Can Short Form Video Help Podcasters?
There's a reason movies have teaser trailers, that TV shows have short hits. Tonight, on a very special blossom, came from somewhere. They are designed to create buzz and entice viewers to go and watch the entire movie or episode when it comes out. And while they are a tried and true method for TV and movies, do they or something analogous work for podcasts? That's what I wanna talk to you about today.
Welcome to Podcast Workflows where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a deep dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it. I'm your host, Joe Casaubona. And today, I wanna talk to you about how short-form videos can help your podcast.
Now this, my friends, is actually the 6th entry in our Podcast Advent calendar. I have a small confession to make. Every 5 days, I do a giveaway, but that giveaway is going to be over before this podcast episode comes out. So, I'm skipping those episodes. All the more reason to sign up over at [podcastworkflows.com/advent]. So while this will have the number 6, this is the 5th in our audio form article series.
In any case, can a short-form video work for your podcast? I think it depends. At play here in the headline of this very episode, is a conflict. First of all, I'm saying can instead of do. Anything can work and some podcasters surely believe it does. And number 2 is something called Betteridge's law of headlines which states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with no. So, maybe the better question is how can short-form videos work for your podcast.
I've tried a couple of experiments with short-form video over the past few years. My most recent attempt had me working with a video editor running similar experiments. He'd take the full video of each episode and extract clips he thought were good, add some music and branding, and then post them on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and X/Twitter herein referred to as X. Importantly, for TikTok and X, they were posted to my personal accounts. For Instagram and YouTube, they were posted on the podcasting accounts.
So what were the results? Well, they were aggressively average. We don't even need to talk about X. I may as well have not posted on there at all. On TikTok, I got within 10% of the views for the videos. So, 10% of the same views on each video all being in the mid-2100. This proved to be the most consistent platform, but I don't think it was successful, and I'll get to why in a minute.
Relatively speaking, the pinned videos remain my top performers ranging from 1200 to over 2,000 views on those. Plus, I don't really use TikTok much for a combination of reasons. This likely hurt me as I'm not posting more “organic content” nor am I engaging in comments. The most interesting results came from YouTube and Instagram. On average, those videos deeply underperformed compared to TikTok with averages in the tens. But there were 2 videos on each platform that did 3 to 5 times more than TikTok's 250-ish average. One of the videos I posted on Instagram Reels got 2,000 views. And I think that's more the goal I have with short-form videos. Take a bunch of shots and see which one scores.
But that's not the real goal for me nor should it be for you. Hopefully, I'm stating the obvious here. I want short-form videos to lead people to my podcast. The easiest place for this to happen is YouTube. The shorts are posted to the same channel as the podcast episodes. So discovery should be best there. People are seeing the shorts and maybe subscribing to the channel where they'll see the full episodes. TikTok also lets you connect podcast episodes to videos, but it's impossible to see how well that converts as I couldn't find the stats anywhere in TikTok and the TikTok app doesn't appear as a player in my analytics apps.
It's also hard to know the impact of my most recent experiment as iOS 17 just made an update that deeply affects daily downloads for podcasts overall. Though initial data shows my downloads per new episode are about the same. All of that is to say, if there was any conversion, it was not noticeable. I'll still continue to experiment. Perhaps, there's a better type of content to help promote the show than just straight clips from the show.
But I think that there's a better workflow in general. I think about calls to action on social media that take users off the platform like this. Imagine you're swimming in the ocean and someone comes up to you on a boat with a bike and says, “Hey. I got this bike for you. You should ride it right now”. Even if you want that bike, you're not ready to ride it at the moment. Telling someone to stop scrolling their timeline to listen to your podcast is kind of doing the same thing. They are in one specific context, and they're not ready to change context.
Instead, I think the better play is to get them on your mailing list. Then you can promote your podcast to the mailing list. This was super effective for my friend, Yong-Soo Chung. The subscribe to my mailing list call to action isn't a 20 to 60-minute commitment. They can do it quickly and then get back to what they were doing. And then you're gently reminding people who have opted in to what you have to say that you have a podcasting. And you're giving them the option to subscribe and listen when it's convenient for them. It's like giving them the option to ride a bike or swim before they start, not interrupting what they're doing to do something totally different. So what should you do from here?
I think that really depends on your audience. You should determine where your audience hangs out, determine what kind of content they like to consume, and post on the appropriate social network, the one where they hang out, regularly and with purpose. Make sure you have your call to action clearly stated. You want people to come off that platform and join you where you live.
You can also use tools like Riverside or Descript to help you create clips. I think the AI route is best here while you're still learning and experimenting. This is a numbers game for you. It's about the number of shots that you take. You don't know what's quality until you have quantity. As for me, I'm going to try 2 things aside from making my call to action to join the mailing list.
For this show, I'm going to release the full episodes on TikTok. They have a 10-minute limit, and the short episodes are less than 7 minutes. For How I Built It and longer Podcast Workflow episodes, I'm going to borrow a strategy from our friends in the movie industry. Create content during the episode just for the teaser. Maybe you've noticed that not all trailer footage appears in movies or TV shows. Studios will use interesting scenes from the cutting room floor or, in some cases, create scenes just for the trailer. That sounds like a fun, low-effort thing for me to try. What do you think?
If you like this episode, you can get every entry in Podcast Advent 2023 delivered directly to your inbox by going over to [podcastworkflows.com/advent]. You'll get daily emails with tips and tricks, of course, recommended tools, and giveaways from now to December 24th. You'll also be able to view the archive over there.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey. Before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called my Podcasting Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com workflow/ templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcasting process templates today.
