Justin: 00:01

People underestimate the momentum that YouTube has. Kids wake up in the morning and they've got five minutes to kill, they go to YouTube. When people come home from a long day at work, I'll just like go to YouTube.

Jeremy: 00:13

People who spend at least 75% or more of their podcast consumption in audio only format, 48% of people found their favorite show in YouTube, and the distant second place was at 14%.

Justin: 00:24

It just occupies a space in the consumer's life that no other app does.

Jeremy: 00:32

It's beyond choice. It's beyond even habit. It is just pure addiction. People have been programmed and conditioned to pull up their phone, pull up the smart TV, pull up their iPad, and, like, reach for that red YouTube button. Do podcasters need to be on video now?

Jeremy: 00:49

Okay. So there's this kind of, like, weird phenomenon happening in podcasting right now where there is, on the one side, this existential dread of video is going to obliterate podcasting as a medium as we know it. And this is from the kind of traditional ad driven revenue side of things in the podcasting world, the established podcast industry. And then on the other side, we've got this unbridled enthusiasm about the potential for discovery that video is introducing. And it strikes me that you are actually the perfect person right in the middle of both of these worlds where you both are the cofounder of a podcast hosting platform, very much tied to traditional RSS based podcasting.

Jeremy: 01:27

But then you're also a creator. I know, you know, we launched this show as a video first show last year. You launched another show, The Panel, as maybe not video first, but heavily reliant on video. And you also do a lot of stuff on YouTube. So I'm curious, like, how do you think about where podcasting is at?

Jeremy: 01:41

Is it apocalypse or is it unbelievable opportunity?

Justin: 01:44

Oh, it's not apocalypse. I think it is opportunity for some people, some creators, some shows. Audio podcasting, I think is going to be fine. There is a time and place for audio only listening. Audio only listening has attributes and benefits that video podcasting doesn't, both on the consumption side and on the creator side.

Justin: 02:10

There's a bigger investment for video that a lot of people don't talk about. I don't think this is apocalyptic. I think it's exciting in some ways. Because for some people, being able to do video is going to be hugely beneficial for their business, or for their brand, or for whatever they're trying to achieve. And for other folks, they're gonna be able to do both at the same time.

Justin: 02:30

There's gonna be a lot of people starting video only shows, and then moving into audio only podcasting. Mhmm. So I think this is a very exciting time. Last time we talked about there's some concern about the platforms themselves, like Yeah. YouTube and Spotify.

Justin: 02:45

I think that's a different conversation. But in terms of like this moment as a creator, I think it's pretty exciting.

Jeremy: 02:52

Yeah. So you mentioned that you don't think audio podcasting is going anywhere. And so I think that that maybe answers the question that I think one of the most common things I hear from creators is, do I need to be on video now? And it's very much a like expectation almost. And my thoughts are that you do not need to be on video.

Jeremy: 03:09

It doesn't sound like that's your thought either.

Justin: 03:10

No. No. But I think it's a good time to assess again, the kind of content you're producing, who you're producing it for, and the outcome you want to achieve. So if you're doing programming tutorials

Jeremy: 03:23

Mhmm.

Justin: 03:24

And you're showing code on screen, like do video. Yeah. For sure. But if you're doing true crime fiction, audio only might be the best format for you. Yeah.

Justin: 03:36

And so you've got to decide, you know, what kind of content am I producing? What kind of audience am I trying to attract? And what kind of outcomes am I looking for?

Jeremy: 03:47

Yeah. I think my take on it is that let's just say there's like this pool of people who are listening to to audio only podcasts. That pool is going to say roughly the same size, but people who are willing to adopt video and interested in adopting video as podcast creators can tap into these bigger pool of people who may not listen to audio only podcasts. And so there's gonna be the same amount of attention probably to go around in audio only podcasting going forward. And actually, that probably will still continue to grow, but I think the pool for video consumption is actually growing much quicker and is already just many, many times bigger as we'll see as we, look at the data.

Jeremy: 04:22

So let's, start off with the the data as always, and this is something that I've tracked in the past couple of podcast marketing trends reports. And actually, are currently running the survey as we're recording this for the 2025 report. I've introduced a number of additional video and YouTube focused questions, so that'll be interesting to see how those play out. But from 2023 to 2024, we had an 84 increase in the average subscriber count for, participants who submitted the survey. So that seems to suggest that people are taking YouTube more seriously and actually gaining some traction there, which that's interesting on both the consumption side as well as probably creators putting more effort into it.

Jeremy: 04:59

I pulled from a few other sources, and one of the really interesting pieces was around video as a discovery platform, which is the whole promise of YouTube for a lot of people and video in general. And this comes from Sounds Profitable and, Tom Webster wrote a couple of great blog posts on this, which we'll link in the show notes. Basically, what I thought was fascinating is he broke down in this one kind of blog post. He calls them video primes. So these are people who identify as podcast listeners, but 75% of their podcast consumption is in video and audio primes who 75% of their podcast consumption comes in audio.

Jeremy: 05:35

And both of them, when asked about where they discovered their favorite podcast, the overwhelming favorite was YouTube. And so for video primes, that was 66% of people discovered their favorite show through YouTube. But for audio primes, people who spend at least 75% or more of their podcast consumption in audio only format, 48% of people found their favorite show in YouTube, and the distant second place was a tie between Facebook and Spotify at 14% video.

Justin: 06:03

Mhmm. It makes sense. I think because the mode of consumption is different. So this happened to me the other day. I was watching YouTube and the algorithm serves up recommended videos.

Justin: 06:18

It's very different than feed based podcast listening. When I open up my podcast player, I'm just looking at a feed of episodes that I'm subscribed to those shows. Right? So I'm only seeing what I'm subscribed to. But on YouTube, I'm getting recommended videos.

Justin: 06:34

And I got a recommended Ezra Klein video. And I'm like, oh, I forgot about him. Like, I used to be subscribed to his show, and then I switched from overcast to pocketcast. And I should check that show out again. So it makes complete sense to me that people are discovering audio shows on YouTube.

Justin: 06:53

What's still not clear in this data Are they getting served regular full length YouTube videos? Are these YouTube Shorts? Are these just short videos? We have no idea what kind of content is leading people to subscribe to audio podcasts. But anecdotally, at least in my life, I can see this happening.

