Top podcasts are generating significantly more engagement on Instagram than platform averages, while YouTube drives the highest community interaction through comments. These findings come from a new study by the social media management and analytics platform Metricool, which analyzed more than 12,000 social media posts from the top 100 U.S. podcasts, highlighting how successful podcast creators approach content distribution.
The data shows 87% of leading podcasts maintain a YouTube presence and 82% use Instagram, with short-form video clips driving notable audience growth. This marks a shift from audio-only strategies to integrated cross-platform content systems, challenging conventional approaches to podcast promotion.
“I think I would sum up the state of podcasting in 2025 in one word: opportunity,” says Alex Caceres, Growth and Influencer Marketing Specialist at Metricool. “With podcasting, you can talk about anything; it can be a super niche subject or more broad. And I think it has the opportunity to really become something much bigger than you probably would imagine when first starting.”
To ensure solid findings, Metricool developed a detailed method for its analysis. “We took this data over a 30-day period earlier this year. So it ended up being about a bit over 12,000 posts,” Alex explains. The team built a custom algorithm based on Apple Podcasts rankings, implementing a point system that factored in the daily positioning of podcasts.
“A good example would be if, for example, we had podcast A and that remained in one of the top spots over that 30-day period, that’s going to naturally be higher on our position tier as opposed to one that only hit the top 100, but didn’t stay there very long,” Alex says.
The Video-First Shift in Podcasting
A key finding from Metricool’s study, noted earlier, is that 87% of top U.S. podcasts maintain a YouTube presence, with Instagram following closely at 82%, indicating that podcasting is no longer primarily an audio medium.
“YouTube and Instagram are the platforms where they post the most,” Alex notes. “Video is the main tool for promoting podcasts. Short videos work great for grabbing attention and gaining new subscribers.”
This shift to visual content represents a significant change in how podcasters perceive their product. Rather than treating social media as supplementary promotion for audio content, top performers are creating integrated systems where video elements are core to the podcast experience.
Instagram’s Surprising Dominance
While YouTube’s importance might be expected, the study uncovered a striking statistic about Instagram’s role in podcast promotion: posts from top podcasts receive 724% more engagement than the platform average. This performance is primarily driven by Instagram Reels, which make up nearly 80% of podcast content on the platform.
“I think this is due to how we consume content,” Alex explains. “Reels are just that perfect formula for it. A lot of us consume short-form content on a daily basis. So you’re taking maybe 30-minute or hour-long episodes and putting them into 30-second, minute-long sound bites for people to see.”
The power of these bite-sized highlights extends beyond mere engagement to actual podcast discovery. “It’s even happened to me where sometimes I’ll go and listen to a podcast because I saw a 30-second clip about it,” Alex says. “I probably wouldn’t have listened to it if I hadn’t seen that clip. So I think that Reels are a great opportunity for discoverability. It’s easy for people to consume them.”
Platform-Specific Performance
Metricool’s analysis reveals interesting differences in how podcasters use different platforms versus where they actually find success.
On X, podcasters are surprisingly active, posting an average of 96.55 posts per month – the highest volume across all platforms studied. “This was actually another metric that did surprise me because I just did not realize that so many people were posting about their podcasts on X,” Alex says.
However, this high activity yields minimal returns, with just a 0.35% engagement rate and relatively few meaningful interactions. Alex attributes this to convenience: “I think it’s more so just because of how the platform is. The posts are so easy to throw up because it’s just like a quick text post.”
In contrast, YouTube shows strong engagement with a 3.13% engagement rate, which is higher than typical platform benchmarks. It also generates considerable community interaction, with an average of 537.16 comments per post. “I think it makes complete sense that the engagement is so high on YouTube because YouTube meshes that long form and short form content, and they also have a great community feature so people can have whole conversations in the comments,” Alex explains.
Facebook maintains steady performance with 71.30 posts monthly and a 0.87% engagement rate. Interestingly, it’s the only platform where there’s a clear connection between posting frequency and follower counts, with 5 of the top 10 accounts also being among the most active posters.
Perhaps most surprising is Instagram’s efficiency. Despite having the lowest posting frequency (37.24 posts per month), it delivers the highest engagement, with 5,517.51 interactions per post and 425.71 comments on average. This notable performance highlights how strategic content can outperform volume-based approaches.
