Having engaging media content is crucial for your media streaming program's success. There are many factors that determine whether your audience will stick around for the majority of your content once they have pressed play.

In this article, we will discuss a few ways you can:

• Better engage your audience before they press play.
• Retain your audience’s attention through the length of the content.
• Analyze an episode’s engagement using uStudio.

CREATE PROPER EXPECTATIONS

Setting proper expectations for your audience begins before your audience ever presses the play button on an episode. To ensure great engagement with your content, during the planning and recording phase, you’ll want to give extra attention to two areas:

1. Creating a compelling episode title and an accurate episode description.
2. Keeping your content on track and focused with a thoughtful episode plan.

EPISODE TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

A compelling episode title can serve to entice the audience to press play, and an accurate episode description will properly set expectations for your audience once they do press play and begin to engage with your content.

Failure to set proper expectations can lead to a significant drop-off in the first portion of your episode due to unmet expectations about the episode's content. uStudio provides graphs to help you assess your content engagement; more on that below.

The following is an example of a compelling episode title and an accurate episode description from our show called Customer Chats where we interview uStudio customers about their enterprise media program.

Not only is the title compelling, but the episode description clearly lays out exactly what will be discussed and what you can expect to learn from the episode.

EPISODE PLANNING

Having a thorough episode plan before you hit record is vital to keeping your audience engaged with your content once they press play. An episode plan will serve to keep you on track and focused on your main points. This is especially true when doing an interview-style podcast, where it is easy to chase rabbit trails and get off-topic with your guest.

You can create your own episode planning document, or you can use our template found here. Either way, having a thought-out plan for each episode will make your podcast more engaging and keep your audience tuned in for the entirety of the episode.

CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT

Now that you’ve set proper expectations for the content, it’s time to focus on the quality of the content itself. To keep your audience engaged to the end, you’ll want to ensure:

1. The host is following hosting best practices.
2. The audio and/or video quality is clean and not distracting.

HOW TO BE A GREAT PODCAST HOST

A great podcast host can help keep the audience attentive to the content.

Follow uStudio’s best practices for being a great host to keep your audience’s attention.

1. A great podcast host should do their homework, and let their guests shine. It’s important to schedule a prep call, or a discovery call, before your podcast interview to establish additional talking points and ensure your guest is prepared.
2. Don’t get too caught up in being perfect. You want your podcast to sound natural just like if you were having an in-person conversation. You can always go in afterward and edit out the ‘um's’ and ‘ah’s’ in the post if need be.
3. Respect your listeners' time by being concise and focused. Avoid rambling or going off-topic. Stay on track with the main theme of the episode and deliver your points succinctly.
4. Engage your audience through storytelling. Use business anecdotes, and narratives to illustrate your points and make your podcast more engaging. Stories have the power to captivate and connect with the audience on an emotional level.

To discover other ways to level-up your hosting skills, a simple internet search will provide countless resources.

HAVE HIGH-QUALITY MEDIA

Due to the current popularity of podcasts, listeners have come to expect high quality audio and video content. The good news is that you can accomplish this without spending a fortune on gear and software.

Below are a few suggestions of ways you can improve your audio and video quality.

1. Invest in a USB microphone. A microphone will instantly increase the clarity of your audio and they are easy to set up and use.
2. Use headphones while recording and editing. Headphones are the best way to ensure that your audio comes across clearly and precisely when recording and editing.
3. Use an AI audio enhancement software. Adobe Enhance Speech is free and it makes your audio sound like it was recorded in a professional studio.

To read more about the gear you need in order to produce high-quality media on any budget, check out our blog: A Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting Gear.

ANALYZE YOUR CONTENT

Once you have created proper expectations, executed your episode plan, hosted your episode well, and made your media assets look and sound amazing, the next step is to analyze your episode engagement data. You can accomplish this by:

1. Soliciting feedback from your audience members.
2. Looking at your episode analytics data in your uStudio podcast management console.

Gathering feedback from your audience can help you fine-tune your content and give your audience more of what they find engaging.

FEEDBACK

Within uStudio’s mobile application and desktop experience, there are several opportunities for audience members to provide feedback. When your audience leaves feedback about a show or episode, it will be recorded in the Feedback section of the uStudio Admin Console. Use this feedback from your audience to guide you as you create content.

Pro-tip: Encourage podcast hosts to solicit feedback on their episodes. Audience members tend to form trust of and respect for podcast hosts, so using the host’s influence to obtain feedback and improve content programming cannot go understated.

ANALYZE EPISODE STATISTICS

The uStudio Admin Console gives you clear insights into each episode’s engagement trends.

This data can be found in the ‘Episodes’ section of your uStudio PMC. Once you are on the episode page, you can simply click the chart icon above the episode list.

From there, you will see your episode content engagement statistics similar to the following:

How to read Episode Engagement Statistics

Y-axis: Represents the total number of plays for any single piece of content. Since the number of plays will vary across episodes, the plays are normalized by percentage.

X-axis: Represents the length of the episode. Since the episode lengths will vary, the lengths are normalized by percentage.

Since this graph only accounts for the actual plays of the content, the beginning of the episode (0% progress) always shows 100%, as this indicates the initial press of the play button.

Use this information to show you which episodes had the best content engagement and which episodes performed poorly in this department. From here, you can analyze what you did differently on each episode, to see why your audience prefers different episodes over others.

You will likely never get 100% of your audience to listen to 100% of your episodes, you can use the above tips and tricks to improve your content engagement and drive your media program forward. Creating engaging content will keep your audience listening to your episodes longer, will nurture repeat users, and help drive your media streaming program overall.