Tips to track new conversion metrics on Spotify

We understand how vital audience growth is to you and your show, and one of our main goals at Spotify for Creators is to help you expand your reach and give you more opportunities to grow a loyal fanbase. We believe accurate and actionable insights are critical for creators to build success—the more you understand, the more you can make better, more informed decisions about how to grow your show.

That is why we’re enhancing our analytics tools with an audience journey visualization, a new feature that allows you to connect the dots between the discovery and consumption happening on Spotify. This builds upon our existing impression analytics, that allow you to see where your listeners are finding your show on Spotify, and takes it a step further, showing you how many of those impressions are converted into meaningful engagement with your content.

In the next few weeks, all creators, regardless of where you host your show, can find the new metrics on the Analytics page on Spotify for Creators. This new addition shows creators how many people you reached, how many people showed interest, and how many then consumed their content.

These new details let you benchmark your progress and help you understand where you might want to focus in order to help make an impact on your show’s growth trajectory. For example, maybe you have a strong reach, but lower conversion from reach to interest. Once you’ve identified where you want to improve, you can start to address new ways to optimize conversion across your funnel.

Increasing your reach on Spotify

Reach on Spotify represents how many people see and discover your content, also known as an impression. It can be for the first time, or it can be a repeat fan seeing that you’ve published something new.

Impressions on Spotify come from:

• Spotify Home: Recommendation shelves, recently played shows, podcast previews, and more
• Spotify Search: Showing up as a result in user search queries, top podcast charts, Spotify editorial playlists, and more
• Spotify Library: Exposure from the saved shows or episodes folder, user created playlists, and more

Tips to increase your reach and impressions:

• Consider how you can optimize your episode SEO so you’re more likely to show up in relevant search rankings.
• Keep an eye on trends (e.g., events, pop culture moments, your audience demographics) and see if there is timely and relevant content that you could be publishing
• Expand your reach with collaborations, cross-promotions, or guest swaps with other podcasters
• Share your Spotify show links on other platforms to encourage potential fans to look for your show
• Build loyalty with the fans you already have and encourage them to follow your show on Spotify. You’re more likely to have your latest content recommended to fans who follow your show and it’s important to ensure that your work is consistently featured to keep your momentum going
• If you feel ready to invest more into your show, you can consider how targeted advertising can help increase your visibility. And we’re here to help you with that: through Spotify Ads Manager creators may build their own show advertising campaigns so that more fans on Spotify can hear about what you have to offer. You record the ad and we’ll help put it in front of people that may be interested.

Generating interest in your content

People who showed interest in your show include those who clicked on an episode, viewed your show page, or played an episode. A strong reach only goes so far, and mastering the transition from visibility to interest will ensure that you are generating new fans of your content.

Tips to boost interest:

• Take advantage of our platform tools such as clips. Uploading your own clips to Spotify will ensure that you are putting your best content in front of potential fans when you’re on the discovery feed on Spotify. These clips are directly linked to your episodes to optimize conversion from discovery to interest and ultimately meaningful engagement with your content.
• Leverage the customization tools available on Spotify and ensure that you have engaging episode and show cover art to draw potential fans into each episode
• Experiment with episode titles and descriptions to draw potential fans in
• Consider which episodes are the best to feature as the “Best place to start” on your show page. Taking a look at episodes with the highest play count could be a valuable first episode to link as the “Best place to start” for fresh audiences

Converting curiosity into a loyal audience

When somebody on Spotify interacts with your episode for at least 60 seconds, we track it so you can understand how many people are engaging more deeply with your hard work.

Tips to convert interest into consumption:

• Ensure that you are building in a quick hook within your episode content so that listeners get engaged as quickly as possible
• Use your episode play counts and retention graphs to understand which content has performed the best and use those learnings to guide your future episodes and content strategy

Don’t stop at the initial consumption: Focus on an engaged community

There’s more that you can do to cultivate a loyal community which is critical to ensure that your hard work lasts.

Tips on building community:

• Ensure that fans are following your show so they continue to stay up to date with your new content. Fans who follow shows listen to 4X the number of episodes, so it is powerful way to build an loyal fanbase
• Engage directly with fans through comments and polls on Spotify and turn your show on Spotify into a space for connection. In our Podcast Trends study we found that 1 in 3 podcasters on Spotify find interactivity tools such as comments to be the most helpful tools on the platform, and some creators see higher consumption times and completion rates when using them
• Consider which other marketing surfaces, such as your social platforms, you want to use to update and engage with fans

Growth is a learning journey

Ultimately, growing your presence on Spotify is both an art and a science. Keep track of your learnings and use these analytics features to help measure and benchmark your progress. We’re here to help and share learnings from experts on our team and other creators.