Quality Over Quantity
The study’s findings directly challenge conventional wisdom about posting frequency on social media. “There’s no direct link between how often you post and how many followers you gain,” Alex says. “Of the top 10 podcast accounts by followers, only Facebook shows a clear link between frequent posting and follower count.”
The data revealed that on X, only 1 of the top 10 accounts by followers ranks among the most active posters. On YouTube and Instagram, just two accounts demonstrate this correlation. “Bottom line: posting more doesn’t automatically mean more growth, except maybe on Facebook,” the report concludes.
The evidence suggests that focused, high-quality content strategically distributed across platforms generates better results than maintaining a relentless posting schedule on any single platform.
Community Through Conversation
One of the study’s most compelling findings concerns the exceptional ability of podcast content to generate genuine conversation. The data show that podcast content outperforms platform averages in generating comments and meaningful interaction.
“Podcasts stand out on every platform not only for their reach, but for something even more valuable: real conversation,” the report notes. “Podcasts feel close and conversational, which creates a sense of familiarity that naturally encourages the audience to comment, share opinions, and join the discussion as if they were part of the conversation.”
This translates to comment rates that exceed platform averages by noteworthy margins: YouTube (229.28% higher), Instagram (2,431.51% higher), and Facebook (1,849.96% higher). The data indicates that podcast content naturally facilitates a sense of community that other content types struggle to achieve, creating stronger audience bonds and loyalty.
The Repurposing Advantage
For traditional marketers looking to apply lessons from successful podcasters, Alex highlights content repurposing as the key takeaway from the study.
“One of the biggest things that traditional marketers can learn is the power of repurposing,” she emphasizes. “I think we can forget that repurposing has so much power.”
The study shows top podcasters have mastered the art of transforming a single hour-long episode into numerous platform-optimized pieces without losing the core value of the content. This approach not only maximizes content efficiency but also meets audiences where they are with formats optimized for each platform’s consumption patterns.
“Traditional marketers should also look at how podcasters are doing partnerships,” Alex adds. “It’s changing every day and they’re becoming, you know, not just the podcast sponsorship, but the system sponsorship of it all.”
The Future of Podcast Content
Looking toward 2026, Alex predicts that while YouTube and Instagram will remain dominant platforms for podcast promotion, the format itself may continue to change toward more bite-sized content alongside traditional long-form episodes.
“I’m curious to see, because it is obviously still long-form heavy. I’m curious to see if we’ll start to see them change as time goes on,” she speculates. “I’ve seen that some podcasts, they’ll do their weekly one-hour episodes, but then they’ll do mini segments that are 5, 10, 15 quick bits. So I’m curious if that will change as well, and if those will start being incorporated more into their schedules.”
This hybrid approach could represent the next stage of development for the medium: maintaining the depth of long-form conversation while adapting to changing consumption habits and attention spans.
Recommendations for Podcast Success
Based on the detailed findings from their study, Metricool offers guidance for podcasters at any stage of development. Alex recommends a sequential approach that prioritizes consistency before expansion.
“First, I would say get your audio down pat and establish a consistent schedule of how often you’re going to record and publish your podcast,” she advises. “As soon as you do have that down pat, I would add a visual element as soon as possible.”
Once these foundations are established, platform selection becomes crucial. “Look at where your audience would find you the best, whether that be YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, and start building that community on those engagement-heavy platforms so that you can eventually get to your big ecosystem,” Alex says.
The study’s findings also suggest that creators should prioritize building sustainable community connections over chasing viral moments. “Community comes first, but the goal is to have a very efficient ecosystem,” Alex concludes.
Metricool’s study ultimately reveals that the most effective creators have moved beyond thinking of themselves as audio producers supplemented by social promotion. Instead, they’ve become multi-format content system builders who deliver their message in various formats across platforms, creating numerous entry points for new listeners.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how podcasting changes,” Alex notes. “If you’re starting a podcast or if you’re already in the podcast world, social media is 100% an element to it and how you’re repurposing that content and getting your content seen in order to bring more people to the podcast.”
For creators in the audio space, this multi-platform perspective requires more diverse content creation skills and platform knowledge, but it also provides multiple avenues for audience growth and engagement. As Alex puts it, in the world of podcasting today, “opportunity” may be the operative word, but capturing that opportunity requires thinking beyond the audio file.
Image credit: Metricool The full study is available here.
Nii A. Ahene is the founder and managing director of Net Influencer, a website dedicated to offering insights into the influencer marketing industry. Together with its newsletter, Influencer Weekly, Net Influencer provides news, commentary, and analysis of the events shaping the creator and influencer marketing space. Through interviews with startups, influencers, brands, and platforms, Nii and his team explore how influencer marketing is being effectively used to benefit businesses and personal brands alike.
