Podcast Stats & Feedback

There were a couple of questions in my ACRL Virtual Institute session yesterday about podcasting statistics and feedback. Our hosting site provides pretty good statistics for each file, including how often they've been downloaded and if the downloads were subscription based from iTunes or some other podcast receiver or directly downloaded from the web. The free Feedburner service provides similar statistics for number of times a file is download from your feed, but not as comprehensive. If you're hosting on your own server, you should be able to get stats from your server administrator on usage too.

We've had around 6,000 downloads of our podcasts at GPC since April of 2005. We've settled into each episode averaging between 100 and 150 or so downloads. There has been a shift from most of our traffic coming from iTunes to more like 40% iTunes and 60% direct web downloads. Just a guess, but I think the balance has shifted from library folks sampling our podcasts to more local listeners. Events such as readings and lectures tend to get the most downloads.

As far as feedback, I used to try to get people to comment on our podcast blog about what they like and would like to hear in the future. I didn't get much feedback that way. But I do get a ton of informal feedback just walking around campus etc. When someone says "hey, you're the podcast guy" I try ask them for input. I also get a ton of input from faculty/ administrators, especially if I sent out email notices of new podcasts. Old school, but some folks are slower to jump on the RSS bandwagon than others.

We now have a statement on our podcast page to give input and I'm going to set up a survey probably when next semester starts.

Any other ideas on how to get feedback? And of course make sure to listen to what feedback you get and act on it!