Jeremy: 07:13

Yeah. And Tom actually shares an anecdote similar to yours where his it actually was a YouTube short that introduced him to a new podcast that he then started listening to. Immediately after watching the short, he's like, this seems like an interesting show, searched it in his podcast app, and started listening. I think it's fair to say that probably people discover podcasts in all the possible ways on YouTube. Mhmm.

Jeremy: 07:33

But what is the most effective? We don't really know that. And that's something that I'll be curious to either add into future podcast marketing trends reports, as we get more people actually experimenting with YouTube. Right now, it's still not a huge percentage of people, but I imagine over the next couple of years, we're gonna start seeing a lot more of that. Mhmm.

Jeremy: 07:49

So discoverability, it makes a lot of sense that that's what YouTube is built around, their algorithm. We did a whole episode already this season on algorithms and algorithmic discovery, both primarily through YouTube and Spotify. But there's this other aspect of video that I think is really interesting, which is just consumer behavior. And so I was pulling some data here from a number of sources online. And if we look at how much time the average American adult spends consuming video content a day, it is six hours and forty eight minutes.

Jeremy: 08:20

Wow. Almost seven hours. This is crazy to me. And you're thinking, part of this is digital video. And so that accounts for four hours.

Jeremy: 08:27

In 2025, '4 hours a day, the average American adult spends consuming digital video content and two hours and forty eight minutes on traditional TV. So even four hours of digital video content is a huge amount that basically people are looking for this type of engagement with content and they're seeking that out where I just don't think that that exists for audio only content. And, I mean, it's tough to say because you think podcasts and music and radio, that all could add up to a significant amount, but I don't think it's seven hours a day for

Justin: 08:57

each person. And by the way, I'm gonna flip what you just said. You said people are looking for this kind of content, so they're going there. I think it's actually the other way around. I think this kind of content pulls people in.

Justin: 09:08

I think it's addictive. I think a lot of this includes people scrolling TikTok for two hours on the toilet. You know? That Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: 09:16

It's it's easy to get sucked into video. We talked about this in the in the other episode. It's just as a medium, it has this power over people. Yeah. And the platforms also do have a role to play in this medium.

Justin: 09:32

And why we're seeing these big numbers is because the platforms are really good at keeping your attention on platform. Instagram Reels wants you to stay and look at how Facebook's using Instagram Reels. It's all through every app. It's like they know what they're doing. There's a reason that that's become the most important feature to Facebook.

Justin: 09:52

It's Reels and Shorts and Stories. Sorry. But this is a lot of time spent

Jeremy: 10:00

Yeah.

Justin: 10:00

Watching. And we see this with very young people. But we also see it know, all the baby boomers I know, a lot of them are just retired and sitting at home all day, and they are watching TV with their iPads open. They're consuming both at the same time. So I'm not totally surprised by this.

Jeremy: 10:21

Yeah. So I went a little bit further and looked specifically at some of the YouTube numbers, which is is really interesting as well. And so let's actually start off with podcasting. About 47% of Americans aged 12 and older listen to podcasts on a monthly basis. And so that's around a 34,000,000 people.

Jeremy: 10:37

When it comes to YouTube, it's actually 238,000,000 people who view YouTube on a monthly basis. And so that's not quite double the amount of people who engage with podcasts, but then we get into some kind of crazy numbers about, like, daily, weekly, and monthly active users on YouTube. Basically, of all the Internet users in The US, this is not YouTube users. This is Internet users. People who use the Internet in The US, Sixty Two Percent of Internet users use YouTube on a daily basis.

Jeremy: 11:05

92% use YouTube on a weekly basis, and 98% of all US Internet users use YouTube on a monthly basis.

Justin: 11:14

Yeah. I mean, just think Internet users, that's everybody with a cell phone with a data plan. That's everybody with home Internet. That's everybody that can access the Internet at a Starbucks. This is a huge group of people.

Justin: 11:27

And it's basically saying 98% of those people who have access to the Internet somewhere, public library, wherever it is, are using YouTube monthly. I think people underestimate the momentum that YouTube has. When kids wake up in the morning and they've got five minutes to kill, they go to YouTube. When people come home from a long day at work and they're like, oh, should I get into that Netflix show? It's like, nah.

Justin: 11:56

I'll just like go to YouTube. It feels like a lower lift. You know, Spotify wants to get into video. What would Spotify have to do to actually change consumer behavior? Well, they would need a Spotify video app icon on the Apple TV.

Justin: 12:13

And people open up Apple TV. And it's like that icon sits next to Amazon Amazon Prime. It sits next to Disney Plus. It sits next to Netflix and YouTube. And then and you got to think, well, they can offer compelling programming that convinces someone to say, well, instead of going to YouTube, I'm going go to Spotify and get that show that I'm really into.

Justin: 12:37

Or they have to compete with that mode of consumption, which is very laid back. Let me see what my options are. Very low commitment that YouTube occupies. YouTube just has every piece of the pie. It's like, where do I go for that long form content that I love?

Justin: 12:59

Where do I go when I'm bored? YouTube. Where do I go when it's like, do I have the energy to dedicate to a whole TV show right now or a whole movie? No. Do I want to just scroll TikTok?

Justin: 13:11

No. But I'll open up video and there's gonna be 20 videos recommended for me that are five minutes long. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna watch that. It just occupies a space in the consumer's life that no other app does. And it's a different mental mode than being on TikTok, than being on Instagram, than listening to a pod audio podcast.

Justin: 13:38

When we talk about video podcasting, what we are ignoring is how much the consumer's mindset and the different modes that the consumer finds themselves in matters. And like even Spotify is trying to compete on this.

Charles Duhigg: 13:57

Yeah.

Justin: 13:57

They're trying to say like, okay, we're gonna add video. But people are not opening up that Spotify app on their connected TV as much. I know Spotify says they're getting a lot of consumption there, but not as much as they are YouTube. And there's a reason for that. It occupies a space in the consumer's mind.

Justin: 14:17

It occupies a space in their habits, which I think are also underrated when we're talking about consumer behavior. The podcast industry is ignoring this at their peril. They are misdiagnosing the opportunities and the threats, because they

Jeremy: 14:35

are

Justin: 14:35

misdiagnosing consumer behavior. This is not just like something that people are switching to. It's like, oh, I was an audio podcast listener, but now I'm a video podcast watcher. I discovered podcasts on YouTube, and now I watch video podcasts on YouTube. There are so much more dynamics to this that people are ignoring.

Justin: 14:59

Yeah. Maybe I watch a podcast on YouTube. But then the next video that gets recommended is not a podcast. You know? And then the next five videos I watch are not podcasts.