Top podcasts are generating significantly more engagement on Instagram than platform averages, while YouTube drives the highest community interaction through comments. These findings come from a new study by the social media management and analytics platform Metricool, which analyzed more than 12,000 social media posts from the top 100 U.S. podcasts, highlighting how successful podcast creators approach content distribution.
The data shows 87% of leading podcasts maintain a YouTube presence and 82% use Instagram, with short-form video clips driving notable audience growth. This marks a shift from audio-only strategies to integrated cross-platform content systems, challenging conventional approaches to podcast promotion.
“I think I would sum up the state of podcasting in 2025 in one word: opportunity,” says Alex Caceres, Growth and Influencer Marketing Specialist at Metricool. “With podcasting, you can talk about anything; it can be a super niche subject or more broad. And I think it has the opportunity to really become something much bigger than you probably would imagine when first starting.”
To ensure solid findings, Metricool developed a detailed method for its analysis. “We took this data over a 30-day period earlier this year. So it ended up being about a bit over 12,000 posts,” Alex explains. The team built a custom algorithm based on Apple Podcasts rankings, implementing a point system that factored in the daily positioning of podcasts.
“A good example would be if, for example, we had podcast A and that remained in one of the top spots over that 30-day period, that’s going to naturally be higher on our position tier as opposed to one that only hit the top 100, but didn’t stay there very long,” Alex says.
The Video-First Shift in Podcasting
A key finding from Metricool’s study, noted earlier, is that 87% of top U.S. podcasts maintain a YouTube presence, with Instagram following closely at 82%, indicating that podcasting is no longer primarily an audio medium.
“YouTube and Instagram are the platforms where they post the most,” Alex notes. “Video is the main tool for promoting podcasts. Short videos work great for grabbing attention and gaining new subscribers.”
This shift to visual content represents a significant change in how podcasters perceive their product. Rather than treating social media as supplementary promotion for audio content, top performers are creating integrated systems where video elements are core to the podcast experience.
Instagram’s Surprising Dominance
While YouTube’s importance might be expected, the study uncovered a striking statistic about Instagram’s role in podcast promotion: posts from top podcasts receive 724% more engagement than the platform average. This performance is primarily driven by Instagram Reels, which make up nearly 80% of podcast content on the platform.
“I think this is due to how we consume content,” Alex explains. “Reels are just that perfect formula for it. A lot of us consume short-form content on a daily basis. So you’re taking maybe 30-minute or hour-long episodes and putting them into 30-second, minute-long sound bites for people to see.”
The power of these bite-sized highlights extends beyond mere engagement to actual podcast discovery. “It’s even happened to me where sometimes I’ll go and listen to a podcast because I saw a 30-second clip about it,” Alex says. “I probably wouldn’t have listened to it if I hadn’t seen that clip. So I think that Reels are a great opportunity for discoverability. It’s easy for people to consume them.”
Platform-Specific Performance
Metricool’s analysis reveals interesting differences in how podcasters use different platforms versus where they actually find success.
On X, podcasters are surprisingly active, posting an average of 96.55 posts per month – the highest volume across all platforms studied. “This was actually another metric that did surprise me because I just did not realize that so many people were posting about their podcasts on X,” Alex says.
However, this high activity yields minimal returns, with just a 0.35% engagement rate and relatively few meaningful interactions. Alex attributes this to convenience: “I think it’s more so just because of how the platform is. The posts are so easy to throw up because it’s just like a quick text post.”
In contrast, YouTube shows strong engagement with a 3.13% engagement rate, which is higher than typical platform benchmarks. It also generates considerable community interaction, with an average of 537.16 comments per post. “I think it makes complete sense that the engagement is so high on YouTube because YouTube meshes that long form and short form content, and they also have a great community feature so people can have whole conversations in the comments,” Alex explains.
Facebook maintains steady performance with 71.30 posts monthly and a 0.87% engagement rate. Interestingly, it’s the only platform where there’s a clear connection between posting frequency and follower counts, with 5 of the top 10 accounts also being among the most active posters.
Perhaps most surprising is Instagram’s efficiency. Despite having the lowest posting frequency (37.24 posts per month), it delivers the highest engagement, with 5,517.51 interactions per post and 425.71 comments on average. This notable performance highlights how strategic content can outperform volume-based approaches.
