After creating your podcast, it’s time to focus on the numbers. Internal podcasts are a time-based medium which makes them easy to track if, when, how, and on which device your listeners interact with your content. Unsure what you want to measure? Keep reading.

With any endeavor in employee communications, it’s good to keep an eye on the progress you make, genuinely understand your workforce’s listening habits and improve content (if need be). Also, note that success looks different for every company and every internal podcast. Set a tangible goal and write down how you plan to measure success upfront.

This article originally appeared in our bi-weekly newsletter on private podcasting. Sign up here .

Here’s a quick breakdown of what you can measure using Pager :

▶️ Number of starts and streams

You’ll be able to see the number of starts (that’s how many people actually press play) and the total number of streams. A stream counts after full 60 seconds have been played.

✔️ Completion rate

You’ll be able to see when employees stop listening and drop out. If most listeners stop early, it might be an indicator to shorten future episodes.

☀️ Starts by time of day

You’ll be able to see a heatmap making the listening behavior of your workforce visible. Is it during work hours or in their free time?

📱 Device data

You’ll be able to see a chart showing how people prefer to listen: on a mobile device or not. It can also hint if people are consuming your content on the go.

📍 Countries

You’ll be able to see from which countries most employees are tuning in. Do you see a connection between episodes and locations? For example, if you interview an employee based in Germany, are more employees in the German market listening?

💻 Browsers

You’ll see which browsers your employees are using to listen to your internal podcasts. Do they listen at work or from home?

And remember: All data is available per episode, podcast, and aggregated over time. So you can see your progress from episode to episode.

💯 Story Time

But what if engagement looks completely different? A story: In 2019, we launched The Idealists Podcast. No experience. No Audience. No nothing. And still, we got surprised by the listeners’ engagement. They reached out, asked for the next episode, shared their stories, suggested new guests, and told us what they enjoyed most. Some even mentioned purchasing the products of our guests. We have never experienced this level of excitement before. So what if engagement looks completely different? Maybe you get a personal message applauding the podcast, receive direct feedback on a specific episode that resonated, read ideas for improvement, or hear suggestions for future guests or topics. Perhaps two employees met for a coffee because your podcast made the intro they needed, or a work friendship started to form because of one of your episodes. The list goes on. Possibly, the success of your internal podcasts is the opposite of reaching 100% of your employees on paper but touches a few profoundly and connects employees meaningfully. In our On The Inside interview with Zane Ewton, he also stresses the importance of qualitative feedback from employees as podcast success.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at podcast artworks and why they are the face of your show.