Podcast Widgets and Vid2Pod from Blubrry – PCI 389

Speaker 0 00:00:00 We will convert that video to audio. We will pull the title, we will pull the metadata, we will pull the chapter notes, and we will automatically publish that video as an audio podcast that you have to do nothing. You can be at sleep in the middle of the night, and your new episode will post so long as you have posted your new video to that YouTube platelet. You're listening to Podcast Insider, hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochrane, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. All with the sport of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. This is Todd Cochrane, CEO and Co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 1 00:00:46 And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 0 00:00:50 We have some exciting features to talk about today, widgets for your website and our very exciting bid to pod.

Speaker 1 00:00:58 Yeah, well, let's, let's get with widgets first. Uh, of course they've been available in the dashboard. We kinda soft launch them, but, uh, if you haven't tried them out yet, you can find them under show manage and then widgets. And what they are are little things you can stick on your website. Uh, a lot of 'em are Podcast 2.0. Uh, and the nice thing about this is it works on any website that will take an I Frame, not just in WordPress. So we're branching out a little bit from WordPress kind of,

Speaker 0 00:01:33 And these widgets are really designed to take many of the features that we have added to our, our platform and for you to be able to showcase those features, uh, on your website or partner websites or wherever it may be. And I think what I'm really excited about this is, is while we're have the functions in podcast apps, a lot of the, the podcasting 2.0 apps over@podcastapps.com have many of these features built into the app. This is actually taking the ability for you to display a widget on your website that allows you to show stuff off like your audience survey your funding, your boosto gram, your pod roll, um, to be able to show these functions off in a way that, uh, allows you to get web exposure to, uh, the features that are in your, your RSS feed and things that we have set up for you, uh, both in the dashboard and then in Power Press.

Speaker 1 00:02:32 Yeah, I really like the pod roll one. 'cause you know, you years ago used to be that, uh, blogs out there would have what's known as a blog roll. So it was whatever the blogger wanted to promote. And it was, you know, it was pretty slick where you, you know, you, you could cross promote blogs that you liked. Well, this brings that to podcasting. Now, of course, that was podcasting 2.0 that brought that in the namespace, but now we're gonna surface that on the websites. And, you know, I, I really like it 'cause you know, I do more than one show. I do this show, I do a couple other shows and I like to be able to cross promote those, you know, 'cause people that tend to like you will also like some of the shows that you like or some of the other shows that you do. So it's, it's really kind of slick that way.

Speaker 0 00:03:25 You know, the widget for pod roll is one of those that you can place in a sidebar of your website or maybe in a post. And I like being to put it right in the post because as people are reading my episode show notes, they can see directly the podcasts that I recommend and click over to their website to be able to subscribe to them. So I think the pod role function gives you the ability to, again, like Mike said, promote other podcasts that you like and love, including your own other, other shows as well. I think my pod role, I think I've got six or seven shows that I listen to consistently that I have recommended in my pod role, and that will be able to give my audience ability. I just say in the podcast, Hey, check the show notes out. You'll see my pod roll and within the pod roll, uh, embed will be the, uh, the album art and a link to go over to the show.

Speaker 0 00:04:16 So I think that's one thing that's really, really exciting. And another thing, you know, we, we've given you the ability for a long time to embed your audience survey link. Mm-Hmm. . And, but sometimes that takes a little bit of work. Um, you gotta, you know, put a little something together on your website and you have to link it and make sure that it all looks well. Well, this is easy. You just grab this embed and drop it. You can put it in show notes, you can drop it the sidebar. And again, it gives you, and, and when I run my annual audience survey, it gives the listeners a link them to fill out. And, and what's cool about it is it's only gonna show up in the three or four episodes during that month when I'm promoting the survey that, so as soon as the, the episode that I stop promoting the, the audience survey in, I don't have to put the, the widget in there no more. I don't have to put the in bed, it carries over into those older episodes. But again, it allows me to distinctly have a campaign. And, uh, it's not necessarily sidebar, uh, where I have to take it or uptake it down. I can leave it up in those episodes. It makes it really, really nice. Or,

Speaker 1 00:05:17 Or you could just leave it up all the time. That's up to you. But, uh, that's, you know, the, the way you're doing it actually helps, you know, promote people filling it out. Whereas, you know, we promote that we have one in our show notes every every episode, and we'll be using this widget of course, instead of, uh, the link that we've been putting in there. ,

