As we mentioned near the end of last week's episode, this week we're talking about listener life cycles -- because not all listeners are created equally, and without a proper understanding of your podcast’s listener life cycles you will find yourself fighting an unwinnable fight to keep every new listener who comes your way.

We publish remarkable podcasts on a consistent basis and new listeners discover our shows each and every day. So why do new listeners not stick around? Is it something we did or didn’t do, or is it something deeper than this?

Today we are going to expand upon a private conversation we had. We found them ourselves dissecting the growth of our podcasts -- and more importantly, the life cycles of our podcast listeners.

A fair bit of warning: this discussion is not as tight and buttoned-up as some of our other discussions. We meander a bit, and even struggle to explain things at times.

But it really comes around at the end, and the calls to action we suggest are extremely useful (and potentially fruitful) thought processes that you should go through to get to know your audience better, so you can serve people more appropriately at whatever part of the listener life cycle they are in.

Among the topics we discuss:

• Why all listeners have unique jumping in and out points
• Three types of podcast listeners: passers-by, advocates, and fans
• How to help listeners cross over to the next life cycle