A valuable metric that can help to determine the success of your podcast program is monitoring repeat listeners within your organization. Building a recurring audience that comes back for content week after week is important to the long-term success and community surrounding your private podcast. Loyal listeners will also be the first to share the content with their peers and help to increase your visibility to even more listeners.

Habitual users can be monitored through uStudio’s podcast analytics by looking at active users in a smaller window - how many of your users were active this month that were active last month? The beauty of our named-user data is the ability to track individual content consumption and engagement. Our user activity reports breaks out various user activity throughout the podcast application on an action by action basis.

We’ve highlighted a few tips below on how to best drive habitual users within your podcast program.

Isolate Habitual Users.

If your podcast has been launched for some time, it is extremely beneficial to take a look at the habitual podcast users that you do have. By isolating these users you can dig into their traits, habits and demographics to pull helpful inferences that can help to plan upcoming content. For example, are most habitual users coming from a specific region of the world or team within your organization? Are they new hires? You won’t be able to fully target your podcast content to your ideal audience unless you understand them. Once you have pulled your habitual users, consider surveying them on their likes, dislikes, habits and more to get even more valuable feedback that can impact and grow your program. These users will also feel valued, as if their voice is important, which will continue to strengthen the relationship they have with your show.

Have a Predictable Editorial Calendar.

A predictable editorial calendar is a great way to set listener expectations and habits. When your audience knows exactly when to expect your next podcast episode, they will be more inclined to tune in and listen in a timely manner. For best results, we recommend launching your podcast episodes within a particular show in a consistent frequency, day and time. Using an editorial calendar or similar tool to plan out your episodes in advance is a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. You can download a content calendar template from our knowledge base here.

Utilize Promotional Materials.

The release of a new episode does not automatically ensure your audience will listen. It is important to gain traction by utilizing many different promotional materials and tactics.

For example, promotional embeds are available through uStudio to allow podcast administrators to promote their podcast episodes with a visually appealing preview of the episode. Clicking anywhere on the promotional embed will direct the user to the podcast mobile or web application, depending on which device they are using. Share links are also available to provide your users with a direct link to a particular podcast episode, making your content easy to find and promote.

Worried about how to keep track of all of your efforts? A promotional calendar is a great way to plan your promotions and remind you to frequently boost your content. You can download our promotional calendar template from our knowledge base here. Note that the promotional calendar is available on the third tab of the spreadsheet.

Push Subscriptions.

An increase in subscriptions should lead to an increase in habitual podcast users. When an audience member subscribes to a show they will receive a push notification when new episodes are added to that show. Note the audience member must have allowed push notifications within their device to receive the notification. Especially if subscribing is not “required,” if a user chooses to subscribe to your podcast, it tells you that they found your content valuable and they are looking forward to more from you.

There’s no point in creating podcast content if your employees aren’t motivated to push play. Many of our clients leave cliffhangers or tease future episodes to give their audience more incentive to join them again. As obvious as it may seem, your content needs to be strong and engaging to draw people in and keep them coming back for more time and time again. Looking for the right private podcast that lets you securely engage with your users? Check out our private podcast platform.