95: Should You Publish Your Podcast on Youtube in 2023?

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to talk about video, specifically whether you as a podcaster should focus your energy on making video episodes and posting them on YouTube. Now if you don't know who I am, my name is Kevin Schmidland, I am a two time podcaster who has taken two shows past six figures in downloads and in revenue. And I also run a podcast accelerator program, which has over 350 students. And that's where we help independent podcasting business owners to grow their audience and generate more sales and revenue from their show. So I have worked with tons and tons of podcasters over the past few years and there's been a lot of buzz about video in podcasting. As a podcaster and podcast coach, I have gotten a lot of questions about what to do about video for podcasting. And most of those questions sound exactly like this. Hello, my name is Jim James and I am the host of the unnoticed entrepreneur podcast, loving what you're doing. Kevin, thank you so much for all of your amazing guidance and wisdom. My question is the impact of video. Do you think that podcasters will have to include a video version in the next year in order to stay relevant because video, as we know on YouTube is the world's second largest search engine and more and more platforms, including Riverside, are promoting video recording to complement the audio recording. So my question should we focus now our attention on video as much as on audio? Thank you so much for your question, Jim. It is fantastic. And so let's dive in. What I specifically love about the end of your question is that you asked about whether podcasters should turn their attention to video and that is such a great way to phrase it because attention is our most valuable resource as podcasters because in almost all cases, our podcast is not the only thing that we are working on. In fact, it's quite rare that a podcaster is only working on their podcast in their life. Not they have some other full time job that's unrelated to their podcast or they have a business that their podcast is related to, but they have to spend some time and attention running that business. So your question is do podcasters here now need to pay more attention to video or should they adjust their attention to making sure that their show is audio and video? Well, I have a few thoughts around this. Let's begin. I see it. The podcast industry indeed is moving closer and closer to video as time goes on and it feels like every year, the word podcast means something different. And I guess much specifically what I mean by that is there's really two definitions of the word podcast that floats around. Some people when they say podcasts, what they mean is an audio show, something that they listen to while they're doing something else. It might be an interview. It might be solo. It might be true crime. It might be fiction. It could be a number of things, but when they think podcast, they think of Apple podcasts or Spotify and they think of listening to something. There's a whole other class of folks who when they use the word podcast, what they mean is video interview. Some of these are podcasters whose shows are primarily a video show and some of them are consumers of podcasts who when they say, you know what? I want to watch a podcast right now. They don't go to Apple podcast or Spotify. They go to YouTube. And here's the thing for you to understand as a podcaster. That second group is growing year over year over year. The first group is growing too, but the second group is growing faster. So more and more as time goes on, video becomes synonymous with podcasts. Now, I know what you're thinking. Oh, God, this guy's going to tell me that I have to start doing video for my show off. I don't have time for that. I don't know how cameras work. I don't know how lighting is absolutely not not true stick with me. It is true that many, if not most, of the biggest podcasts have their shows on YouTube. And they produce their shows video first, meaning all of their interviews are done with expensive cameras and microphones and usually in studios or on a recording platform like Riverside. And it makes a lot of sense that those shows are some of the biggest ones around because YouTube, the platform gives podcasts something that audio podcasts only don't have. And that is organic algorithmic reach, which basically means there's an algorithm that will show your podcast content to people who might be interested in it shows that are audio only don't have that or at least not really, maybe a little bit, but not too much. Podcast listeners who only consume on Apple podcasts or Spotify don't really find out too often about new podcasts through some sort of algorithm, but people who consume podcasts on YouTube do. And so for that reason, it is extremely extremely beneficial for a podcast to be on YouTube and to be video first where, you know, when you pull up the video, it's not just a wave form or some little animation with the audio. It's actually a video of people talking, but here's the thing while there is a lot to be gained in doing that. There is also a huge cost in terms of money paying for cameras, for equipment, for video editing, for thumbnails to be made, and also attention as you alluded to Jim, which is number one, the attention of learning how YouTube works, learning what click-through rate is, thumbnails, titles, the importance of all those things, but also just the attention of making sure your show is not only good in what is said, and not only sounds good, but looks good as well. So as a podcaster, yes, there's a ton to begin on video, yes, there's much more cost to a video show than an audio only podcast, so then what should you do as an independent podcaster? Well, here is the distinction that I want to make. I do not believe that every single person who creates a podcast right now needs to say, okay, my show is a video show in 2023, totally unnecessary, because number one, there's a lot of cost, there's a lot to be learned, and that's just yet another thing you have to worry about. But number two, there are still literally tens, hundreds of millions of people who only consume podcasts via audio, and honestly have no idea that there's video versions available or some of them do, and they prefer audio, they don't care, they don't want to watch people talk. There's so many of those people, and that's okay, and it's totally fine to only reach those people. There are tons of massive shows, think about any NPR show that only exists in audio and they're killing it, and that's awesome, because audio shows are way easier to produce, they're way cheaper to produce, and again, it's just a different experience than watching video. And so rather than you as an independent podcaster thinking, oh God, now I got to take my audio show and make it video, instead what I encourage you to do is decide whether your show is audio first or video first. Make the decision and stick with it, own it, because here's the thing. Many of the podcasts that are successful on YouTube that are video first also have the audio for their show available on the streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple podcasts, etc. But what you might not notice unless you looked and listened very closely is that it's rare that those shows are exactly the same on YouTube as they are on streaming, and what I mean by that is you edit a