Speaker 0 00:05:38 Another thing that we have is similar to our sidebar in Power Press, where you can add your subscribed links, uh, and, and modify that so that they're round or square. And there's, you know, there's some options in there in Power Press. Not all of you are running Power Press on your website. Maybe you are running a Wix website and you're using the dashboard Mm-Hmm, or you're on a Squarespace or something like that. And you don't have an easy way to put the subscribe, follow, uh, icons on your website. Well, this is real easy. You, again, it gives you the links and logos for people to follow your show on podcast apps. So any, any of the destinations that you have, uh, basically organized Mm-Hmm, , um, in the destination section, both in power and on the dashboard, will show up in the subscribe and follow, uh, embed. And again, it's just another way to be able to place a easily place, um, these subscribe buttons. And maybe you wanna do this on, you know, maybe you have a dedicated page and haven't had really the ability to, to promote all the different destinations. So really this is really designed to put, have this, uh, box put anywhere you want with all those, uh, with all those icons.

Speaker 1 00:06:47 Yeah. And the next two are, uh, you know, a lot of people are talking about monetizing shows. Well, there's, there's ways to do it with advertising, but there's also the value for value and Podcast 2.0 has the two tags, the funding tag and the, uh, and the value tag, which, uh, turns into boosto grams or streaming Satoshis. Uh, we've got that now where you could put that right on your website. And the funding tag would be like something like a PayPal donate link or a Buy Me a Coffee or a Patreon, something like that. Any sort of donation site. Or if you have a specific page on your site, you can throw that in the funding tag. And this widget will just, uh, have that right there on there. So if they wanna donate to your show, there'll be one link and you can put that anywhere. And then the value for value boosts, uh, you know, just like in some of the podcast 2.0 apps, the new apps over@newpodcastapps.com or podcast apps.com. I don't know, there's probably 10 , 10 ways to get there. But anyway, any of those new apps, uh, you can send a Boosto gram, which is a little message with a, with some, uh, satoshi in it, uh, bits of Bitcoin. And now you can do that right from your website, or actually your listeners can do that right from your website if you use this widget.

Speaker 0 00:08:11 One of the ones that is also kind of cool is how do you give credit? Well, show credits is another feature where you put, let's say you and your co-host as the host and co-host or maybe dual host titles. And then you have a guest. Well, this, uh, show credit, uh, widget will allow you on an episode by episode basis to basically, um, give a, give a credit and have that credit show up on your website with your guest and, um, and their link to their website. So you can have essentially two embeds. You can have one for you and your co-host, or just you and another embed right next to it with your guests. And really what it does, it spices up each episode so that as people land on your website, they can see your picture as you have the ability to link a picture, your guest picture, and then maybe a, um, a link to either your or the guest's LinkedIn page. It really depends on how you want to, uh, to mix it up. Pretty

Speaker 1 00:09:06 Much any link you can put in

Speaker 0 00:09:08 There. Yeah. Or, or a bio link or site link. Um, but again, the credits is a, um, it gives you the ability to show your host producers and, and guests Of course.

Speaker 1 00:09:18 Yeah. And, you know, there's a whole list of different things you can give credit for . So you, you could make it, uh, almost like the credits at the end of a movie, you know, . But

Speaker 0 00:09:28 It's true. If you've got someone that's the editor or co-producer or does the transcripts for you or someone that's providing value and you wanna, you can put, give 'em a title and put them in your show credits. And again, this is something that you can use to recognize, you know, again, what we've done here and what's been done is you are now giving value back by promoting the people that are helping you. And again, the guests that are being on the show in a very, very smart, professional way. Um, instead of just putting some links, some hyperlink and some text to them on your website, it really can s sp up your post, uh, for your episodes. And again, you can put this maybe on a status page or something in about page. These, these widgets can live almost anywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:10:10 That's the, the beauty of it here. This next one actually, that you use this one a lot. Uh, so you, 'cause you go live with pretty much every show. We don't go live on this show anymore, but, uh, talk about that live widget.

Speaker 0 00:10:24 Yeah. The live widget is when you set the time that you're going to go live, the widget will update with the date and time along with the time zone. And, um, it'll, that basically updates on your website automatically. So this is designed to live maybe permanently in the sidebar or wherever you're promoting your live event to show when the next live is. And then when you send out the live signal, basically saying that you are going live, and the mechanism that happens there, the widget will update to live, and it'll show that you're green, that you're in the studio, that you're live, and that basically that widget will link to your live page so that you can take 'em to the live page to participate, to either watching the audio or listening to audio or watching the video or produce, uh, participate in the chat room. And then when the show ends, when you, when you basically have finished a live, the status changes on that icon to say that the, the live show has ended kind,

Speaker 1 00:11:17 Kind of like a rally light for your website. You know, like an old radio station, you have a on air light, you know, it's kind of that thing.