Justin: 15:09

YouTube is an ecosystem all onto its own. And it is just a behemoth in terms of capturing consumer attention in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of modes of life, and at all sorts of stages of development. Everything from young children, to teenagers, to working adults, to retired baby boomers. They have captured everybody's attention in all sorts of ways. And I think the podcast industry does need to take YouTube seriously.

Justin: 15:43

But I think they're misdiagnosing like, the response is, well, maybe we should do video in RSS. Maybe we should do video in Spotify. Sure. You should do all that. But the YouTube is so much bigger than all of this.

Jeremy: 15:59

Yeah. You know, the your description there at the start just made me think very much along the same lines of Instagram and many social media apps where there is a habit. And I think about oftentimes when I'm gonna sit down to eat dinner if I'm on my own, and I'm like, oh, let's, like, watch something. And immediately, I'm going to YouTube because I'm like, I've got, like, ten to fifteen minutes. Podcasting is a very active engagement and intentional platform about what you're gonna listen to where you go to YouTube to served something.

Jeremy: 16:24

Mhmm. I go to YouTube, and I just wanna see, tell me what to watch. Like, win me over. Like, woo me on the home screen. And there's always something else scan through.

Jeremy: 16:31

I'm like, ah, this is good enough. And which is very different than, like, I wanna listen to a podcast because I like this host, and I wanna be in this mode right now. It's like, give me something to pass the time. The job of of YouTube, if we think about jobs to be done, is like almost just help me provide a background layer to, you know, whatever I'm doing right now in a different way than podcasting is, which is usually more intentional. It's kind of like fill my time in some way while I'm doing something boring, which again, you

Charles Duhigg: 16:55

could say for podcasting as well. But I think, like, where we get

Jeremy: 16:57

into this Instagram kind of territory in social media is it's to that point where it's like every spare second that you have that is not engaged in something, pull out your phone and open up Instagram. It's not a habit. It's an addiction. And I think that YouTube occupies that same space where it makes me think of that life planning exercise where it's like, okay. First, you gotta think about the big rocks.

Jeremy: 17:15

You put those in the bucket, then you pour the sand in, and it fills up all the available space. YouTube is like the sand that will find its way into every spare moment that you have, and people treat it that way. It's like, I'm bored. Turn on YouTube. I'm standing in line at the grocery store.

Jeremy: 17:29

Maybe I go to Instagram. Maybe I just go to YouTube and watch shorts and scroll through that. And so I think that that is not something that podcasting can compete with in the traditional way. And it's something that there is just, like you said, this user behavior that it's beyond choice. It's beyond even habit.

Jeremy: 17:43

It is just pure addiction that like people have been programmed and conditioned to pull up their phone, pull up the smart TV, pull up their iPad, and, like, reach for that red YouTube button. And, yeah, there is a huge brand and platform pull.

Justin: 17:57

Yeah. And it's an aggregator on a level we've never seen before. It's like, this is why, you know, YouTube's getting into podcasting. YouTube doesn't care about podcasting. YouTube is just saying, okay.

Justin: 18:07

Well, this is a label that's helpful. This is a type of content that people wanna consume on YouTube right alongside how to videos, right alongside full length stand up comedy specials, right alongside full length documentaries, right alongside traditional cable news, which is now getting broadcast to YouTube. People come to YouTube for full length movies. People come to YouTube for sports. People come to YouTube for concerts, for music videos.

Justin: 18:36

They got it all. And that's the territory we're entering into as podcasters and a podcast industry. This is not our kingdom. This is YouTube's kingdom. And podcasting is a tiny little province in that kingdom.

Justin: 18:56

And it's just one piece of their overall empire. And until we take that position seriously and realistically, I don't think we're going to be able to address the quote unquote threat or quote unquote opportunity of YouTube properly. Until we really view this through the lens of consumer behavior and how encompassing YouTube is in that world. Like 98% of US Internet users use it every month. This is insanity.

Justin: 19:37

Like the truth is, there is a world in which YouTube encompasses every single type of content you can consume. It gets it all. And they serve all the ads. And so what does the stand up comedy special industry look like if YouTube owns it all? What does the podcasting industry look like if YouTube owns it all?

Justin: 20:02

And again, the YouTube doesn't care about these as industries. These are just keywords. These are just labels. These are useful labels that consumers recognize in the same way they recognize comedy special and they go, Oh, I know what that is. That's what I want.

Justin: 20:18

They see podcasting and they go, Oh, I know what that is. And that's what I want. So yeah, I think our space has really misdiagnosed what's happening here.

Jeremy: 20:28

It's almost like if you're on the internet, eventually all roads converge on YouTube in some way. It's like Google and YouTube, obviously like one in the same at this point in a little bit different ways. But it's like everything leads you back there. And so it kind of feels, you know, inescapable as a user of the internet. And so I think that that's why, you know, we're seeing more podcasters starting to adopt that.

Jeremy: 20:49

And as creators, we are going where the attention is. And so if the audience is directing your attention over here, it's good marketing to say, well, I guess I should be over there. And this is anybody who's, you know, sold cold water in like the hot sun and a lineup outside like a football stadium or something. It's like, there's the lineup of people in the sun. Like, that's where you gotta be to sell that water rather than, you know, somewhere else where there's no congregation of people.

Jeremy: 21:09

And so this makes a lot of sense why, you know, there's this incentive for creators to go to where the people are.

Justin: 21:15

I I think this is underplayed, and that is that creators are somewhat agnostic. Some creators are like, no, I'm a podcaster. That's what I want to do. I'm passionate about podcasting. But most people who create content, they are agnostic in the sense that they will go wherever they're getting the most attention.

Justin: 21:34

This is why we're seeing these big movements. Right? This is why it's sometimes hard to say, well, you know, all of a sudden, podcasters are going to TikTok. It's like, well, some of those are diehard podcasters, but a big number of those are just creators. And they're just going wherever they're gonna get the attention.

Jeremy: 21:52

You know, we've talked about this idea before of, like, the units of available attention. And you look at some of this data and it's like, okay, there's more people spending more time on not just video, but YouTube, specifically. And so it's like, it makes sense to go there. If you're creating something and you wanna get it in front of people, you can be a really small player in a industry that has momentum and build a vastly bigger business with arguably less effort than being in a small industry. There's not that much kind of momentum behind it, not that much energy in it, but you could be almost at the top of it, and you just cap out much easier.

