YouTube Podcasting – PCI 351

Speaker 0 00:00:00 They've had moderate success in podcasting depending on, you know, how big their channel is and what they're talking about. But this kind of reverses that. So an audio podcaster that wants to build a YouTube channel could conceivably do that and, you know, move their, not move their community, but build their community by doing videos. But I would suggest do real videos for YouTube. And, you know, instead of just audio and aesthetic image,

Speaker 1 00:00:30 You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, 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 support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2 00:00:49 I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry. And

Speaker 0 00:00:52 I'm Mike Dell, VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 2 00:00:56 Today we're talking about the pros and cons of YouTube's relatively new podcasting feature. And Mike, I'll let you kick it off.

Speaker 0 00:01:05 Yeah, YouTube released a in air quotes podcast feature or a podcast section in iTunes or iTunes. See, I got iTunes on the brain today, YouTube , and we we're gonna kind of discuss some of the pros and cons. One of the things I wanna talk about at first is, you know, at some point you'll be able to submit your RSS feed to YouTube. Whether or not you wanna do that is completely up to you. It's just like any of the other platforms. If you wanna abide by their terms, then go ahead and submit to it. But we're gonna talk about some of the pros, why you might, why you might not, that kind of thing. So, I don't know, what's your opinion of it so far? Uh, what, what have you seen Mackenzie?

Speaker 2 00:01:54 That's the problem. Not a lot. Uh, so as someone who is not like a frequent YouTube user, you know, when I heard that podcasting was gonna be a part of this, we have, you know, blueberry has our own YouTube channel and I was like, okay, cool. How do we add ours to this? And I took a look around and at some other people's shows who I know, you know, has like their quote unquote podcast on YouTube. And I was, I was a little confused at the beginning because I was like, I don't really see how this is, you know, sectioned off or, you know, put in its own category or distinctly labeled as a podcast. And as far as I know, there is nothing that does that. I have no problem with people uploading their show to YouTube. I think it's great. It's, you know, great for building a community, but I was very confused as to what exactly YouTube was claiming and what was being presented to me.

Speaker 0 00:02:50 Well, it was kind of a soft rollout. So basically they had a podcast section in their regular video platform there. And most of the shows that were on there were just YouTube channels that called themselves podcasts. Mm-hmm. . And there's nothing particularly wrong with that. I mean, you know, there is a technical definition of podcasting, but we went over that and the episode about what is a podcast, but, uh, you know, the term podcast can be used more broadly than just the technical term. So we'll give them that no problem. But basically that's what it was. Now they are adding selectively right now, but eventually everybody will be able to do it, is they're adding RSS ingestion, which means that you submit to something at YouTube and that hasn't come about yet as of the time of recording this, but you'll be able to submit your SS feed and then they'll automatically pull that into mainly YouTube music. But they will put a static image and, and do it as a video on your channel as well. Which, you know, how many people sit there and listen to a podcast with a, with a static image on YouTube? Well,

Speaker 2 00:04:07 Yeah, I personally, I don't know, but I think what you just described of in the future is more or less what I was expecting. Yeah. So that tracks though that I am definitely not an early adopter with new YouTube things.

Speaker 0 00:04:22 Yeah, they do have certain shows that are already on that. So let's, let's go over some, some of the reasons you might want to have your show on YouTube.

Speaker 2 00:04:33 Yeah, definitely Some of the pros, discoverability for sure. YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the internet. And you know, with, if someone is looking for a new show and they're searching for anything with your keywords

Speaker 0 00:04:49 Or they're searching for something, you know how to do something. Mm-hmm. and if you do podcast episodes about how to do something, you know, like whenever I have to work on a car, that's where I go YouTube, you, you know, how do I change the canoer valve on a 57 Chevy? You know, and somebody's got a video about it. And that's one of the big things there, you know, you can get your podcast in amongst that search and that'll help for discoverability as you put down there on the notes and monetization. Now again, podcasts, you know, say a static image and, and, and you know, just the audio playing and the static image, you know, I don't know how well that will do in monetization, but if, you know, if your channel's pretty big, it might do okay, but, uh, you know, you can turn on monetization with their partner program if you have enough views or downloads. Well they don't download but viewed on YouTube or listens depending on the

Speaker 2 00:05:51 Platform. So I have a question. If you can't be part of their partner pro program, do they just do automated ads regardless? And I know that's for, I believe you too, but are Yeah, but like, are you also gonna get any money out of that if you have like a very, very small following?