Speaker 0 00:11:23 And then when you update the, the information on when your next live event's gonna be, it'll update and it'll show your next live and give the advertising right on your website or that next live event. So it's just a cool little tool, like it is, it's kind of like a tally light, Hey, we're live or we're off air, or here's the upcoming event. So again, you can send those links to, um, the locations you want, uh, from that widget, but basically it just gives you the ability to advertise it, click on it, and you can then have your audience participate. Right?

Speaker 1 00:11:53 And here, here's one that I think is kind of cool, is if, say you have a, uh, landing page for, you know, new, new possible listeners, you could throw a widget for your trailer up, and that way you've got your trailer linked, you know, all the time and playable right there on your website, you know, so if someone comes to your website, it's not sure they wanna listen, they wanna hear a little bit more about the show, they can play that trailer right there. So that's kind of an easy, easy way to do a trailer episode, uh, mark it as trailer in, uh, you know, when you publish the episode. And there it's, so anyway, kind of a neat little widget.

Speaker 0 00:12:33 Now, as, as a ri reminder, these widgets are not just for WordPress, therefore, any website will take an iframe embed.

Speaker 1 00:12:40 Basically, if you could throw a YouTube, uh, embed in into your website, you can do these.

Speaker 0 00:12:45 Yep, exactly. So I think we can move on and talk about our most exciting announcement that's getting a lot of buzz. Oh, yeah. Um, this has been available for about a week now, and, uh, it's a new product called Vid two Pod and, uh, I think vid to pod video to podcast. But Vid two Pod is a way for video first creators, uh, YouTubers to have an audio podcast version of the show available. Now, if you think about it, if you, if you are focused on doing video first, but yet you want a podcast, but don't wanna go through the hassle of creating an audio version, cross posting, doing all the things that are needed to produce an episode, well, we've got a solution for you. Um, we have the ability now to automatically create a podcast episode from any new video you put in a designated playlist in YouTube. Now, we're gonna probably expand this beyond YouTube, but currently it's for YouTube, uh, more services to be added, uh, as we figure out the mechanism to do so. But again, it will automatically create a podcast episode for you. So we will actually, soon as you post to your YouTube playlist, we will query that playlist on a regular basis. And when it's, when we see there's a new, I don't know if you wanna call it episode or post, lemme see there's a new,

Speaker 1 00:14:05 A new video.

Speaker 0 00:14:06 We will convert that video to audio. We will pull the title, we will pull the metadata, we will pull the chapter notes, and we will automatically publish that video as an audio podcast that you have to do nothing. You can be at sleep in the middle of the night and your new episode will post so long as you have posted your new video to that YouTube playlist. So this is really, again, for friends of yours that are doing podcasts on YouTube, but yet they're not in Apple Podcasts, they're not on Spotify, they're not available where you listen to podcasts. So we think, and based upon the feedback we're getting already and the amount of folks that are telling other YouTubers about this, this is a product that might be for someone that you're listening to, or maybe you have been posting double posting, and maybe you're video first already, and, but you still want an audio podcast, but don't wanna do the extra work,

Speaker 1 00:15:00 The big time saver for, uh, you know, for YouTubers. And you get that extra exposure as a YouTuber. You know, you're, people would know, you know, based on what you say in the show, but you, you know, you let 'em know, Hey, this is available on YouTube. It's a YouTube channel or whatever. Uh, the other beauty of this is you do have the option to have an audio only show. You can come to blueberry and just publish an MP three if you want, as something extra or maybe put a trailer in or something like that, where, you know, so this could be used to, uh, actually promote your YouTube or vice versa. You know, we're kind of flipping the script a little bit. You know, a lot of people do podcasts and also a video channel. Well, these are for, this is for people that do a video channel and also wanna do podcasts.

Speaker 0 00:15:50 The, the big, the big thing that we realize is we were at an event recently and someone comes and says, oh, I got a podcast. And I said, great, let me look it up in Apple Podcast. And the guy looked at me kind of funny. He says, no, I'm on YouTube. I'm like, well, your podcast is not an Apple podcast. And, and there was this bewildered look upon this creator space. Well, he, you know, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I can go to YouTube, but I wanna subscribe and follow your show on a podcast app. Oh, I don't have that. Well, this is, this fixes that and allows a video podcaster or video one on the YouTube channel be able to have a podcast. And maybe, you know, this is another thing too, is this could be a secondary show. It doesn't prevent you from also coming into the blueberry platform and having your own website.