Jeremy: 22:25

And I think the same kind of dynamics are at play a little bit here between these two mediums.

Justin: 22:30

Yeah. The way to think about this is we often think about total addressable market as total number of consumers. I think an even better way to think about it is total addressable market is the total number of units of attention that exist in a given day or a given week or a given month. And so if you aggregate everybody's units of attention, these hour blocks, just imagine those. How big is that pie?

Justin: 22:56

And where are consumers giving their units of attention? And sometimes they they gotta give their units of attention to driving, but then they can also listen to the radio or a podcast or music. But Yep. When they get home from work, they can watch Netflix. They can watch cable TV.

Justin: 23:12

They can listen to a podcast. They can listen to music. They can listen to Vinyl. They can watch a YouTube video. So we are competing for units of attention.

Justin: 23:21

That's that's how it is. And Yep. There's only gonna be so many units of attention left for podcasting in general, and video podcasting and audio podcasting as a part of that whole. Like, this is a competition for attention and video is one way to maybe grab people.

Jeremy: 23:39

Clearly, there's an opportunity with video and YouTube and potentially other platforms as well. But I think a lot of times the question is almost like, should I put my podcast on YouTube? This is the one that I hear a lot, which really oversimplifies what it takes to actually make use of YouTube. So it's really easy now. YouTube has made it incredibly easy to submit your RSS feed, and it will ingest your episodes and it'll create a little episode artwork for you.

Jeremy: 24:04

So your podcast can be you know, in two clicks, you can have that on YouTube. Your podcast can exist on YouTube, and you will probably get zero utility out of being on there. You might get a handful of views here and there. But I think it's worth talking about, like, what does it actually take to not just put your podcast on YouTube, but actually use YouTube as a platform either for discovery of your audio only podcast or as a kind of means to an end in and of itself, where you're just you want YouTube viewers. And, like, the podcast can be on YouTube.

Jeremy: 24:32

People can watch that entirely on YouTube. They may never need to listen to the audio podcast, but that can still be useful to your creative platform or your business. Mhmm. So I'd actually be curious if you have a video podcast that you think leverages YouTube really well, and how would you dissect what makes it great on YouTube?

Justin: 24:48

I mean, yeah, there's lots that come to mind. Dignation is one that just rebooted. They were always video first, even back in the iTunes days. And so that's just baked into their DNA. And they are just two guys sitting on a couch drinking beers.

Justin: 25:08

But they managed to do that in a compelling way and build up an audience for, you know, that style. And most of their consumption still happens in video on YouTube now. But previously, it was on iTunes. And I think they've leveraged clips. They're investing heavily in Instagram Reels.

Justin: 25:29

And all of these things, in their case, they are trying to remind a nostalgic listener or viewer that they exist. So they're just trying to go everywhere, post these little clips, and then for people to go, oh, I remember those guys. I wanna and maybe recommend it to a friend like, oh, these guys were the best back in the day. So they're taking these atomic little units of video and creating shorts, reels, etcetera, and then posting the whole episode to YouTube. And it's done in a studio.

Justin: 26:03

They have a camera operator. They have somebody, you know, monitoring audio and all that. And they have the benefit of this existing format and fan base that they're tapping into.

Jeremy: 26:13

Yeah. Yeah. Here, you're already, you know, getting into the potential drawbacks, which I think we're gonna talk about in a second of they've got a studio. They've got a camera operator. They've got somebody monitoring the audio.

Jeremy: 26:21

Like, there is a higher level of production quality with these guys, and, like, we don't have any

Charles Duhigg: 26:25

of that. We have a show that

Jeremy: 26:26

is on YouTube. You actually have two of them. Mhmm. And so, like, that is not necessary to do well on YouTube. And we're actually gonna look at a couple other examples of people, I think, who do well without that.

Jeremy: 26:35

But it's interesting. Like, we're having this debate about where podcasting is going, but then there's a conversation on the YouTube side of things about YouTube is moving more and more towards Hollywood where, like, production values are starting to blend over. And I've heard some interviews with Mark Manson's talked about this a couple of times, and you look at, like, what mister beast has, like, been doing for years now. Mark Manson, I think he actually hired in ex Hollywood people, producers, and things like that to help work on his YouTube channel. He ultimately found, like, they were too entrenched in that system to understand the digital side of things so much.

Jeremy: 27:05

But it's interesting that you are getting these, like, big people who have platforms, who have budget, who are starting to blend Hollywood and YouTube. And so it's like, now podcasting is coming in from the one side, and YouTube's already moving on to even higher production quality. Mhmm. And that's not to say that's what you need to do to be successful. You know, the more the more niche your topic is, the lower the requirement is in terms of quality.

Jeremy: 27:25

But I think when you're looking at the entertainment angle, that is clearly going higher production quality, more TV, more Hollywood influence.

Justin: 27:32

Yeah. There's this other dynamic that people aren't talking about, Which is one of the things that attracted bloggers to podcasting, for example, was that bloggers realized that podcasting was lower effort and they got the same amount of attention or even more attention. Because it's hard to write a cohesive article. But if you're a thinker or a debater or somebody that's researching things, for you to just talk and interact with a co host or a guest, that's a much lower lift. And so we saw all these people like Marco Arment, who is a fairly famous blogger in the tech sphere.

Justin: 28:13

He's like, I'm just switching to podcasting because this is a lower lift. Over on the YouTube side, you have creators like Logan Paul, like MrBeast, that have one part of their business that's expensive and high effort to create these YouTube videos. But then they're realizing, oh, people like it when we just sit on the couch with a couple of Shure SM7Bs just talk off the top of our heads. And we get tons of views and revenue from those videos. They're long.

Justin: 28:44

You can monetize them over and over again. There's all sorts of opportunities to put ads in them. So they're realizing, oh, this is a lower lift. That's the competition. The people on the video side that were high production, more expensive, whatever.

Justin: 28:58

They're like, oh, wait, I can just like sit down on a couch and talk. That's who we're competing with. And they've got nice cameras already from their other activities. Right?

Jeremy: 29:08

Okay. So let's talk maybe a little bit about, like, how to leverage video in the ideal scenario. Like, what does it actually take to make use of video to serve your podcast? And like I kinda mentioned before, I think there's two ways to approach this. You could do both, but I think there's video as a discovery channel for your audio podcast.