Speaker 0 00:06:09 Well, if you have a decent following, then yes, because then you'll be on their partner program. But if you're not signed up for their partner program, get all the ad revenue and that's, you know, that could go in the con section, of course . Okay. But you know, so you know, you don't have control over it once it gets there cuz it's their platform. Just like on Spotify, you don't have control over what Spotify does with your show. Mm-hmm . Now if you're going through blueberry or any other company that has pass through, then you do have control and you know, Spotify does allow pass through. YouTube is not going to, or at least not yet. And so what they do is it uploads to YouTube and then YouTube distributes it and you don't get any stats other than what you see on YouTube. You don't get any, yeah. You can't have inserted ads because of something else that they have in their terms.

Speaker 2 00:07:04 Yeah, that's totally fine.

Speaker 0 00:07:06 Yeah. You in theory you could get on their monetization.

Speaker 2 00:07:12 Yeah. And part of that is our next topic, which is building a community. Because when you already have such a large user base, such as how many, oh God, I don't even know how many users YouTube has. That's a scary number. But it's easy to build a community on a platform that has a, a very large user base like that. So you know, you're able to build that and then you are able to get better monetization through YouTube. So it all works, works together.

Speaker 0 00:07:40 Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of times big YouTube channels will start an audio podcast, so it's kinda the backwards way of doing it or backwards to what this would be. And they've had moderate success in podcasting depending on, you know, how big their channel is and what they're talking about. But this kind of reverses that. So an audio podcaster that wants to build a YouTube channel could conceivably do that and you know, move their, not move their community but build their community by doing videos. But I would suggest do real videos for YouTube and you know, instead of just audio and aesthetic image.

Speaker 2 00:08:22 Yeah. That actually goes into the next point as well of just the additional audience of those that are never gonna really move to audio only. Like there's a certain subset of consumers who are gonna prefer to stick with video regardless. So that static image you're talking about is probably not gonna be super appealing to them. However, they also are probably gonna be more likely to find a show, find a podcast on YouTube, um, just because like they're a video person as opposed to going to a podcast app. So you're gonna be able to get some of those people probably who just you would never get regardless.

Speaker 0 00:08:59 Right. You know, like I said, the more the merrier and uh, and as Todd and everybody else says all the time, we don't care how you listen as long as you do. Mm-hmm. more the merrier. Be everywhere you can be, but just be aware that some of YouTube's conditions are not, oh, I don't know, I guess , I'm trying not to be mean cuz not, you know, I, you know, I use YouTube for what it YouTube is for and, and it's great, but I don't know whether it's worth putting my podcast there and some of the cons, of course video is complicated, so video production is more difficult and requires equipment, software and, and you know, you gotta take a shower and comb your hair and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 00:09:49 That second part Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:09:50 To, to be on video, but it's not terrible. Uh, you know, if you're good at it and you know, have a compelling video, you know, a lot of podcast videos are just talking heads on the screen and that's okay too. You know, some people like that. The disadvantage of doing just video or doing video at all would be, you know, part of the charm of podcasting to me is the fact that I can stick my earbuds in my ear and then go mow the lawn or wash the dishes or I'm driving in my car. I can't watch YouTube videos while I'm driving in my car

Speaker 2 00:10:28 And No, you cannot. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:10:29 Or on an airplane cuz they stream, they don't download. So, you know, when I get on an airplane, I, I have to have all my podcasts and most of the audio already on my device when they tell you to shut off the, shut off the wifi.

Speaker 2 00:10:44 I, I've never listened to a podcast on YouTube and really the only interaction I have with this is when they get reposted for social on TikTok or Instagram and I mean, there's three or four podcasts that I know exist in the audio and visual mediums that I never actually listen to. I just get my little like soundbites and clips from social media and that's good enough for me because I just, I don't care enough to actually go on to YouTube and like watch it. I'm like, okay, I got my two minutes of this show for, you know, the next three days and then another video will pop up with it later and that's enough. You know, they've put in all this, all this work for video production and it looks great, but at the same time, like, I don't really care.

