201 | Social Media Clips Won’t Grow Your Podcast - Do This Instead

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Stridland. I am your podcast growth coach, and today we are going to talk about the thing that everyone thinks will grow their show, but I have almost never seen grow a show. And that is this, clips, video clips. There is a plethora of online tools that make the promise that if you give them a recording of your video podcast, their software will grab a bunch of clips, useful nuggets from the episode, chop them up into pieces of short-form social media content, and then you can plaster those clips all over your social media profiles like Instagram Reels or Facebook Reels or TikTok or YouTube Shorts, and boom, your show will grow, right? But I'm willing to bet that you have been posting them, maybe you're still posting them regularly, and yet your podcast isn't growing. And so you probably think that the problem is your clips, or maybe it's the specific software that you're using, but that's not the problem. And so in this episode, I'm going to explain to you why this doesn't work. I'm going to give you permission to stop ripping clips from your podcast episodes, and I'm going to share with you how you can actually use certain tools, AI tools specifically, to really efficiently create great social media content that, yes, grows your audience on social media, which can in turn grow your podcast. Now this is something that I've been wanting to share with you for a while, but I really didn't have a solution to it. So I didn't want to make a podcast episode that said, hey, you should stop making social media clips because I didn't have anything to recommend that you do instead. If you disagree with that, if you rather would me tell you to do stuff, even if I don't know what you should do instead, let me know. But usually I try to have some sort of solution to pair with this introduction of a problem. But I'm not even introducing the problem here because you probably know that it's a problem. And if you ask around, like if you get in touch with big podcasters, even the ones who posts clips on a regular basis, they'll be the first ones to tell you that having clips, even ones that go viral, get millions and millions of views, they don't really move the needle on downloads at all. They go viral and maybe they get the creators some followers, but really it doesn't do much. What's way more common that I see is that creators will post clips to their podcast. They are clips that are taken from remote interviews so the clip looks like the hosts in the top half of the video, the guests in the bottom half of the video. There might be a bunch of graphics about the podcast. There might be some captions. And again, like nothing really happens. The clip doesn't get tons and tons of reach. And it definitely doesn't grow the podcast downloads. So why is this? Well, what you need to understand is that, first of all, short form social media is now entering its fifth or sixth year in the public conscience. So 2019, 2020 is when TikTok really exploded onto the scene and changed what social media is like because shortly after TikTok exploded and started taking market share away from the other social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, now X, Facebook, and even now LinkedIn shortly followed suit by introducing short form clips, first of all, as a key way to consume content on that platform, but also making it so that when you go on a platform, you mostly see content from people you don't already follow. That changed the game on social media and that ushered in this current social media summer where while it's not easy to go super viral on social media and get tons of organic growth, it is much, much easier now than it was from 2015 to 2020 when this wasn't the case. So short form video, indeed, is an incredible way to get tons of reach, but the repurposed podcast clip in my opinion is not, and here's why, if you pull up your favorite short form clip watching app, so if you're a TikTok watcher, pull up TikTok, if you're an Instagram real watcher, go to the Reels area on Instagram, sending on Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it. And what you're going to find is that if you just scroll through the videos that get served to you, almost never will you get served a video that is a repurposed, remote podcast interview clip. And if you do get served to that, it's usually from somebody that you already follow, which is a little hint that I'll drop and come back to later. But if your goal is to get new people to discover you and your podcast and your business on social media, the reason why clips aren't doing the trick for you is because those clips don't get shown to new people. Why don't they get shown to new people though? Well, it's because the algorithm, the big, bad algorithm that everybody loves to hate is simply a recommendation engine. And I give credit to my friend Travis Brown, who explained to this to me, Travis is somebody who has cracked the code of going viral on Instagram. And I was chatting with him and he said, the Instagram algorithm is just a recommendation engine. Every single time you upload a video, an Instagram real, and this is the same thing on every other platform. Every time you upload that video, Instagram is going to take that video and it's going to show it to a little bit of people, just a little bit. And it's going to watch what they do. If the people who get served that video once it originally gets posted, watch it in its entirety. And they don't immediately scroll past it. And especially if