Your (company) podcast in the charts? Read on.

You put a lot of time, attention and energy into your new podcast project, but it is struggling to find its audience. That’s a pity. The fight against the dominant distributors is also unfair. But we should still ask, what exactly is success in podcast land? Don't let the size of their audiences intimidate you. You're not the only plucky underdog making a podcast.

Newsworthy

If there's a holy grail to getting your podcast to resonate, it's newsworthiness. The investigation into the SS camp commander in The Disappeared SS Commander, Walter Heinrich, featured in several newspapers and TV reports. Trouw, AD, NOS, NRC, and many more big titles reported on this podcast. The highlight was featuring on the NOS 8pm news broadcast on Sunday evening with 2.4 million viewers. Watch your downloads numbers skyrocket.

Visual

Visual appeal. Think of the station kiosk. It’s the book or magazine that looks the best that stand out. Or look at the Netflix, HBO Max, or Prime Video catalogues. The poster has to be distinctive and fit the story. The same goes for podcasts. Too often we see a colourful background, a microphone icon, and the title of the podcast. That is not interesting or eye catching and certainly does not invite you to click on it.

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Social

Social media and podcasts aren't really friends yet. On platforms that support embedded video you are adding an extra, but limited reach step. After all you can say: 'Listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, Podimo...' But that cannot be the end of your promotional activities. Nowadays, the method used by celebrity talk shows is commonplace. They record the conversation and make short teaser clips for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and also TikTok.

Subscribers

This is a very important one. These are potential regular listeners if your podcast is good. Subscribers receive a notification that there is a new episode. Or they'll regularly see the podcast appear at the top/front of their library. This allows you to build a fan base, and lasting relationships with your target group.

BONUS: Want to measure your success? Use the following parameters.

Downloads

Downloads or sessions are often used to indicate the success of a podcast. There is a big difference between 10,000 and 1,000,000 downloads. Both are still very good, depending on the size of your target group. If you are going to make a podcast where an investment advisor discusses the latest tips and developments on the stock market, then 10,000 downloads per podcast is very good. But if you made a podcast about finding a missing Nazi and you end up with 10,000, then there will be some disappointment. And for internal podcasts: if your company consists of 100 people and you have 100 downloads per episode... Then you just have a raging success, don't you?

Charts

Apple and Spotify's charts are used to measure the popularity of podcasts. In addition, listeners often search for new podcasts through these types of lists. So it's important that your podcast can be found easily. But how are those charts actually compiled? To add to the challenge, Apple and Spotify have a different algorithm, which is officially secret, but in Apple's case it seems to have been cracked...

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