Analytics, Reporting and Conversion for Podcasts and Videos

The digital age is a beast.  If you produce content, there are unlimited inputs and outputs, platforms to consider and comments that can make you want to rethink your strategy entirely. Information is everywhere.

On one hand, it is raw and nobody knows how an audience will react to your content until it is out there in the real world and enough people see it where you can tell if it is well received. Phenomena like TikTok and Instagram pop up effectively making success stories out of individuals winging it. On the other hand, services like Google Analytics and Facebook enable reporting and testing to an extent where you can craft your show to drive better results, nearly in real time.

Analytics and metrics help you understand how the audience interacts with content and where the audience comes from. This information can help make decisions about what to produce and how to do it.

What are analytics for podcasts and videos?

Analytics are measurements of the engagement around your show. Reporting is the format of the analytics data.  And conversion relates to the rate at which your goals are met.  For example, does the audience convert to the next step within your objective? If they do take the next step, that is conversion.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the metrics that you establish for your objective.

When we talk about show development, podcasts and websites, there are key metrics to keep your eye on. Your show’s key metrics could depend on your objective. Somebody selling ads will want the audience to interact with your show and have long sessions of screen time, where they don’t leave the show. Somebody that wants to be viewed as a consultant may prefer click throughs during a break.  Somebody that publishes short videos may just want views per month.  

Common Metrics for Podcasts and Videos

Check out the major metrics to consider when hosting your particular media production. Understanding these will go into your long term strategy and also adjustments you will make to meet your objectives in media production.

Metrics for Videos

Video metrics can give you insight about how your audience engages with your content on places like YouTube and Vimeo. 

  • Subscribers: the number of users that opt in to receive alerts about all videos you publish.
  • Unique viewers: the number of different people that have watched your video.
  • Avg. view per user: how many times a particular user views your video. 
  • Avg. watch time: the average amount of time that an individual watches your video.
  • Views per video: how many total plays your video has.
  • Engagement: social shares and comments that users leave on your video and/or use with your video.

Metrics for Podcasts

Podcast metrics can give you insight about how your audience engages with your content on places like Sounder, Spotify and iTunes. 

  • Subscribers: the number of users that opt in to receive a notification when your podcast episodes are released.
  • Unique listeners: the number of unique users that listen to your podcast episode.
  • Downloads: the number of times people download your podcast episode.
  • Listeners per episode: the number of unique listeners that choose to listen to your podcast episode.
  • Plays per unique listener: the average number of plays per unique user.
  • Avg. listens per unique listener: the average number of times that 
  • Avg. listen time: the average length of time that people listen to your episode.
  • Avg. listens per episode: the average number of listens across multiple episodes.
  • Traffic Sources: the source of listeners that log on to your episodes.
  • Keywords: keywords that people enter to find your show and end up listening.
  • Audience Demographics: age, location, and interests information about listeners.
  • Engagement: social shares and comments that users leave on your video and/or use with your video.

Metrics for Websites

Website metrics can give you insight about how your audience engages with your content on your website. 

  • Unique visitors: the number of unique users that visit your website.
  • Page views: the number of page views on your website
  • Avg. page views per user: the average number of pages that a user visits on your site.
  • Traffic Sources: the source of users that visit your site.
  • Conversions: the number of conversions on your website. Conversions are set up within metrics by you.
  • Audience demographics: age, location, and interests information about users on your website.

Conversions

Conversion metrics can give you insight about how your audience engages with next steps produced in your content.

  • Ad click-throughs: the number of times someone clicked on an ad out of your episode.
  • Email subscriber: the number of people that register to receive emails from your organization.
  • Subscriber: the number of people who opt-in to receive alerts when a new episode is released.
  • Schedule meeting: the number of users that deliberately schedule a meeting when watching your episode.
  • Orders: the number of orders generated by click-throughs on your episode.

Editing and Post Production for Videos and Podcasts

Editing is the final process around producing your show. After editing you are ready to promote your content.

Editing consists of taking the video and audio footage and bringing it together in a cohesive package that makes sense. During the capture process of show development, where you recorded video and audio, many clips were captured for use.  Editing is the process where you cut out moments that are not useful and you transition between clips to help the audience process the footage.

The formal definition of editing is to prepare (motion-picture film, video, or magnetic tape) by deleting, arranging, and splicing, by synchronizing the sound record with the film, etc.

Video Editing

Pros use software such as Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Affects and Final Cut Pro to edit video clips and add transitions. Canva, an online software as a service solution is also a simple program to get started editing videos.