Quality Over Quantity
The study’s findings directly challenge conventional wisdom about posting frequency on social media. “There’s no direct link between how often you post and how many followers you gain,” Alex says. “Of the top 10 podcast accounts by followers, only Facebook shows a clear link between frequent posting and follower count.”
The data revealed that on X, only 1 of the top 10 accounts by followers ranks among the most active posters. On YouTube and Instagram, just two accounts demonstrate this correlation. “Bottom line: posting more doesn’t automatically mean more growth, except maybe on Facebook,” the report concludes.
The evidence suggests that focused, high-quality content strategically distributed across platforms generates better results than maintaining a relentless posting schedule on any single platform.
Community Through Conversation
One of the study’s most compelling findings concerns the exceptional ability of podcast content to generate genuine conversation. The data show that podcast content outperforms platform averages in generating comments and meaningful interaction.
“Podcasts stand out on every platform not only for their reach, but for something even more valuable: real conversation,” the report notes. “Podcasts feel close and conversational, which creates a sense of familiarity that naturally encourages the audience to comment, share opinions, and join the discussion as if they were part of the conversation.”
This translates to comment rates that exceed platform averages by noteworthy margins: YouTube (229.28% higher), Instagram (2,431.51% higher), and Facebook (1,849.96% higher). The data indicates that podcast content naturally facilitates a sense of community that other content types struggle to achieve, creating stronger audience bonds and loyalty.
The Repurposing Advantage
For traditional marketers looking to apply lessons from successful podcasters, Alex highlights content repurposing as the key takeaway from the study.
“One of the biggest things that traditional marketers can learn is the power of repurposing,” she emphasizes. “I think we can forget that repurposing has so much power.”
The study shows top podcasters have mastered the art of transforming a single hour-long episode into numerous platform-optimized pieces without losing the core value of the content. This approach not only maximizes content efficiency but also meets audiences where they are with formats optimized for each platform’s consumption patterns.
“Traditional marketers should also look at how podcasters are doing partnerships,” Alex adds. “It’s changing every day and they’re becoming, you know, not just the podcast sponsorship, but the system sponsorship of it all.”
The Future of Podcast Content
Looking toward 2026, Alex predicts that while YouTube and Instagram will remain dominant platforms for podcast promotion, the format itself may continue to change toward more bite-sized content alongside traditional long-form episodes.
“I’m curious to see, because it is obviously still long-form heavy. I’m curious to see if we’ll start to see them change as time goes on,” she speculates. “I’ve seen that some podcasts, they’ll do their weekly one-hour episodes, but then they’ll do mini segments that are 5, 10, 15 quick bits. So I’m curious if that will change as well, and if those will start being incorporated more into their schedules.”
This hybrid approach could represent the next stage of development for the medium: maintaining the depth of long-form conversation while adapting to changing consumption habits and attention spans.
Recommendations for Podcast Success
Based on the detailed findings from their study, Metricool offers guidance for podcasters at any stage of development. Alex recommends a sequential approach that prioritizes consistency before expansion.
“First, I would say get your audio down pat and establish a consistent schedule of how often you’re going to record and publish your podcast,” she advises. “As soon as you do have that down pat, I would add a visual element as soon as possible.”
Once these foundations are established, platform selection becomes crucial. “Look at where your audience would find you the best, whether that be YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, and start building that community on those engagement-heavy platforms so that you can eventually get to your big ecosystem,” Alex says.
The study’s findings also suggest that creators should prioritize building sustainable community connections over chasing viral moments. “Community comes first, but the goal is to have a very efficient ecosystem,” Alex concludes.
Metricool’s study ultimately reveals that the most effective creators have moved beyond thinking of themselves as audio producers supplemented by social promotion. Instead, they’ve become multi-format content system builders who deliver their message in various formats across platforms, creating numerous entry points for new listeners.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how podcasting changes,” Alex notes. “If you’re starting a podcast or if you’re already in the podcast world, social media is 100% an element to it and how you’re repurposing that content and getting your content seen in order to bring more people to the podcast.”
For creators in the audio space, this multi-platform perspective requires more diverse content creation skills and platform knowledge, but it also provides multiple avenues for audience growth and engagement. As Alex puts it, in the world of podcasting today, “opportunity” may be the operative word, but capturing that opportunity requires thinking beyond the audio file.
Image credit: Metricool
The full study is available here.
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