Jeremy: 29:24

So this is like social media where you're gonna post video content on YouTube and maybe on TikTok and Instagram and elsewhere to create awareness of the show, but ultimately you're trying to grow your audio only podcast. And then there's creating a video podcast on YouTube that you don't really care if people go to the audio side of things. So I'm curious, let's start off with the video as a discovery channel to use for a audio only podcast. How do you think people can leverage that in a way that will effectively grow their show?

Justin: 29:49

I mean, record all of your episodes in video and audio. And it has to be talking head. It can't just be these audiograms. I've seen very little traction with those. People want to see your face.

Justin: 30:00

Humans have evolved to look at human beings. And so it's got to be actual recorded video. And some of these tools, like Riverside, are now generating AI short clips of what's most interesting. And those can be helpful just to like go in there quick. It's like, okay, here's a clip.

Justin: 30:19

The other thing is to actually put the overlaid text on the portrait style And export those, and then just start experimenting with uploading them as YouTube Shorts and uploading them as Reels and TikTok. Like, I would just experiment and try this out. And then I think uploading full length YouTube videos is also something people should be trying. I found just the unit of a YouTube video is helpful for promotion in certain cases. So for example, I just did this interview with Taylor Otwell, and Caleb Porzio.

Justin: 30:57

They're programmers in the Laravel community. There's a Laravel subreddit. I could have tried posting a link to the audio. But it won't actually embed the player. It's very unlikely that people would that would grab people.

Justin: 31:12

But posting the video into Reddit, it actually embeds the video. People can watch it right there. And it got way more views than we normally get on our YouTube videos. So the unit of a YouTube video is just more shareable. You know, you share it on Blue Sky, people can play the video right there in Blue Sky.

Justin: 31:32

Share it on Reddit, you put it in a Medium post, a Substack post. You put it in a you know, like, you can just post them almost anywhere. And then Yep. There's some platforms like LinkedIn and Spotify where you can actually upload the video there, the full length video there as well, and it might do well there as well. So that's how I'm thinking about it for this new show I'm doing is yeah.

Justin: 31:57

Let's get some clips for each episode. I will often tease those out before we publish the full length episode. And then after we've published the full length episode, audio and video, I will drip out these shorter clips everywhere that you can.

Jeremy: 32:13

One thing I think that is interesting to think about with the clips, I think that when we're talking about discoverability, I think that that is an important distinction there is, like, one of the things we wanna do with podcast growth of any kind is get people just to experience the show in some way. And so it's like, what is the lowest friction way to get them to do that? And probably, you know, looking at a sixty minute YouTube video, it's like, maybe I'm gonna click play on that. But if it's a thirty second short or something like that, I'm much more likely to to click play on that. And at least now I'm into the show, I'm experiencing it.

Jeremy: 32:44

And I may not go and look up the pod audio podcast right now after watching that short, but I might watch another short. And that might not be today. That might be next week. But I was like, oh, I like these shorts. And after a month, I might have consumed 30 shorts.

Jeremy: 32:59

And now I'm like, okay. I like this show. I just haven't yet gone over. It's like I'd made the mental subscription almost of like, okay. I like the show.

Jeremy: 33:06

I'm subscribed to the ideas behind the show. I'm subscribed to these hosts. I am subscribed to the premise of the show. I just haven't actually taken the physical step of opening up my podcast player and making that subscription. And so I think this is, like, the sale before the sale kind of.

Jeremy: 33:19

Mhmm. And so this is, I think, that's something we can look to do with Shorts. And the the one thing that I would caution people with I talked to a client yesterday who was using the program OpusClip. This is similar to, you know, what Riverside's building in. Descript has something like this where their AI pulls out clips.

Jeremy: 33:38

I have never been satisfied with any of the clips that it has pulled. This client, he was kind of like, you know, I did this. I processed it, and it gave me, like, 15 clips in, like, three minutes. Well, it's probably better having one really great clip that maybe you've actually done some editing with than having 15 clips that are, like, kind of, like, start not at the perfect point of, like, entering the thought and didn't, like, end on the perfect point. And so if I was gonna really take short form clips seriously, I would be manually doing that.

Jeremy: 34:03

I would be finding the perfect clips that I think will do well in short form. They're a complete thought. I mean, maybe they're a complete thought, but still with a bit of an open loop that makes you want to keep listening, but you get something valuable out of it. There's a payoff from listening to that thing that is not just like sizzle. I think that's one of the important things that that people get wrong when they're posting short form content is it's all sizzle.

Jeremy: 34:23

It's all promo. There's no actual, oh, I'm glad I watched that thing because I got something in and of itself.

Justin: 34:28

Yeah. Like, you want people to share it with a friend. You you want it to be engaging enough that it's, like you said, a complete thought. Just going back to something else you said. I I think the advantage of posting the full length video is that YouTube as a platform does reward watch time.

Justin: 34:46

With the short form videos, people are just flipping through those. The algorithm is serving up whatever channel has videos that are engaging for that particular user. If you grab them in a long form video and Yep. You get them to watch five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of a one hour show, that's still significant. And YouTube will start to promote it.

Justin: 35:10

YouTube will start to recommend it. And we know that there are people sitting on their couch after work who are looking for that kind of long form content. Even from my own behavior, I've started full length interviews on YouTube and then finished them in audio format. If you're looking to convert people to audio listeners or to subscribers even, long form has its place. And if you can grab them for a significant amount of time, it reinforces the algorithm and all that other stuff.

Justin: 35:42

So I think it's still worth doing that as well.

Jeremy: 35:44

One other kind of hacky thing that you can do on the clips side of things to pull short form is actually build this into your episode structure. And so you might have, like, one question that you ask guests that's maybe a little bit more sensational or provocative. You might have a pretty, like, grounded, like, nuanced interview, but you have, like, one question, maybe it's toward the end or something like that, that you have designed this thing to Mhmm. Be an intended to do well in short form. It's going to be a short answer.

Jeremy: 36:09

A short question fits into whatever the time limits are, and it is something that is a little bit more maybe over the top or like, you can't get into a nuanced discussion usually in sixty seconds. And so we're looking for something that grabs attention. And this could be like gamified segments. It could be you could lean into humor. You could lean into kind of surprise.

Jeremy: 36:27

Like, it's it's thinking about, like, what are these stronger emotions that we can elicit and, like, package up into this little sixty second thing. And I think that you can structure that. You can engineer that into your episode. And you could even have a couple of those in like a lightning round style question or something like that at the end of the episode or or really anywhere in the episode. And so I think that's another way to make it easy to produce that content without making your workflow more complicated.

