Listen to the gurus and you’ll believe every brand and entrepreneur should be hammering YouTube with their podcast this year. Ignore them. YouTuber podcasts tend to get audience.
While podcasters who put out YouTube content don’t.
Why is this?
YouTube takes a LOT of expertise
Let’s be really honest about this.
Most people posting content to YouTube are completely clueless about how YouTube works, or what makes for a successful YouTube video.
While a podcast is relatively straightforward in comparison. I’m not suggesting it’s easy. It’s absolutely not.
But learning curves for getting results from a podcast are far lower than for an equivalent YouTube channel.
It’s far easier for YouTuber podcasts to get results than it is for a podcaster to build a following on YouTube.
If a YouTuber podcast feed has been published using similar methods as the ones they’re using on their YouTube channel, chances are they’re going to get at least 50% of the way towards their desired goals.
We can’t say the same for a podcast publishing to YouTube.
Mostly because it has its own sub-culture.
What you need to think about before starting your ‘YouTube podcast’ campaign
Let’s get this room sized elephant out of the way before we even start!
This is a deep and well-argued topic, and I don’t want us getting distracted.
Let’s assume we’ve already decided that “YouTube videos are not podcasts” argument.
Assume we’re talking about a marketing manager who doesn’t care about that at all, and just wants to get their ‘podcast’ on YouTube.
There are three challenges you’re going to need to overcome in order to even start planning this project properly.
YouTube is bloody hard!
You’ve no doubt heard of Pew Die Pie and Mr Beast.
After all, these are two of the most famous and successful YouTubers.
And both, as well as many other YouTubers, have launched their own branded YouTuber podcasts in the past.
Admittedly with mixed results.
But even their ‘meh’ podcasts were still more successful than most people’s decent podcasts.
At least in terms of their goals and audience reach.
For every Pew and Beast, there are about one million “Ken from Liverpool talking about campervans” type shows.
These people will be doing super niche topics and still only get a handful of views with each video. This is because growing audience on YouTube is not easy.
And that brings us to the next point.
Editing video takes way longer than it does to edit audio
Even if you’re massively cutting corners and only slightly editing your video content, you’re still going to find producing your YouTuber podcasts exceptionally time consuming.
With considerations like lighting, transitions, B roll, and even cutaways to pre-recorded footage, there’s enough content to have to sift through.
And that’s without even factoring in the processing power that’s needed to seamlessly and quickly render this stuff for publication.
And that’s before you even think about the audio.
You might need to spend hours cleaning up your duff audio, because you’re not using a suitable microphone.
Ask any video expert and they’ll tell you; a YouTuber might put up with less than perfect video, but they get put off by bad audio.
Ironic huh?
And people still insist that audio quality isn’t all that important in podcasts? As in, audio’s own domain?? Are these people for real.
Get in the sea, the “Podcast Movement” Facebook group.
It’s a full time job, producing YouTuber podcasts!
Are you a multi-millionaire, semi-retired entrepreneur?
Do you get to fill your week up doing exactly what you want, whenever you want?
No?
Well, then I’m guessing your time is limited.
And you don’t really need to be adding too much more to your plate in terms of tasks.
So you might be upset to learn that your YouTuber podcasts are going to be taking up most of your week.
That’s if you want to get results from them.
In other words, you need to treat this as a full time job.
If you have a marketing team, that’s not such a huge challenge.
You can just assign those tasks to a member of that team.
But if your resources and person power are limited to just…. er….. you…
Well, my friend, you’re going to have to give some thought to how you’re going to manage this.
Whether you do it yourself, or outsource it to a video expert, the content’s going to be expensive to make.
And that’s before you even think about the optimisation.
The marketing.
And the offsite SEO.
It’ll take all of these things to get this content seen by your target viewers.
Some things you could consider doing instead of going all-in on being yet another creator of YouTuber podcasts!
- Start an audio podcast (or improve an existing one!)
- Test some short form video content on your website and socials first, and see if people resonate with it. If they don’t like your video now, they won’t like it on YouTube.
- Test and measure all of your current marketing channels and consider cutting any underperforming ones. Ironically, this will probably be YouTube!
If you do indeed already have an audio podcast but it’s not yet giving you the results you’re wanting – hence your temptation to test out YouTube – then why not let me see if I can help you to grow it?
I have a history of helping other podcasters to improve their shows, and get the results they’re wanting.
To see my testimonials, check out my podcast audit page here.
