Blubrry’s Event Tracker for Podcast Milestones – PCI 408

I'm Mike Dell, VP of sales and customer relations here at Blueberry. And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry.

Today, we're talking about a new feature that we recently added, an event tracker. It's part of our statistics dash board and designed to enhance your podcasting strategy. This tool helps you streamline your workflow and hopefully better understand your audience and overall

just optimize your content planning. You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

We're gonna talk about some of the highlights of of what this can do for you. What it boils down to, and correct me if I'm wrong, is say you got mentioned on CNN for some reason. Okay? You could put that in the event tracker and you could see that, okay, you got mentioned on this day, and for the next 30 days, you've had, you know, this amount of impact on your statistics. Is that do I have that right?

It really lays out, like, you're able to say, like, this happened this day so that it makes it easier for you to go back and look at your stats and realize, like, oh, okay. This happened on such and such date, so let me go check what happened to my stats on that day, You know, instead of just someone kind of remembering things on their own, which none of us can really do as well as we think we can.

This is just making it easy to kind of keep that tally yourself as well because some of the like, a lot of this information that you guys have that you're trying to track with your own show, we don't have. You know, we just don't know what that would be. So this is just an easy place for you to add that as well so that you can correlate and compare and contrast, you know, what it is that you're trying to look for

in in the event tracker in your dashboard instead of just, like, going back and forth and back and forth. Right. You know, and another use for it would be, like, if you're starting a new campaign on Facebook.

You could, you know, if if you're at you know, paying for advertising on Facebook or you, you know, you put out a new TikTok video promoting an episode, you can, you know, put that in the tracker so you can see, okay, what you know, is this little rise in, in stats or or drop in stats based on what you've been doing or not doing. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a

I I think it's a neat idea. It just it it puts it right in the stats where you can you can track it right there rather than, you know, having to write it down and then look at your calendar and, you know, try you know, it kinda puts it all in one place. Yeah. One of the benefits is just that streamlined workflow that you're able to have. So you can you can plan things out much better.

For example, like, one of the ones that you, one of the events that you can choose from is episode recordings. So say you wanna do it on the 5th of every month or, you know, every other week, whatever it is, just add those in there and you'll see them whenever you go in to check your stats or you're like, oh, okay. I know I need to do this by a certain point. Same with your promotions. And then that's where it gets into, Mike, what you were saying about campaigns.

Those audience insights that you can get based on just keeping track of when things were actually happening, can really, really help. And it's just it's kinda like good to look at at the end of the year, the content planning. You're like, okay, This part of the year was really easy because we did it in this system, not just like, I think everything went okay this year. It's like, no. You can actually see a repute a representation

of how many things it is that you have to do as a podcaster and how many things that Blueberry is able to help you with. Right. Right. You know, and and and what's cool about it is it it lets you make decisions about what you're gonna do with your content based on what you've done in the past. And, you know, you can definitely keep saying the word track, but that's what we're doing. We're tracking what happens within your show over the over the months, And you can say, oh, well, hey, this really

went real this went really good. Let's do this again. Or this didn't really do much, so let's try something else. You know, something like that. You know, it helps you, you know, organize your your strategy for marketing your show and let you track some goals and all that stuff. But it the, you know, the cool part is it's just all built right in. Yeah. It's it's really nice

to to make those data driven decisions sometimes with those analytics that we provide. So that way you are reaching whatever goals that you have set up, and that time management. You know, we podcasters are in so many different systems and softwares and using different technology for all of this together, And we really just wanna eliminate, you know, we wanna be that full solution. So I think this is another step forward to fulfilling that. Yeah. You know, we're we're adding stuff all

the time. I believe this is part of the the Thrive package. So if you're, you know, if you're a Thrive user or in the month of August, as you heard at the beginning of this episode, if you've listened in the month of August of 2024, we're giving Thryv away for free for the for the month. So, you know, go in there and check it out, see if it's something I you'd be interested in.

But, you know, it's it's really a a way of, you know, even, like, you know, with us, with this show, we we use a calendar that set up by our pro team. And, you know, you can kind of replace that type of thing with this as well, which is which is nice. I don't know. It helps you, you know, manage your time and and, you know, all kinds of last minute rushes and stuff. We do that here. You know? Like, oh, crap. We gotta record an episode. You know? Stuff like that. Of course.

And, you know, and you're never gonna avoid that completely, but this may give you a central location to to to do that for yourself. That and, the the fact that, like, it's already just gonna be part of your dashboard, I think is cool because this is I don't wanna, you know,

say things too early, but I think this is just like the first iteration of something like this that could help people be more on track. You know, gentle reminders that you were setting up for yourself of making sure that you're getting everything out on a consistent schedule because one of the things that helps podcasters grow immensely is just staying on a consistent schedule. So anything we can do to help in that effort, we are always trying to implement in the best way possible.