Justin: 36:49

Yeah. I think if you wanna stand out, there are other things you can do conceptually with video that like, most people are just in a studio the way we are with these static shots. But, you know, I've seen people do interviews on the subway. I've seen people do interviews while they're walking. Like, they have a camera person and just a microphone.

Justin: 37:08

And they're, like, walking and talking. There's other ways you can stand out. And that is part of the game. Like, you're trying to figure out in a sea of people who have these static shots with Shure SM7Bs in front of their face

Charles Duhigg: 37:21

Yep.

Justin: 37:22

How are you gonna, like, be different and grab people's attention? So you gotta start thinking creatively, I think.

Jeremy: 37:29

So there's actually we're gonna talk here about, like, what about the other approach of using YouTube as an end unto itself, looking to build your audience there. But there's actually one approach that kind of bridges the two, which is more creating not podcast episodes and putting them up up on YouTube, but creating, like, video first, YouTube first videos that don't belong on the podcast feed. They're kind of traditional YouTube style videos. And this is something that I see a lot of podcasters actually doing.

Justin: 37:54

Mhmm.

Jeremy: 37:54

They're doing both podcasting and pure YouTube content. Mark Asquith from Captivate did an experiment, and they basically published similar content in podcast form, audiogram form, custom YouTube form that was, like, a ten minute video, whereas the typical podcast interview was like sixty minutes. Mhmm. And it was just overwhelming that the thing that did best on YouTube was the YouTube specific video. That was like the ten minute summation, really actionable, highly scripted, engaging video content.

Jeremy: 38:21

And, you know, that kind of makes intuitive sense. YouTube has maybe changed that podcasting is more popular now, so maybe I think podcasting has more of a chance. But I'm curious, like, you do videos for transistor and for yourself that are not podcast. They're YouTube specific. What's your take on, like, podcasts on YouTube versus YouTube first content?

Justin: 38:40

Yeah. I mean, there's so many there's lots to unpack here. In general, I've found that scripted podcast content sounds better as audio than it does as works as video. Like, video exposes kinda how jilted and awkward it is. I mean, in some ways, it is nice to be able to, like, say, you know what?

Justin: 39:05

I'm just making this for YouTube. I'm crafting this for a viewer in a specific context, and I'm just going to make the best version of that thing. And depending on the mindset you bring to something, if you're, like, really have an audio first mentality, but you're just recording the video, that will affect your output as opposed to being like and I think you can have both in mind. And so I am seeing creators, and I think we're in this bucket, and you get better at it over time where we are simultaneously creating video and audio content. And it can be compelling in both formats.

Justin: 39:45

You have to kind of like massage things as you're going along. You have to get better at it as a medium. It's also, what are you trying to accomplish here? Like, if all you're trying to accomplish is attention, which I know is like kind of the base desire of a podcast creator is I just want the attention. I want the views.

Justin: 40:06

I want the streams. I want the downloads. Yes. But eventually, you have to look at what am I ultimately trying to achieve here. And Right.

Justin: 40:17

Ultimately, you might be trying to achieve discussion. And that we get back to that idea of response rate. So I want to see comments. I want to see emails in my inbox. I want to see thoughtful replies.

Justin: 40:28

Okay. Well, that's just one level up from attention. Right? And if your YouTube videos are constantly generating just garbage interaction that you don't appreciate, but your pod audio podcast is garnering thoughtful email replies, then, you know, you've got your answer. But then, you know, for a lot of people listening to the show, there's even another thing they're trying to achieve, which is sales, revenue, etcetera.

Justin: 40:56

And if a YouTube video is generating more of what you want, then absolutely, you should just you don't need to call yourself a podcaster. Just make YouTube videos and do that thing. So that's how I would be evaluating these is like, what kind of first order, second order effects are you trying to generate from this content?

Jeremy: 41:21

We're gonna actually come back to this in a later episode this season, but one of our longtime listeners, Philip Pape of Wits and Waits, he was actually the first podcast roast that we did in, our other show, Roast My Podcast. He emailed me this past week, And in response, he was asking some questions about if we're gonna focus more on, like, industry and niche specific trends beyond podcasting as a whole. So we're gonna do an episode on that later in the season, but I had a little bit of an email back and forth with him. And he was saying that basically he has experienced exactly what you just mentioned, where he said the viewers on YouTube, he has a fitness podcast. They're overly aggressive, overly bro y, and they don't really wanna take action.

Jeremy: 41:57

And they're really quick to critique, and they're just like bad fans. And so they'll watch his content, but they are not his ideal customers or clients. They are not people he even really wants in his audience or life. And so he's actually scaled back his YouTube videos, which he was gaining traction on. And he was actually mentioning, yeah, I think I might just stop doing YouTube entirely because it's the podcast listeners who are like the thoughtful ones, the nuanced ones, the people who become my best clients.

Jeremy: 42:19

And so it's kind of like he's getting this attention over here, but it's not actually doing anything for him. Arguably, it's making his life worse because it's building it up with this negativity. Whereas he has this other audience, exact same content, but the podcast listeners are different in some way, and they're looking for something different. They're engaging with a different platform, And those are more of the people that he wants more of. He may be able to put more time into the audio podcast, which then actually, you know, serves the business better as well.

Justin: 42:42

Yeah. And the other thing I'll say about any kind of example of results, the results that get talked about are these short term snapshot of like, I did this. Like, I started posting on YouTube and I got this kind of engagement. Engagement is just a very fragile metric. It's somewhat helpful.

Justin: 43:04

But I would also encourage people to expand their window in terms of how they evaluate things. And again, in my case, with this business I'm running right now. You know, I started podcasting in 2012. I still have people signing up as customers that say, I listened to that first show you did back in 2012, and I've just been a fan ever since. And I know that you have this software product.

Justin: 43:33

And so when it came time for us to choose, I chose you. That's a long term view. And because I've been around now for, you know, a couple decades in terms of making content, I can see the long term ramifications, how these things kind of add up over time. And I will say these short term wins, these marketing hacks, these growth hacks, these I switched to TikTok and I got 5,000,000 views. They have not produced as much value over a long term as long form podcasting and blogging has for me.

Justin: 44:13

Anytime you see results, people sharing, I'm switching from podcasting to YouTube because YouTube's killing it for me. I would just wait and see. You know? Wait and see how that works out for them. Over a long period of time, I personally am an advocate for long form slow media, as I call it.