Video editing is an artwork in and of itself. Define a style for opening, closing and transitions between clips. That baseline can help your videos look professional and deliberate, even with less experience than other editors.

Audio Editing

Pros use software programs like Adobe Audition to edit audio footage.  Audition allows you to control all aspects of the captured audio.  Adobe states that Audition is a comprehensive tool set that includes multi track, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content.

Similar to video editing, you want to establish a standard beginning, end and transition style as a baseline to your productions. From there, you can drop in more clips and add transitions, but that baseline helps to establish professionalism right away.

Transitions

Think of transitions in video and audio clips where it is a technique used to connect one shot or clip to another.  

Video Transitions

  • Standard Cut 
  • Fade In
  • Fade Out
  • Cross Dissolve
  • Wipe
  • Iris
  • Flip

Audio Transitions

  • Standard Cut
  • Fade In
  • Fade Out
  • Music or Sound Effects

File Types

The most common audio file type is MP3 and the most common video format is MP4. These file types are solid for distribution on a variety of platforms online and that makes them the primary files types that Contentz uses to deliver footage to clients for distribution.

Use of License Free Music and B-Roll Footage

Budget limits most small businesses from producing their own music or background video footage. Creative Commons (CC) is an internationally active non-profit organization that provides free licenses for creators to use when making their work available to the public. These licenses help the creator to give permission for others to use the work in advance under certain conditions.

Producers can use Creative Commons material so long as they clearly give credit to the owner. You can find license free audio and video footage to use in your productions, provided you credit the owner as described when you access the footage.

To properly attribute credit to the owner, include the labels below.

Attribution for Creative Commons

  • Title
  • Creator
  • Source
  • License

Set Design – Choose the Look and Feel of Your Show

Set design can help create ambiance for your production and it will support the style of your production.

For example, some shows take place in a laid back, more conversational tone, where guests and hosts sit on couches, perhaps in street clothes.  Other shows set the tone with a news desk type of look/feel, with two characters facing each other and looking eye to eye.

There are three popular styles of set design supported by Contentz. If you require a different set design, you are free to bring in your own props.

Casual Talk Show (Couches)

  • 2 couches
  • Floor lamps
  • Lapel microphones
  • Background
    • Green screen or dark shades
    • Signage: TV

News Desk (2 Chairs)

  • 2-4 chairs
  • News Panel
  • Green screen
  • Microphone stand on desk

Informal Studio Look (4-up Table)

  • Table – up to 4 people
  • Mounted Microphone extensions affixed to edge
  • Chairs not visible in camera angles
  • TV in background

Live Streaming – Social Media During the Show

Live streaming events are powerful and growing in popularity on social media. Youtube Live, Instagram, Twitter and Discord all give special treatment to live events with more than 150M Americans tuning in to live streamed events. The networks promote live events heavily, which helps grow your following.

Live events are prominently displayed on social platforms so people can easily find them and join the conversation. This makes it easier to grow followers and/or subscribers so your audience grows over time, giving you more control to message directly from your channels in the future.

Consider making your studio time live in order to Leverage Twitter Spaces, YouTube Live, Twitch or Discord Stage Channels, where you can interact with a live audience remotely. This is a very engaging form of content, albeit less controlled because it is live. 

It was reported that during the pandemic, people watched live videos 10-20x longer than pre-recorded videos and that 70% of people replaced live events with streaming videos in terms of their free time.

5 Popular Live Streaming Platforms

Virtually every social network hosts a live event or live streaming function. However, for podcasts and video zoom panels, which Contentz helps you produce, we have aggregated information for the five most relevant live streaming channels for our clients today.

YouTube Live

YouTube is Google’s video network that is extremely popular with over 2 Billion users. That means all demographics are covered. The site has so much content pushing through every day that it serves as a search engine as well. YouTube Live allows creators to interact with users via live video and real time chat. The videos automatically save as well. The cloud storage aspect of the service is unparalleled with YouTube enabling unlimited storage. Some services restrict this. YouTube is traditionally a space for longer form content. You will want to plan how to use YouTube versus other platforms and YouTube live is a great option for live streaming. If YouTube is a part of your strategy overall, then YouTube Live is a great way to push up stream counts and subscribers. Building your subscriber base unlocks additional features. For example, you can customize your links, thumbnails and more.