Yep. For sure. And, you know, what what I find, you know, interesting about this is, you know, I never even thought I needed something like that for my own show. And, you know, the little bit that I've played with, you know, can calendaring and, you know, trying to set up things like this, it has helped me with my consistency, you know, and I'm still inconsistent. But, you know, except for this show, of course, we we, we stay real consistent.

But, you know, on my personal shows, it's it's really hard to do, and I think I'm going to utilize this to, to maybe get get myself a little more consistent. Absolutely. And it's not necessarily, you know, this is gonna change the way that you wanna do your podcast necessarily, but it is just so many people still use their calendars on their phones or even, like, you know, paper planners. That's still pretty popular, actually. And by writing it down, it just adds another level of,

what's the word that I'm looking for? Accountability? Yes. Accountability. Yes. So I think I think it'll be great for people who are maybe doing this alone and feel like they're just like, ah, well, it's all on me, so I don't have to coordinate anything

with anyone else. So, like, I'll just do it when the feeling spikes, you know, whenever I feel like I'm in the mood to do this or, like, oh, I can do it tomorrow, but it's this is one of those things I was like, no. This might be my hobby, but I can still treat it like a, you know, somewhat like a job where I'm like, okay. I need to do it at this time just because it's gonna make my life easier and better. Alright. Well, I see you had something like

that. You have some tips in there, how to use this event tracker.

We go into that. We have a couple options for people to use, of of events, quote unquote events. And, of course, you can add your own. You can write your own as well. But some of the regular ones are a episode recording, a special segment, setting up an anniversary or a guest interview. I think that would be really cool for people to include.

Nice. And then some marketing efforts in that sense is include all of your promotional activities, such as your social media campaigns, if you send a newsletter out a certain day, any ad placement campaigns that you're doing. That way that you're just, you know, making sure that you're keeping up to date with everything, especially if you signed any contracts in that sense.

Mhmm. And then lastly, just the analyzing your data overall, you know, being being able to coordinate these dates with spikes in your stats, anything like that. Maybe you realize, like, I shared out my audience survey on this day. How many people have I gotten so far? Right. I should share it again on this day. I should share it, you know, once a month or whatever it is or something like that. Just makes it easier to gather all of

that relevant information. Yeah. You know, it's funny in support, we get stats questions, and they either are, how come I got this huge spike this day? Or how come my stats are too low, you know, or whatever. It's it's either one extreme or the other. And, you know, if you write down in this calendar or this tracker, say, you know, hey, I interviewed so and so, and they shared this out on on Twitter or whatever. Mhmm. You know, and you see a spike, you say, well, maybe that's the spike.

You know, that way you can kinda correlate what you've done versus what your stats have done. I think that's a really good one. Don't rely on your mind for all of this information. There is certainly too much available for you to, you know, remember everything. So something like this bound to be helpful.

Yeah. The bottom line is if you're in there looking at your stats and you see something weird, if you've been tracking what you're doing, you'll be able to to maybe correlate whatever that weird thing is with that. Mhmm. But, yeah, it it's pretty simple. You know, like I said, if you're on the Thrive or during the month of August 2024, you can locate the event tracker in the blue top bar in the stats dashboard, and, there's a guide in there to help you set up your first event.

And it's, yeah, pretty pretty slick implementation. That'll get you started on it. And, yeah, go check it out. And, you know, maybe it could help you figure out, you know, some, you know, some things that you can change or may not need to change, but at least keep track of what you're doing in your podcast. Yeah. If and if anyone has any glorious, you know, epiphanies where they're like, oh, I could use it for this,

feel free to share. We'd love to, you know, tell other people a great way to use it as well that we just hadn't really thought of or expected. We this is definitely one of the things that we would like to add more to in the future. So, you know, your your feedback is valuable. We would love to hear it. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Feedback is always good, you know, because we we're always

polishing and improving and, you know, adding new features and all that. And, it's mostly driven by you, you know, the users of the system. Speaking of, you know, valuable feedback from you, we are attending podcast movement, specifically Todd, Mike, and myself. We will be there later this month in August in Washington, DC. So, give it a try before then and let us know what you think when you see us in person. Yeah. Definitely. And, you know, we'd like to hear from

you there and, and before and after. Of course, in the show notes, we have contact information and all that stuff over at podcast insider.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Happy podcasting. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe,

share, and read our show notes. To check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the e's because we can't afford them.