Jeremy: 44:38

Yeah. And I think for anybody who is wanting to go deeper on that, check out our episode from season one on the 10 k timeline. I believe the episode title is looking at how long it takes to get to 10,000 subscribers based on the data in the podcast marketing trends report, but, there's also some nuanced in-depth conversations about longevity as a creator as well. So, a good resource there. Okay.

Jeremy: 44:58

So we've talked about kind of using video as a acquisition channel for audio podcasts and leveraging YouTube a little bit more broadly to get exposure and attention. I think the one thing that most people are thinking about here when it comes to video podcasting is actually video podcasting is putting full video episodes up on YouTube. And I have two kind of like case studies here that offer two different approaches. And the first is our friend of the show, Jay Klaus of Creator Science. And he is the first person I think of as somebody who has really taken YouTube seriously as a podcaster.

Jeremy: 45:32

And there's a lot of people who've done this well, but I think he is is somebody who started out with a very great audio first podcast and then made this pivot to video. And he is not so over the top as Dignation where he's got a studio and he's got, you know, producers and all this this team there. Mhmm. But it is interesting to see basically, now he's at a 21,000 subscribers. So in podcast terms, that's incredible numbers.

Jeremy: 45:56

In YouTube terms, that's like middling. It's like solid, but it's not incredible in terms of YouTube. Mhmm. But to get there, right now, he's produced 61 video podcast episodes. And some of these, I believe, were lower production before he officially went to video.

Jeremy: 46:12

They put those up after the fact. And then he's done 90 other videos, in terms of, like, shorts and kind of other YouTube first content. And so he's got around, you know, a 50 videos total. So he's he's certainly put some output into YouTube. And also, I know that he said that he has invested over a hundred grand, I think, in the first year of video.

Jeremy: 46:31

And so part of this was studio build out. A lot of this was hiring on his producer, Connor. He hired a video thumbnail artist, and he had some some other staff, and he was basically hiring both a video producer and editor and a audio engineer for the podcast version. And so there was a huge amount of both time and financial investment into YouTube, and that was the first year, a hundred k. And basically, it took 48 episodes that were, like, really great episodes before one really took off.

Jeremy: 46:59

And so he was getting maybe, like, a couple thousand views per per episode, something that, like, for the production quality he was doing does not seem to you know, he seems like he should be getting more attention. And then one took off. It was his episode with, I think, Jenny Hoyos is her name. I think now it's at something like almost 4,000,000 views. Mhmm.

Jeremy: 47:15

And that then just blew up the channel. And so he was basically, you know, taking out all these lottery tickets. Every episode is like another chance to hit the algorithm. And I know from his kind of conversations with him and a lot of, like, stuff that he was sharing publicly, he was really frustrated that he was putting time, money, and like effort into doing YouTube for a year before there was any kind of like reward of that. And I think it's even taken him another year since that to kind of even recoup the costs that he's put into it.

Jeremy: 47:40

So Yeah. This is like one route that you can take, which is really doing this, going all out on video, but this is not really an approach that is doable for everyone.

Justin: 47:50

Yeah. And and also look at his business. His business is serving creators. A big part of that group is on Instagram, making photos or videos on YouTube. In terms of his market, it makes sense that, you know, people are gonna watch these videos and then potentially convert to customer.

Justin: 48:08

Right? So Yeah. In his case, it makes sense. If you have a different business that, you know, you're trying to convert people to customers, it might not work for you. Like, it might not be the best approach.

Jeremy: 48:19

Yeah. And I think, you know, there's some other interesting things from his story. Like, if you look at his most watched videos, they all tend to be on YouTube creation. And so a lot of YouTube creators are watching YouTube, and he has a bunch of videos that are on doing better at YouTube. And those tend to be all of his videos that have over, like, a hundred k views.

Jeremy: 48:36

Mhmm. And he's got that one with over a million now up to almost 4,000,000. But then a lot of the videos are just like a few thousand, which, you know, in podcast terms, like, if you have a few thousand downloads an episode, you're like top 1% show. Mhmm. Whereas on YouTube, like, that's almost nothing.

Jeremy: 48:48

Mhmm. And so that goes back again to the potential of YouTube that there is this big pool, this big pie to tap into. But they have started with their content strategy saying some episodes we're just not gonna put the cost and the expense and effort into creating for YouTube because we know this is gonna be a great audio podcast episode, but it's not worth us investing in doing YouTube well. And so we're just not even gonna make a video on that. And I think that that's an interesting kind of hybrid approach too, where, like, the podcast is this consistent thing that everything goes on the podcast, but only selective videos go on YouTube.

Jeremy: 49:19

Like, can be certain episodes that you think this has a great hook to it. And I think there's maybe search potential here. But that's maybe once a month I do that. And this is another approach that creators can take.

Justin: 49:30

Yeah. I like this approach. And, again, some people love this stuff. Like, I like being on camera. I I like it.

Justin: 49:37

I like also being on the microphone. You know, there are times where I just wanna record an audio only episode and not worry about video. Yeah. And there's times I'm like super excited to get on camera. So if you like this stuff, if you wanna get some equipment, and set up a little studio in your house, all of this is fun.

Justin: 49:55

It can cost a lot of money. Especially in terms of editing time. We've talked about this before, I think. But editing an audio episode as opposed to a video episode is just like way way different. To the point where, like for my other show, all I'm getting the editor to do is like take the Riverside video, clip it a little bit, and then export that.

Justin: 50:15

That's what goes to YouTube. And then the audio editor is spending way more time on the audio version of that show. Really finessing it. Really making it great. So for us, the premier version of our show is audio and the raw version is video.

Jeremy: 50:34

And I think that, you know, when it comes to video is both more difficult to edit. And if you edit a video the way that you edit a podcast, cutting out every and ah, not that everybody does but it is just very noticeable and jarring. And so it takes more to make it feel natural. Because obviously playing with different if you're screen sharing or have different visuals, that's not necessary by any means. We don't have a ton of that with our show.

Jeremy: 50:56

Yeah. But also, we don't get millions of views or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. So there is this kind of like, if you really want to capitalize on YouTube, it's going to require you to put more effort into your visual production from everything from the camera that you use and the setup that in terms of, like, backgrounds and visuals and video production. And so you can do this on a budget, and you can expect to get, you know, maybe some lift to your existing kind of audience awareness and and podcast growth or YouTube channel growth. But I think if you really wanna play the YouTube game, you have to be willing to invest time and money and energy into, you know, really doing it well.