Twitter Spaces – powerful audio rooms on popular platform

Twitter Spaces is a powerful feature from Twitter that allows any user (business or personal) with 600 followers or more to host a live audio conversation on the platform. There can be one host and 11 speakers. When you go live with a space, your followers see a purple bubble at the top of your timeline for the durations of the conversation. The powerful thing about Twitter is that 50% of their users are on Twitter daily and the primary age demographic is 35-49 years old. This age group is responsible for buying decisions in many industries. Last, 90% of the population knows what Twitter is, so there is little waste in promoting the service to your existing audience. Alternatively, teaching a contact about Discord may present challenges due to the learning.

Discord – the home of Web3, Crypto and More

Discord lets friends chat with each other either one-to-one or as a group via a server. Don’t be scared off by the term server. For the novice, the user experience just feels like selecting a list of chat rooms. It’s not difficult technically. Discord streaked in popularity during the onset of Crypto, NFT trading and Web3 in 2021.  Businesses or individuals can use the service to send direct messages, have video calls, voice chat and screen share on the platform. Over 250M people are on the platform. This is where groups broke out and have aligned on projects and where projects have distributed information to groups of people at one time. It is a powerful platform that is becoming more mainstream and useful to regional businesses.

Instagram Live

More than 1 Billion people use Instagram every month, and it is one of the most popular platforms for small businesses. This is because it is easy to use, appeals to a mass audience and it is interactive.  Instagram’s DM offers voice recording message feature, vanish mode and linking, making it nearly as effective as email for small businesses, especially on initial outreach.  Like the other platforms, live video is promoted front and center and it that makes it easier to attract viewers and grow your following.  You are able to save live videos and many companies opt to deliver these as short reels in posts or stories.  These actions are rewarded by Instagram and pushed to the front of other posts that feature still footage. Around 60% of influencers say they get the best engagement from Instagram.

TikTok Live

TikTok exploded onto the scene over the past couple of years, specializing in short form video content. A powerful network of estimated 3.1M influencers have leveraged this into sales for small and large brands alike.  TikTok Live video boasts success stories for live shopping events. However, you will have to grow your following before you are able to access these features for your brand. It is written that you must be older than 16 years old and have more than 1,000 followers in order to use TikTok’s live shopping feature. A unique aspect to that feature is that creators may receive virtual gifts from watchers, if they are 18 and over.  There is lots of room for development as TikTok matures its offering. Consider adding TikTok to you mix on social and add live shopping as it fits.

Summary

Pull up your show objective and match that with whatever live streaming service you choose. You will want to make sure your objective and strategies match the audience and tool set within your streaming service.  For example, if you don’t want a gaming audience or traits a gaming audience has, then you would be building that audience on a service like Twitch. Building an audience may be lucrative but the cost may exceed your budget. These things need to be understood before investing time and money on a platform.

Cheat sheet – Start a Professional and Engaging Media Show With 7 Decisions

Congratulations on making it through the media production planning module of Contentz’ courses!

You should have a fantastic vision, documented in a treatment document. You may have even added a competitive analysis section and target audience profile.

The next step is to create the show.  We have boiled this process down to 7 steps. Save this page so you can revisit the process and / or order services from Contentz vetted partners on Fiverr.

Define the theme of your media production.

The theme is similar if not identical to the summary section within your treatment document.  It should speak to the tone of the show and help a reader understand what to expect in terms of who, what, when, where and why.  Using a framing device to help people get the concept quickly is always great.  Here is an example: it is like Good Will Hunting meets the Daily Show. The theme is extremely important because it will help prepare guests, hosts and continue to define the way that you show is presented publicly in terms of messaging.

Who Will Host – self service or hire it out?

Who is going to host your show?  Obviously, this is a big part of things.  Think about this in detail, from both the obvious and less obvious ends of things.  For example, it is easy to think that you will host your own show. However, we recommend that you revisit this thinking and how many episodes you are planning to produce.  If you are the host, you must be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses.  Can you legitimately hold the attention of your target audience? If yes, great! If not, consider hosting with a professional host that can sit in and hold a conversation.  While you may be the subject expert on the matter, sometimes it results in more engaging content to have a host that doesn’t know tons about the topic, but where the host is great at engaging guests and helping them explain their position on things. Contentz maintains  a network of hosts that can jump in and host media productions on various topics.