Speaker 0 00:16:36 All the things still apply. You can still have a free WordPress site from us. We don't cross post to that automatically. We do this all in the dashboard, but it still allows you to have an RSS feed that you can submit to Apple Podcasts. You can submit via the platform to Spotify. Um, this is a, um, a product that you do have to have, um, the advanced hosting plan, $20 minimum, uh, plan to do this. And, uh, storage limits do apply. So if you're produ producing 8, 9, 10, 12, 20 videos, uh, a month, you will need a higher hosting plan to handle all the audio. But at a minimum, you need to be on the $20 plan. That should cover most folks, because the video conversion is not that big. This is the only time we ever will actually touch someone's content and create audio for them. And it's specifically designed that way to make it easier. And the best thing really, getting back to the, one of the points I made earlier is you published your playlist on YouTube and within an hour, your podcast episode is also public. That

Speaker 1 00:17:39 Eliminates a lot of the work. I, I, I watch a lot of YouTube channels and some of them do also do a podcast version, you know, an audio podcast version. And this one in particular that I, uh, that I listened to mostly on audio. He was complaining the other day, oh, I got all this extra work. I've got all this, uh, you know, extra expense and I'm gonna have to do some advertising or something and, and all that. Well, that, you know, a little bit extra expense, but no more work. And that's the beauty of it. Once it's set up and it's real easy to set up, it's, it's just you set it up as another publishing method in blueberry, uh, you know, like we have Power Press, we have our dashboard, and now we have this the to pod, and it's just, it, it eliminates a lot of the hand work. And you're, you know, you're free to come in and edit the show notes if you want. You can, you can put out an ep a separate episode from YouTube if you want. All that is still available. It's just, you know, if you don't wanna do anything, you don't have to.

Speaker 0 00:18:42 Now we will have a video, uh, demoing this linked in the show notes. Uh, we're actually gonna be doing, or at this point, have done a live event at, uh, podcast movement evolutions that lays out, uh, how this works and, um, how, how easy the setup is. It really is remarkably easy, um, to, to create and get this set up. Um, the onboarding is just a little bit, uh, different in that we have you go two extra steps in the onboarding. It's primarily to be able to, to find your channel and also to link your playlist and reach some additional terms and service that we need from, uh, those of you that are YouTube creators. Um, but I think you're gonna find this, uh, remarkably, uh, simple. And if you already have a blueberry account, you just add a new account, uh, to the platform, and then you can create the, um, in the settings you're gonna find, when you decide what type of show this is gonna be, you'll have the ability to, to link up your YouTube account. But we'll have that all in the documentation and, and demo videos that are gonna be linked in today's episode.

Speaker 1 00:19:50 And, and, you know, I think the goal that we had, uh, this was, came up with, uh, from, uh, our head of finance, uh, Barry . And, uh, he, he came up with the idea and we just ran with it and our dev team just knocked it out of the park. But one of the advantages of this is that you don't have to, uh, be a podcaster. You know, this is, this is for people that already have a YouTube channel and never really even thought of podcasting. So, you know, if you know a YouTuber that, uh, their show would lend themselves to podcasting as well, or you'd like to be able to take 'em on the go, yeah. Let 'em know, man, uh, we're here. We'll, we'll walk 'em through it.

Speaker 0 00:20:30 Yeah. And I think this is the key is those of you that are traditional podcasts, first, many of you're watching YouTube channels that you wish you could listen on the go. And, um, this is, this is the key here. And, and we have to educate these YouTubers as well, say, Hey, there's a difference. Yes, you're able to have a great video experience, but I've got more time to listen than I do to watch. I'd love to listen to your show and, um, and let 'em know that this product's available, vid to pod, vid to pod is in the, uh, is one of our services pages. We'll have a link to that to in the show notes. Definitely check it out, send people our way. And if you're not an affiliate, this might be a good time to become an affiliate because if you're promoting this, uh, you can use your own affiliate code here and earn some dollars from this. So, um,

Speaker 1 00:21:16 Give 'em a couple months free Yeah. To, uh, get that up and going

Speaker 0 00:21:18 And consider becoming an affiliate. That link is in, uh, at blueberry.com. You can get signed up as a podcaster today and start earning money for yourself. .

Speaker 1 00:21:26 It's under Make Money. Some people make some good money on that program for sure. That's right. Check it out. Vid two Pod. That's VID number two POD.

Speaker 0 00:21:35 Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease because they can't afford the ease.