Should Podcasters Be Focusing on Video?

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WP fam, welcome to today's episode.

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My name is Hector Sania, Stepan.

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I have been producing and promoting podcasts for almost a half decade now.

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And I am excited to share with you some things that have been going on in the

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podcasting world and, and that's video.

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And it's something that's come up quite a bit.

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Over the last several weeks in podcast circles, it came up most

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recently on our Twitter space.

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I've seen people talking about it all over on LinkedIn.

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And then most recently with just on calls with podcasters and

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potential clients, prospects.

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And they're talking about the need for wanting to expand into video and seeing it

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as a way to be able to expand their show.

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But the reality is, is that creating a podcast in and of

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itself is its own undertaking.

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It takes a lot of time.

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It takes a lot of effort.

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It takes a lot of work.

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It takes a lot of skill, but then incorporating video is a whole new

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endeavor and those same things come along.

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And so the question is, should podcasters even be focused on video.

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And we talked about it on our Twitter space.

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I've talked about it with some clients that are gonna be coming on.

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We're gonna be helping them get their podcast out on video.

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And it's also something that internally our own team has been building our

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capabilities and ramping up our systems to make sure that we are

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able to be able to do video as well.

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And so that's the question that we're gonna start with today is should you,

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as a podcaster be focusing on video.

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And when I think about video, there's really three different types of videos

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that podcasters can be putting out there because a lot of podcasters get

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overwhelmed, they see videos and they're like, what types of videos, how long.

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Where do I put 'em?

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And so I think if we can break them into three separate categories and we

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can talk about the places that those categories and videos can live, it might

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make it a little bit easier for you.

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And then you might be able to understand who or how you can

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actually get these out there.

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And so the three formats are full.

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right, which are your full length episodes.

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We have short form clips and these clips are usually anywhere

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between three to 10 minutes.

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And then you have your shorts, which are oftentimes vertical

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and less than a minute.

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And so you have these three different types of videos that you

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can be creating for your podcast.

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Now, ideally we wanna be creating all three types of.

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, but even if you could just pick one, even if you could just start with one,

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you're gonna be better off your, your downloads are gonna go up a little.

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If you can pick one, stay consistent with it and distribute it on the right

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platforms, which we're gonna talk about.

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So let's get into the first one, which is full length, and these are the ones

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that might be the most obvious ones.

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And a lot of podcasters are doing this where they'll take their podcast and

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they'll put their episode up on YouTube.

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If they have the video, maybe they'll use the video.

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If not, maybe they'll just use a picture or the episode art,

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or it'll be a static background.

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Having full length videos on YouTube can be a great way for discovery

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can be a great thing for discovery.

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What I want to tell you is that it's probably not going

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to grow your show though.

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It's not going to do a whole lot in terms of getting new listeners.

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And the reason is, is that very rarely are people going on YouTube and stumble onto

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something that's 30 to 45 minutes long.

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It's just very rare.

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Oftentimes those people are searching.

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They go in, they type it, they know your show.

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They go in and look for it.

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They find it and they listen to the episode.

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But most oftentimes, if people are just browsing or people are.

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Hanging out on YouTube.

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What they're gonna be looking for is something in that three

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to 10 to maybe even 15 minute range, they might give it a try.

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If you've got a really compelling title and.

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That's why the next form, shorter clips work so well, especially on YouTube now

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let's hop back to full length, right?

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Cause what we didn't talk about was where to put them.

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We talked about YouTube, but the , other place that people

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forget about putting their full length episodes is on Spotify video.

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Now . If I'm not mistaken, you have to upload through anchor.

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And so I think that's still the case.

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However it is worth doing because Spotify is looking to push their video podcasts.

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And so if you can just be up there, there's not a lot of other competition

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or as not as much competition as there is audio only shows.

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And so getting your show out on Spotify video is really, really simple.

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Once you can know where to.

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Now I mentioned this a little bit before, but the second type

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of video is what we call clips.

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And these are the shorter clips that oftentimes take

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the best parts of the podcast.

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Take the best segments of the interview, or take the best snippets of the show.

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And they create a shorter video so that someone who doesn't have

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the time , or isn't as familiar with your show so that they can

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experience in a much shorter capacity.

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Now we work with a lot of interview shows, not just business shows,

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but a lot of interview shows.

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And so within that interview, there is one general theme or general topic.

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A general idea that creates the title, right.

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And titles are really, really important for podcast discovery and for growing

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your listens and your downloads.

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And so you, I think we did a, an episode on titles go back and listen to that

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now, the thing about that though, is that you only get one.

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Title there you only get one topic and it's not as helpful to keyword stuff.

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And to make these really long titles, cuz that looks weird and

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kind of throws off your listeners.

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And so the value of having these clips is that you can take the best parts of that

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episode and you can pull those out and put them in places where people might find.

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Now, this creates a couple of things.

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There's a couple of things that happen.