they like it or especially, especially if they share it with somebody else, then that's going to be a signal to the Instagram algorithm. And the Instagram algorithm says, oh, wow, I showed this video to 50 people. They really liked it and I know they liked it because they watched the whole thing and they shared it with some friends. Let me show it to 300 more people and see if that's still the case. And if the video is good, those 300 more people will see the video. They will engage with it. They'll watch the whole video and Instagram will be like, this is amazing. Let me show it to 3,000 people. And if the video is really good, those 3,000 people who now are people who know you less because the first 50 people are the people who always get your content. Now we're talking about people who don't always get your content may not know you personally as well. If those 3,000 people watch the entire video, engage with it like, comment, share it with a friend, Instagram goes, oh, we're on to something here. Let me show this video to 30,000 people. Now I'm simplifying it may not be that exact scale, right, in that order, but that is how a video goes viral, plain and simple. So if you think the algorithm is out to get you and you can't crack the algorithm quote unquote, the algorithm is simply the video that you posted. Did people watch the whole thing or was it either not visually appealing or really boring or just confusing and not clear what it was? If it's any of those things, then the person who sees the video is going to scroll past it faster than they even realize that they did. And again, just observe your own behavior, consuming short form. Note how freaking quickly you scroll past the video that doesn't immediately grab you by the lapels, right? That's how you behave watching short form videos and that's how everyone else behaves watching short form videos. And that's why these algorithms are so good because you tell it what you want to see. Now let's bring it back to your podcast clips. When someone sees your podcast clip, first of all, it doesn't look like a short form video that they are used to seeing with all the graphics in your podcast branding and the host and the guests and everything like that. It's cluttered. So first of all, it's not visually appealing. Secondly, and this is the big thing. If they are seeing a random clip, even if it is the best moment from the podcast episode, if they are just thrust into a moment in your podcast episode with no context and podcast listeners love it because they had that context, the short form viewer doesn't have that context. They don't know who these two people are. They don't know why they should care what these two people have to say. And they don't know what these two people are in the middle of talking about. So this is why even the most amazing moments from your podcast episode when they're put into minute clips don't perform well. And if you think about it, this is kind of like if you were trying to get somebody to read your book and you were like, oh, let me give them a taste of the book and you ripped out page number 172 and you had them read just page number 172. Even if it's from the best chapter of the book, do you think they're going to know what's going on? Do you think they're going to be like, oh my gosh, this was riveting. I want to read this entire book. Maybe sometimes, maybe if you have an incredible page, but it is exceedingly rare. On top of that, even if viewers did have the context, if you're relying on ripped clips to grow your podcast on social media, then you are counting on the fact that you or your guest will have accidentally recited an amazing short form video clip through the course of your interview. Do you know how much time people who do well on short form videos spend on their scripts? It's a lot. Sometimes it's ours. Most people have full-time employees who just write their short form video clips because that's how intricate and difficult it is to capture someone's attention who is a complete stranger and in the matter of seconds, get them hooked on whatever it is you're talking about. I know you might be saying, Kevin, but I have seen a couple clips of podcasts go viral. Why did that happen? Well, like I said before, every once in a while, yes, lightning gets caught in a bottle and something is said on a podcast episode that is accidentally well-engineered to get tons of organic retron social media. Most of the time, though, that conversation is going to involve somebody who is really already famous, so the viewer already has context on who that person is. So love him or hate him, a creator that a lot of people pay attention to right now is Alex Harmosey. And if Alex Harmosey is on a podcast, you can grab a clip of that and post it and it will do better because so many people are obsessed with Alex Harmosey and they already have tons of context on who he is and what they say. So if you have a famous person, clips can work. Also, I've seen clips work when you have a really, really fancy studio. So remember before I said what it takes for a clip to work is number one, the viewer has to have context on what the video is about. Number two, it needs to be visually appealing. And number three, it has to not be boring. If you are in a really fancy studio like it's an in-person interview and you edit the clip really, really well, you can achieve some significant reach on social media because it's really, really visually appealing. But for most of us who are doing remote interviews and we don't have insanely fancy studios, it just doesn't cut it. And my favorite example of