of what was originally iTunes and then Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, et cetera. And so a few months ago, they made some changes that have left many podcasters, including show hosts and producers grappling with new challenges.
In short, they made some changes that affected automatic downloads. And then that in turn affects your analytics, your reporting, and what you're able to do in terms of ad sales, in terms of your rankings. There's just all kinds of details. We want to try to avoid getting into the weeds. But we want to talk about it from a perspective of a small business owner, a side hustler, a content creator, somebody who has a podcast, or if you might be thinking about entering the podcast world or any other kind of creator media world, could be YouTube or something.
How do you best respond when there's a change like this that's kind of outside your control? So a listener has a question about how their podcast download numbers have dropped in effect because of these changes. So what in fact do we do? Detailed question from Noah. Noah is in Minnesota.
He's going to bring us that question, then I'll bring you my answer after this message from our sponsor. I'm Noah from Duluth, Minnesota, and I've been publishing my History of Religion podcast for nearly two years. I was relying heavily on Apple's download analytics to understand my audience, but recent changes have just thrown me off. This shift is making it difficult to measure listener engagement and growth accurately. In addition, the company also stopped automatically downloading episodes to people's phones, which caused a big drop in my numbers.
What alternative metrics or tools can I use to effectively track my podcast performance? And how can I adapt my content strategy to the new world of podcasting? So there are a couple of different things happening here. One is a loss of downloads, like losing some listeners or at least losing some downloads, which is a really important metric in the podcasting world. And then the issue of analytics.
These issues are connected, but they're also somewhat distinct. The big thing I would say about both of these is you always want to be working away from dependence on any particular company, startup, platform, app, whatever it is. So you've got your podcast. You want to reach listeners with your podcast, but you also want to be aware that things change. You know, things change in every industry and the most important asset you have is your relationship with the people who care about what you have to say.
So whenever possible, you want to have them on an email list. You want to have them following you on social media, wherever they are. Like if they use LinkedIn, you want to be connected with them on LinkedIn. If they are using TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, any other social media, whatever it is, you want to be there. And you know, over time, your relationship with those followers, listeners, readers, subscribers, et cetera, that's going to matter more than whatever platform you're using or even whatever medium you are using.
If you are doing it right, because things can always change, okay? There's not much that we can do about this whole downloads thing. The analytics thing is a little bit different. And again, I want to avoid getting into the weeds for people who don't care about podcasts, but analytics have been tricky with podcasts for a long time because Apple and Spotify and other companies have had different kinds of reporting, showing different data, often giving wildly different data in terms of like who's actually listening, unique listeners, geography, and so on. So instead of relying solely on Apple's analytics or any one company, use tools like PodTrack or Megaphone, or I'm sure there's others as well.
Some of them are free, some of them are paid, and you often get deeper insights into listener behavior demographics and engagement trends. So try a couple of different things. And more important than just download numbers, which goes to both points, shift your focus to engagement metrics like the average listen duration, episode completion rates, listener feedback through comments or social media, like that often gives you a more accurate picture of engagement than download numbers alone. So I know that the download numbers matter, like I understand that from my own business here. But I also think it's much more important to focus on your relationships, focus on what is within your control, as opposed to something that a company can take away or give, you know, depending on how they see fit, and keep making something that's helpful and valuable.
Like if you do that, that's within your control. So focus on that. Let us know, of course, how it goes, I'll keep you posted from my perspective on different changes that I see in the industry for those who care. And of course, we've got a new episode every day, because I'm rolling them out here every day, seven days a week, sidehustleschool.com, some resources there where you can subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcasts, and let's hang out elsewhere, of course, as well. I'm on all those platforms I mentioned, got an email list as well, you can subscribe on the website.
New episode coming tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