Speaker 0 00:11:35 Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, you got on the list here of cons. It can be expensive to do video.

Speaker 2 00:11:41 Definitely can, it

Speaker 0 00:11:43 Can also be cheap. You look at a lot of those shorts or stories or whatever you, they call it on the other socials on YouTube, they call 'em shorts. They're the little like TikTok videos and a lot of people just do it on their phone and there's little production, so it can be cheap, but that's not what your podcast generally is. Your podcast is generally gonna be longer form content, you know, instead just a two minute video or a one minute video or whatever it is on TikTok or whatever. It's gonna be more of a, uh, a longer form thing. So, you know, people are gonna sit there and stare at a blank image. Ah, who knows.

Speaker 2 00:12:24 The next one though is that this is a visual medium and like I said, you know, in the pro section is that visuals that are available on YouTube are not, like if you're trying to say, look at this, people aren't gonna be able to be able to see that in the audio podcast. I think people have gotten better about it now, but I feel like a couple years ago when this became like a popular thing to do for both mediums, some people would forget that it wasn't gonna transfer and would have like actual things that people were supposed to be looking at. And so you just have to kind of keep up with that.

Speaker 0 00:12:58 Yeah, it used to bug me, I'd wa listen to podcasts that were also doing streaming video and, and the host would forget that, uh, you know, I'm not watching this, what, what are you talking about? No,

Speaker 2 00:13:09 That, that is correct. I think, I feel like a lot of the time it was like a live stream of, you know, they're like, we're doing like a live podcast right now or something like that. And I was like, okay, well you could have edited this audio version do not include said information about visual, but whatever.

Speaker 0 00:13:26 Right.

Speaker 2 00:13:26 That's just a part of it.

Speaker 0 00:13:28 And uh, let's see. Oh, you, you've got that covered as well. There's little listener engagement.

Speaker 2 00:13:36 Yeah. Especially if you only have the, that static image. So, you know, if if there's nothing for people to actually look at and the audio content isn't keeping 'em there, it's not engaging, it's not really hitting them the way that it should be, then they are probably gonna be more likely to dip out. One of the ones that we also have for cons that we had for pros is seo YouTube is the second largest search engine, but this could also distract from some potential actual like podcast RSS feed listeners. So if you're just looking for a great audience, wonderful. If you care about where people are listening from and you're like, YouTube has this many listeners, apple has this many, Spotify has this many that, like, it just depends, you know, if you care about it.

Speaker 0 00:14:28 Yeah. And you know, Google in their search engine ranks video higher than text and they don't even pay attention to audio anymore. So yeah, that could detract, you know, if your YouTube video of your podcast comes up first when people search for your podcast in Google, they may not get to the right place.

Speaker 2 00:14:52 Yeah. The the distraction, I think, you know, people can be a little overwhelmed of like, where exactly do things live sometimes that they're like, is this only here? Is this elsewhere? Do I have to come back here? Yeah, it's, there's a lot of options out there. That's all.

Speaker 0 00:15:07 So, you know, as our advice usually is, you know, make sure when you're recording your podcast that you mention that, you know, this podcast is over on podcast insider.com or whatever your.com is, and that way, you know, people that are listening on YouTube or watching or whatever, we'll know that if they wanna get the audio podcast or learn more about your show, they know where to go rather than, you know, just leaving them hang and well is this it? Okay, well I guess I'll watch it when I see it. But they may not be engaged to the point where they know when you've put out new stuff.

Speaker 2 00:15:48 Yeah. At the end of the day, the blueberry team is gonna tell you to have a podcast website for your show or just a website in general for yourself that you include your show with.

Speaker 0 00:15:59 So I think that about covers YouTube unless you have something else. Uh, does anybody, uh, in the audience have any experience with YouTube podcasts? What do you think of their new quote unquote feature?

Speaker 2 00:16:11 Yeah, keep an eye on our podcast or our YouTube channel as well because I'm sure we'll keep up with whatever releases they have for this new feature.

Speaker 0 00:16:20 Yeah, we'll definitely, uh, be testing it out and see how it, uh, seeing how it goes.

Speaker 1 00:16:27 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 we can't afford the ease.