this was there is a huge creator who is in a similar space of mine. He helps people with content online and he's got a million YouTube subscribers and he's got 500,000 followers on Instagram and I was scrolling through his feed the other day and the reels that he makes that are like reels that he makes, right? He sits down and he makes short form videos, not repurposed but native. Those do really well. They get between 10 and 100,000 views every time he posts one. And sure enough, I was scrolling through his feed and he had a bunch of repurposed clips from his podcast and they were getting 1,000 views, maybe 2,000 views. So even this huge account that already has 500,000 subscribers is not getting any reach from ripped clips, they just don't work. So hopefully by now you understand why this is and that it's not your fault and it's not the tools fault that your clips haven't done the job for you and it's not your editors fault either. It's just not something that really works. And by the way, if you're working with an agency, I know a lot of people who listen to this show work with production agencies that will select clips for you. And I talk with these podcasters who have these agencies and they're like, yeah, I'm thinking of switching agencies because the clips that they select aren't that good. They don't get much return social media. My message to you is it's not the agency and the agency probably doesn't realize the extent to which these clips don't work. I've only gotten to this point and I've done nothing but study podcast growth for 5 years. So I wouldn't blame the agency either. It is literally, we have all somehow but let to believe that this is a great way to grow podcasts. Maybe it was somewhat effective in 2019, 2020 when short form was new and there wasn't the level of competition of short form videos that there is now, but it doesn't work anymore. Okay. So you get the point. I've belabored that these don't work. So what do you do? Well, I've got two things to share with you today. The first thing is actually a reason to keep publishing clips and the second thing is what to do instead of clips that will actually in my experience grow your audience on social media, which means you'll have the opportunity to get those people to tune into your podcast. Okay. So first, here's a reason why you could keep publishing clips. I have been talking about clips in the context of these things are not going to grow your audience. But what repurposed clips from your podcast actually do is they remind your current audience that you have new episodes available. So on the occasion that I publish a repurposed clip from my show onto Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is, most of the engagement that I get is from people who either say, oh, I can't wait to listen to this episode or that was a really great episode. So it almost becomes this little place that my podcast listeners get to interact with me, which is amazing because you right now, if you had feedback for me right here and now, how would you get it to me? You can't give it to me in the whatever app you're using to hear my voice yet to either email me or comment on a social media post of mine. So it does give you an opportunity for engagement and it does remind your current audience that there are new episodes available. Just keep in mind that the clips are not going to get tons and tons of reach. They're only going to be useful to those audience members who already know you, aka already have the context of who you are. Strangers won't be able to get context enough of who you are. So if you do decide to keep publishing clips, just know they're unlikely to grow your show. They're unlikely to grow your audience in a really quick and significant way, but what they will do is allow you to retarget your audience, remind your audience that you have podcast episodes available now and just stay top of mind, which is impactful. It is truly, truly impactful for you to stay top of mind on social media. So I would rather you post repurposed clips instead of nothing, but just understand that they're probably not going to drive as much growth. Okay, so what can you do instead? If you want to actually grow organically on social media and you understand that rich clips don't work, what do you do? Well, here's the thing I've been working on for a while. I'm still experimenting with this for myself, but I'm beginning to share this with my Grow the Show Academy members and my Grow the Show accelerator clients instead of taking a podcast recording and just trying to rip it apart and plaster it everywhere. Without any extra effort, I have found a way that you can participate on social media based on your podcast content that does take a little bit of effort, but it takes way less effort than completely making social media content from scratch. And it is this. You record your long form podcast episode, whether it's audio only or video as well. You record it. You use a transcription tool like Descripts or Riverside or Otter or something like that. You give that tool, the transcript of your long form episode could be a solo episode, could be a guest episode, could be a co-host episode, whatever it is. You get a transcript of it and then you use AI not to create social media content that repurposes those clips, but the AI instead identifies all of the little atomic things, all of the little nuggets of value that you shared or your guest shared in the podcast episode. And you'll find that any episode has at least five different things that by themselves would make an amazing social media post. If you think