Topics – series or topics, chicken or egg, guests or objectives

Plan 10 topics before you start production.  But note that one distracting aspect to Contentz media planning is that we have attached a process to a creative process. And, any creator knows that process doesn’t necessarily come before an idea.  Please note that topics work this way perhaps more than any other aspect of the show development process.  A great topic can attract a fantastic guest. Or, a fantastic guest can create the topic.  A series concept, where you plan a group of topics based on the idea of a series objective, could trump them all because it gives you the momentum to attract multiple guests versus one off.  Anyway, try to plan 10 topics before you launch.  This will help with momentum and you may see a pattern surfacing certain guests or even a series that appeals to engagement from partners.

Guests

Make a list of 5-10 potential guests before you launch. This process, coupled with the topic task above, will help you massage out the reality of the show. You may need to seek out different guest types if you can’t get engagement on your topics. Or vice versa – you may need to re-write topics. Another recommendation is to try random guests, who you have no connection with personally. While it is always good to seed initial guests with personal contacts whom we can trust, it is also invaluable to reach out anonymously and get real world feedback about what you are trying to do.  Leverage your treatment and summary data to help improve engagement. Once you have episodes up and running, then the episodes can speak for themselves, but that awkward time when you don’t have any content to point to can be less awkward if you present a professional treatment document for review.

Look / Feel

Create a logo for your show. You can visit fiverr and get a professional example for about $50. Add this to your treatment and now you look uber professional.  Take the logo, log onto Canva and create some social graphics as well. You can toy around with Canva to establish a social media kit, or different graphics that can be used to promote on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more.  Canva is an awesome tool that is super inexpensive and makes you look professional. Have the look and feel ironed out before you release your first episodes. You will need these assets to promote the show before and after release.  Also, just in case you were wondering, sure – you can wing it and have a show that deliberately looks low budget.  Yeah – sometimes you see that, like on Borat or whatever, but it is limiting. Not everybody gets the joke and nobody is going to shame you for looking professional.

Viewers

Take the data from your target audience worksheet earlier in this process.  Edit the summary and traits. Decide how you will engage potential viewers prior to release. Decide how you will engage potential viewers after launch. Write out a couple of bullets in the treatment plan and develop any assets (look/feel) above.  Free examples are email or publishing to your social profiles, or partner outreach to promote your show. Paid examples are Instagram advertising or pushing out a paid LinkedIn message.

Timeline

Captain obvious here but you are going to want to establish an ongoing production schedule.

Example

  • Monday: promo, editing
  • Tuesday: release, weekly production meeting
  • Wednesday: post show promo, interview for next episode
  • Thursday/Friday: guest outreach, pre production

Run Competitive Analysis on YouTube, Apple Podcasts

Look at some real world examples before you start recording episodes of your show. Stepping through a competitive analysis can help save you time, heartache and budget when you are starting a new media production.

Apple Podcasts and YouTube actually serve as fantastic resources around competitive analysis. The podcast, video interview and webinar formats are established enough to where you can likely search and find similar shows online to what you are trying to produce. That is not to say that you shouldn’t produce your idea or that your idea is not unique enough to get traction.  The world is moving so fast that a quality production is always relevant. And, your distribution method can also add tons of value to your show.

Consider the competitive analysis piece as a way to differentiate your show and also as a way to identify what success looks like before you spend too much money.

Process to perform competitive analysis

  • Identify keywords
  • Pull up YouTube and search the keyword
  • Make a list of videos that address the topic
  • Watch them and read the comments
  • Revisit your mission and treatment.   Do you still believe it?
  • Make a list of topics that you would like to address or improve on in your show.

Questions to ask during competitive analysis

  • What are the main topics / problems that your industry solves?
  • Who are your top 3 competitors? What is their presence like on Youtube, Instagram? Linkedin?
  • Do your competitors offer a show?
  • What topics do they cover on their web page?
  • What guests / relationships do they promote?
  • How can you differentiate from competitors?
  • How are competitor shows formatted?

Series & Episode Planning

Consider the format of your show after performing your competitive analysis.  There are two questions to ask at this time, as you revisit your treatment and episode planning.

  • What topics have you logged during the competitive analysis?
  • Do the topics stand out differently than what you had originally planned?
  • Are there major topics that are connected that would justify a series within the show? Groups of related topics can present an opportunity. Note this for later in our show development series. A series can be a great way to initially engage sponsors for your production.

Going through the process of competitive analysis and decisions around the topics and tone are valuable for your long term success. Of course, you will continue testing and evaluating as you release episodes and get engagement with your audience.  But, some self check prior to an initial release can be very beneficial, especially if you are investing launch dollars.