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The first thing that happens is someone might stumble on that clip and then

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go out and find your full episode.

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It's happened quite a few times where I'm scrolling through Instagram or.

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Just letting things auto play on YouTube.

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And I stumble on a clip from a podcast that I didn't know, actually existed

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. And I ended up going down that rabbit hole and listening to more episodes

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or going and finding their podcast.

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so the shorter clips can be great breadcrumbs back to

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your full length episodes.

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Now, where do we put these shorter clips?

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YouTube is obviously a great place to put them another great place to put

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them is some places like Instagram or even TikTok is extending the length of

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their clips, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, those types of places, Or even

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places like Pinterest, that's another place that's becoming a great place

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for videos, especially videos that are a little bit longer form videos to

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be able to live and find an audience.

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Now the last one is something that we've talked about recently, and that is.

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Shorts, some people call 'em reels.

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Some people call 'em tos, but I like shorts because a lot of people think

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that the importance is the vertical video , what's really important to focus on is

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that it's oftentimes less than a minute, maybe even less, 30 seconds, 45 seconds.

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Something that can capture attention, deliver some information, or

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create some enjoyment or a laugh or create some sort of emotion.

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I laugh

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. Whatever it may be, but that is done in less than a minute.

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And so this is really, really important to try and figure out.

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How can you find the best 60 seconds for your clip or how can

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you create a clip, a, a mash up a montage clip of the best 60 seconds?

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Or, or how can you write a short script for a clip that you can do a voiceover

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for, or a video that you can record?

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It's the ability to convey that message in less than 60 seconds.

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And then it happens oftentimes to be in that vertical format.

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So those are your three different categories.

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You've got your full length episodes.

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You've got your teaser clips and then you've got your

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shorts, your vertical shorts.

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Now the last thing that I wanna get into is how you might get started, right?

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And I'm gonna go super, super basic.

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I'm gonna go super high level.

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And just so that you can walk away with some, maybe some confidence here.

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And the first thing that I would say is just to start recording video, even if

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you don't plan on launching a channel right now, just start recording the video.

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So you have it.

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We have a client who similarly.

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He actually recorded the first, you know, 15 episodes, not knowing what he was gonna

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do with his YouTube channel, but we're gonna probably start taking his videos.

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And start turning them into YouTube videos and clips and all

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the shorts that we talked about.

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So even if you don't use the video right away, it's great to still have it.

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The second thing that I would say is use some sort of easy editor, right?

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There are lots out there.

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My favorite one right now is script.

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And so.

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You can do so many things on the script and it makes it really, really easy.

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And I can spend a lot of time just talking about all the cool things

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that you can do on the script.

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The biggest thing that it allows you to do is it allows you to edit video easily.

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It allows you to take the, and find the best parts of your podcast and

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to clip those and just create small little clips of those, you can

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do cool things like the captions.

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You can add texts and pictures, the whole thing you can do all of

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it, but what's really, really cool.

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Is it makes it easy to find.

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The best clips, the most valuable clips, which is its

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own challenge in and of itself.

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So like I said, we like the script.

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You can find a link in the show notes for that as well.

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The last thing that I would say is get some help and this might mean taking a

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course, if you're gonna do it yourself, or what I would encourage you is that

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if you're gonna spend a hundred dollars on a course to be able to learn how

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to do video, and then you're gonna spend another a hundred or $200 on a

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program to be able to edit the video.

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You might be able to find someone who can do some great video

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work for a few hundred dollars.

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And so that's, I would say to also look, to get some support, maybe

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it's from a place like fiber or Upwork, or maybe you find an agency.

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There are lots of different places that will.

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Do this for you, you know, we're, you can obviously come to us and we

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can talk about helping you out, but get some help because video can be

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a beast and it could be a behemoth.

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And if you don't know what you're doing, and you're just trying to stumble along

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on your own, it can take a lot of time.

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I mean, you could free up 10 to 15 to 20 hours, or, I mean, I guess

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it could cost you 10 to 15 to 20 hours just to get some of these

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basic things that we talked about.

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If you're starting from scratch now, Experience video

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editors know that eventually.

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You can whip these out pretty quickly or you can, you know, you can get 'em

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out in a reasonable amount of time, but if you're not there, right, maybe,

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maybe it doesn't make sense to try and spend all the time to learn it.

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There are people who would be excited to do it for you at

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very reasonable rates as well.

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So those are the three things just get started, use some sort of

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easy editor or, and, or get some.

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Right.

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And I mentioned a variety of places that you can do that I want to thank you

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guys for sticking around with us today.

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If you guys are considering using video or you're using video already, I'd love

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to know what has been your experience.

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Do you like it?

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Do you hate it?

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What's it been like?

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Come find me on Twitter at Hector underscore podcast and let me know.

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I wanna thank you for being a part of the NYP fam.

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And if there's anything I can do to support your show,

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don't hesitate to let me know.

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And we'll see you guys on the next episode.