podcast video differently than you edit podcast audio. A lot of times it is very, very, very similar, but it's not exactly the same. So in my opinion, any podcaster that is doing it right has the video version of their podcast, and then they have the audio version of their podcast, which is produced differently. It's done separately. So it's not a matter of just making one version and then just copying and pasting it to the other platform. In both cases, you do the interview or you record the solo episode or you put together the main piece of long form content, and then you edit it one way for video and you edit it a different way for audio. It's a lot of work. It's duplicative. Now you as an independent podcaster probably don't have the time and resources to do that. So if you want to be on both platforms that you have to do is basically produce the show once either primarily for audio or primarily for video, and then you copy and paste the show to the other platform. So for audio podcasters that want to have their show on YouTube, but don't want to record or edit it with YouTube effects and all that stuff. What those podcasters often do is they record their episode, they produce it audio only, and then they upload it to YouTube with some sort of graphic or image or something like that. Now far fewer people are going to sit and watch that video because they don't have something you know, keeping their attention visually, but as an audio podcaster, that's a pretty good way to get some of the benefits of YouTube without spending all of your time and money and energy turning it into a heavily produced video show. That's cool. You'll also sometimes see people who have video first content, take that content, essentially rip the audio and upload it to the streaming platforms. Now again, that tends to not perform as well because people can hear that this is not an audio show. This is not an audio episode. It's a video that they're listening to. And actually if you go back in time a little bit on the grow the show podcast, you can hear me in previous solo episodes say in this video, I'm going to talk about blah, blah, blah. And back then I thought it was totally fine to just take a YouTube video and put the audio on streaming platforms. But then after a while, after hearing from my audience and after listening back, what I learned was it's actually a kind of sucks like it's weird to be listening to an audio only podcast episode and have somebody say in this video, blah, blah, blah. And then also like refer to visual aspects on the screen. It's just it sucks as a, you know, as an experience for a listener. So overall what my point is to you is that as an independent podcaster, if you simply choose, I am a video first podcast that I will upload the audio to streaming platforms or I am an audio first podcast and I will create a video version and upload that to YouTube. You can totally grow a show to the audience size and revenue level that allows you to then pay to create your show completely native to both formats. And that's what a lot of the biggest shows do. So for example, if you look at Alex Harmosi and his content, he posts YouTube videos fairly regularly. And if you watch one of his YouTube videos, it's him talking and it's extremely heavily edited. The cuts are all over the place. It zooms in on its face. They do all kinds of effects and they've got graphics and be role and everything like that. And it's, you know, visually very, very stimulating and it's again heavily edited. But then if you go to his podcast feed, it's not just his YouTube channel copy and pasted there. They'll oftentimes publish the entire audio of him talking about whatever that subject is on edited. It's like 30 to 40 minutes long compared to the six minute, you know, super edited YouTube video. Why do they do that? Because the content that he sat there and recorded was very, very, very good. And so they edited it twice. They created it once as a long form audio only episode. And again, they edited it down super, you know, a ton as a YouTube video. The same thing can be seen with many interview shows as well. For them, the difference between the video version and the audio version is a little bit more subtle. Like it might only be the intro or the outro that's different on the audio version. But still those things are contextualized to audio only or video first. So what does all this mean? So Jim, you and everybody else listening are like, OK, I get the difference between here, but what should I do? Do I need to worry about video? The answer is not if you don't want to. If you want your show to be video first, cool. There is never a better time to get on YouTube than right now. And you will see that in 2023, I and grow the show will be investing in YouTube. My business is that appointment where I can afford to take my content, record it once, and have it edited two ways, one for audio only and one for video only. So at some point in 2023, you will see that the Grow the Show podcast has complete video versions of every episode, including guest episodes and those will be posted on YouTube. But if you are an audio listener only and you don't plan on watching on YouTube, that's totally cool. You will also get audio versions of Grow the Show in the streaming apps. So I've got to the place where my business and my podcast has grown enough that I can afford to record something once and then have it produced in two different ways. But if I didn't have that yet, what I would do is I would say, this is an audio first podcast. So I'm going to record the audio and then I'm just going to add a visualizer and upload it to YouTube. Or I would say this is the video first show I'm going to make the YouTube video and then I'm going to rip the audio and post it onto the streaming platforms just so that I can get a little bit of juice from the one that is not my primary one. So finally to bring this all home, what should you do as an independent podcaster, assuming you don't have the resources to produce your content twice once for audio only and once for video only. The answer is pick one and go all in on that one for 2023. If you feel fombo for not being on YouTube, simply take your audio, add a visualizer and put it onto a YouTube channel and you will get some benefits from that. You're not going to get tons of views. Your channel is probably not going to grow to huge, a huge amount of subscribers because your content doesn't have a video component, but that's okay. You can focus 100% of your efforts on growing the audio version of your show until it's grown and it's monetized to the point where you can afford to make video first only if you want to. Or if you're somebody who doesn't want to be on camera, cool. You don't ever have to do video. You don't. You can be audio first, you will always have grieving fan listeners who only care about the audio version of your show and you can still be a really successful podcaster just with your voice. So the answer to your question, Jim, to bring it all home is do you have to focus? Do you have to add video to your podcast in 2023? The answer is only if you want to. So that's going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. I hope this got you value. If you have any questions at all, I'd love to hear from you in the free Grow the Show Facebook group. The link to that is in the show notes. My name is Kevin Schmidland and I will see you in the next episode of Grow the Show.