about it this episode here, I've shared many things. I've probably shared about five to ten already little things that I could make into a short form video or a tweet or a carousel or a LinkedIn post or something like that. And that's the beauty behind this, is that if you use AI to identify what to make social media content about based on your long form episode, you can then have AI draft a real script for you or draft the caption for you. This way you're not having to generate stuff completely from scratch. You already said the stuff in your podcast episode, AI can take it, adjust the words that you said a little bit so that they achieve the context that a stranger needs on social media to get value from that thing that you said. I have been doing this for the past few weeks and this is what my process has looked like. Like I said, I recorded an episode. I get the transcript from the script. I then upload the transcript to a custom chat UBT bot that I made. That bot's sole job is to identify the things that were said in that episode that could be good social media content. It could be quotes that were said. It could be resources that were mentioned. It could be frameworks that were shared. I have it pull out hacks, quick tips, contrarian thoughts. It goes through all of these things and says in this episode, you shared three different frameworks. In this episode, you said four amazing quotes. Here they are. In this episode, you shared three contrarian thoughts that your audience might find interesting. Here's what they are. And it gives me literally between 10 and sometimes up to 50 different atomic little nuggets that would make amazing social media posts. I say, oh my God, look at all this social media content that I have for next week. Then here's what I do. Based on how much time I have and whatever platform I want to post these things on, I then have another GBT bot that just writes captions. I'm like, your job is to write me a very, very short text piece that has a good hook that provides some value that shares a story and is valuable to whoever reads it. I give that chat bot the stuff that I said in the podcast episode. And it writes me like 500 word posts, quote unquote. I then use that as a LinkedIn text post that I attach a picture to. I use it as a short form video clip. I just literally record myself saying the words. And I've also converted them into threads on X and on threads, the app. And what is incredible is that I've just been doing this every Saturday for literally 20 minutes. I pull this week's podcast episode, I put it through this process. And in 20 minutes, I have five social media posts on all platforms. And this is what's amazing. Those posts are native. They are not clips that underperform. They actually look like real social media posts. And since I've been posting them the past few weeks, I have been getting reach, I've been getting organic growth on social media and I've been getting leads. I've been seeing people opt into my lead magnets from these posts. And I'm like, holy crap, I think I have cracked the code here. So in summary, if clips are your sole strategy to grow a podcast, it's not working. You know that. It's not your fault. You can optionally keep posting repurposed clips because it is good to show up on social media. And I would rather you post something than nothing. But understand that those clips will serve more as retargeting and reminders than actual growth. If you want growth from social media, leverage a little bit of AI. But most importantly, leverage all of the value that you're already giving in your five to 60 minute podcast episodes. That's so much amazing content that can absolutely be repackaged to share on social media. But you want to do it in zero extra time. And my point is that when you do it that way and you rely on AI to completely make the posts and you rely on the long form video to serve as the post itself, it doesn't work. But if you just spend a little bit of extra time. With AI help you craft native posts based on all of the good stuff that you said, then in just 20 minutes, you can have an entire week's worth or more of good, native social media content that actually achieves your goal, grows your audience, gets organic reach and makes the algorithm say, wow, this is really good. I should show this to more people. So I'm really excited to share this with you. Like I said, I've been testing this recently and I've had amazing early returns. And so I wanted to get this into your brain as quickly as possible. Now I will be sharing more material on this very shortly in the Grow the Show Academy in the coming weeks. So if you aren't in there, I highly recommend that you hop in or if you're a business owner that wants me to just build out this system for you inside of your business, click the link in the show notes and book a call with me and I can, you know, I can just walk you through how we could build it out for you. But either way, my hope is that this episode provided some clarity on why clips don't work and gave you an alternative option that I believe will actually grow your show. All right, that's going to do it for this episode. I will see you in the next one. Now I have a quick favor to ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests and it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment, leave us a five-star rating, maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post-produced with quality really freaking fast and if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it for a girl to show. My name is Kevin Schviddlin. I'll see you next time.