How to Define Your Target Audience

It used to be that only television producers and the government cared about the target audience. Now, every role in every organization talks about their target audience.

Think of your target audience as the a person you want to talk to.  With media production, you know that your message is going to reach a wider audience than just one.  But sometimes it’s easier to define a single member of your audience as the target and then add variables and traits from there.

The definition of target audience in the dictionary is: a particular group at which a film, book, advertising campaign, etc., is aimed.  Likely, your podcast, zoom panel, eBook or webinar target audience your target customer. However, we have clients that use media production to reach their own employees or potential channel partners as well. Your target audience is really whoever you want your media to appeal to.

Defining your target audience helps in several ways.

First off, it helps to craft the content and write. Having a particular target audience in mind when planning your media and messaging is helpful to maintain your relevance and context. If you write without understanding your target audience, then it is highly likely that your target audience will not engage with your content. It is important that you content is valuable (useful) to your audience.  Understanding what makes your target audience’s life easier will help you write better content for them.  Secondly, understanding your target audience helps you make decisions about distribution.  For example, where can you reach your target audience.  How should you best get your content in front of them? In advertising, you will need these parameters to order ads and to help make them effective.

Questions to answer when defining your target audience

We have compiled several questions that help navigate the process of research to define your target audience with precision.

  • Who are you trying to reach as your target audience?
  • What are the interests of your target audience?
  • How does your target audience spend free time?
  • What platforms and entertainment topics would your audience consume?
  • What problem does your audience need to solve in order to make their life better or improve ROI?
  • What industry does your target audience work in?
  • What job titles do your target audience members hold?
  • What age demographic is your target audience?
  • Where do they live or work? (Geography)?

How to Write a Treatment to Support Your Media Production

A treatment is a document that presents the story idea of your show before writing the entire script. It serves as a working document in many cases, where collaborators can understand your concept and continue to improve your plan until production.

Once production starts, then the treatment can serve as the outline of how things came to be. Think of the treatment as a style guide that can be referenced in order to make sure your plans are coming together correctly.

Elements to include in your treatment

Working Title

Write the Working Title of your production. Try to keep it concise and specific to your market and objectives.

Summary of show

The summary should be 100-200 words that illustrate who, what, when, where and why. A collaborator can ideally read this summary and get a sense about how the show works and what it is about.  Framing devices comparing your show to two other shows can be helpful. For example: it’s like Good WIll Hunting meets daily show. A reader immediately thinks of understated smart people on a humorous talk show. It gets them there quickly.

List objectives of show

Try to establish numbers that you are trying to reach.  What is the objective of the show as it relates to your target audience?  Here are a couple of examples: we want to reach 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. We want to get 10,000 streams on our channel this year.

List strategies to reach objectives

Think through how you will achieve the objectives with your project.  Support the objectives with strategies that you write out to get there.

List tasks

The tasks section should illustrate what you have to do in order to execute your strategies.  This will become a list that can be used by you and your production team to successfully build out your production.

Ancillary Information

Beyond the main points of your treatment, it is important that you collect ancillary information about your organization so you can continue maintaining a consistent voice between collaborators.

Ancillary information is part planning and part legacy information about the business. We have assembled some examples below to help illustrate other stuff to think through and document in your treatment.

  • Mission of Your Organization
  • Target Audience
  • Company Facts
  • Differentiator / Value Prop: How do You help you audience?
  • List at list three episode concepts
  • Characters / Guests
    • Name
    • Description
    • Title
    • Company
    • LinkedIn Profile
    • Website bio
  • List 3 experiences / topics to explore with guests
  • What is the purpose of the interview
  • Any stories that we should inquire with guests about?
  • List Upcoming Guest concepts

Studio Photography in the Digital Age

Despite all of the selfies circulating and tagged photos you are featured in, studio photography is still useful and effective for professionals looking to showcase their services.

Furthermore, still photography can get you real world sales in many cases. Quality photography can be used on websites to feature your products, bring your personality to life, tell a story, showcase your team and professionalism and even provide something to sell.

When partnering with a photographer, plan to identify which services you will need prior to booking.

Photography Services

  • Aerial photography
  • Action Sports Photography
  • Action Photography
  • Food photography
  • Real Estate Photography
  • Product photography
  • Documentary-style photography
  • Portrait Photography
  • Set design
  • Lighting
  • Photo editing
  • Retouching

Equipment

  • Cameras
  • Lights
  • Backgrounds
  • Product Light Box