Jeremy: 51:32

And so I think that that's something that is not really talked about a lot when in this conversation of should I be leveraging YouTube? It's like, okay, well, what are your expectations and what are you willing to do? And like those need to be in alignment.

Justin: 51:44

Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree.

Jeremy: 51:46

Okay. So the second case study that I wanna bring up here is a guy named Chris Stone. He has a fantastic newsletter called Podcast Strategy Weekly, and he talks a lot about the YouTube side of things. And so he works for a company called The New Statesman. It's a in The UK, it's kind of a news based YouTube channel and and media company.

Jeremy: 52:03

And he produces a number of shows. He's grown a bunch of their shows. And one of his approaches that I've been reading a bunch of his blogs on YouTube and what they do for the new statesman, his advice is basically you have your, let's say forty five, sixty minute podcast episode, do not upload that to YouTube, but actually take each talking point within it and upload it as its own video. And so you might take one episode that turns into four YouTube videos and each of them has its own title that is specific to this talking point in the episode. It has its own cover art, and that has actually worked a lot better to grow the YouTube channel.

Jeremy: 52:35

But it's a very different experience. It is no longer, I would even say, a podcast at that point. Like, it's the output of a podcast, but it's not the same experience as what you would get from listening to the full interview.

Justin: 52:45

Yeah. I like this actually. I've done this myself. On my personal YouTube channel, I just did a video on AI and whether it's going to take programmers jobs. And I used as source material a series of podcast conversations I'd had.

Justin: 53:01

So I was just taking clips from those conversations and using them as reference throughout. And it definitely makes the video more engaging. But the video was constructed as a YouTube video. And so this can be a part of your overall content strategy is to say, you know, the podcast is where we generate these long form conversations that have all these tidbits. And we can clip those up and make them shorts, or we can take a bunch of that material and then craft it into its own narrative as a standalone YouTube video, documentary, whatever you want to do with it.

Justin: 53:37

I think it's a great approach. Podcasts are great at generating these kind of zeitgeisty thoughts and potent little bits of content. And so, yeah, to accumulate those and to bookmark them and file them away in a way that's useful is totally worth doing, I think.

Jeremy: 53:58

Yeah. And you know, it's got me thinking I'm a classic, like, all or nothing. I wanna go a % or zero. And I also wanna always create something new. Like, as a creative person, I get bored with something I've already created.

Jeremy: 54:08

I never wanna talk about it again. I'm like, okay. Did that. Like, let's move on to the next thing. But it's got me thinking about, you know, our we're gonna have two seasons of this show now, and we'll do more in the future.

Jeremy: 54:19

And, essentially, our current production flow is we do a couple months of episodes. Maybe it'll be two or three months, and then we're gonna have nine months off, which is a huge break. And we, you know, might do our other show or do other content in the meantime. But thinking about all the stuff that we talk about every episode, usually we have two to three segments that are their own standalone talking points, potentially even more than that, that between seasons, it would make a lot of sense to go back and publish, clip those out, and make them their own kind of specific YouTube videos. And I think something in me as a creator, and I think a lot of creators have this feeling where you almost feel like you're gonna get caught or something where it's like, oh, you already did that.

Jeremy: 54:55

You're you're republishing that. And I think that's why a lot of us don't rebroadcast emails we've sent before or republish podcast episodes we've sent before. But I think with YouTube in particular, most people who come across your content are going to be new discovering it for the first time. And so I think there's even more incentive to do it here almost more than any other platform. I think talking myself into doing this right now, going back through season one, season two episodes once the season is over and actually pulling out, like, you know, eight to fourteen minute episodes or or videos from each episode and then packaging those as their own standalone videos.

Justin: 55:28

Yeah. And if anyone's out there and they're provider, there is this opportunity for someone to mine those for clips that can be constructed into videos. And I think there's just like this huge opportunity. There's all this material that just needs to be finessed and used into like standalone units of content.

Jeremy: 55:50

So this actually gets into I mentioned here how, you know, you're taking this podcast episode, you chop it up into these individual videos, which are not shorts, but they're their own standard videos on YouTube. And this begins to feel less like a podcast, which actually leads us into the final thing that I wanna talk about here, which you actually referenced earlier. What does it mean to be a podcaster? And, I mean, there's this whole conversation happening in the industry of, like, what is podcast anymore? And you've got some people saying, well, if it doesn't have an RSS feed, it's not a podcast.

Jeremy: 56:17

My take is that consumers will decide how terminology gets used. And right now, you have a lot of people who listen to podcasts or watch podcasts who they are totally they have never listened to an RSS based podcast in the world. And I would say maybe even we're gonna get to a point if it's not there already where most people who have would term themselves podcast listeners, it's detached from audio only and detached from RSS. And so I think that this this word podcasting is changing, and I also think that it can be a limiting thing to creators to only think of themselves as single platform creators. What are your kind of thoughts on that as somebody who's obviously done tons of content and businesses throughout the years?

Justin: 56:54

Yeah. Let me separate this into two kind of categories, two different thoughts. On one hand, if you are creating content for an audience, you are just trying to get their units of attention. However you do that in a way that fits your morals and your ethics and the things you're good at and your skills and aligns with the outcomes you want, you should pursue that. And the label matters less.

Justin: 57:23

Labels from the consumer perspective are only helpful in that sometimes people are looking for the Logan Paul podcast. Like, they want that version of Logan Paul. I don't know why you'd want any version of Logan Paul. But, you know, they want that version of Logan Paul. On the other side, the medium does matter in ways because the medium is the message.

Justin: 57:47

The message is the medium. A show that is RSS based just has some characteristics that are meaningful, both for consumers and for creators. For consumers, like I said, I think long form media, there's something special about it. And also media that allows you to listen while you're doing something else. It engenders a different mode of attention.

Justin: 58:16

It engenders a different relationship with the creator. There's a lot of dynamics there between the consumer and the creator that I think are important. On the creator's side, there is also this idea that video has become centralized. And it's centralized on Spotify. It's centralized on YouTube.

Justin: 58:36

It's centralized on TikTok. And you are going to be a servant to that algorithm. That's just a very different mode than these long form mediums like blogging and podcasting and writing books. That's how I think about it in these two categories. So on one hand, yes.

Justin: 58:54

You know what? Produce the content that is getting you the attention you desire. On the other hand, you want to also consider the other attributes of these different mediums. What they require of you as a creator, the effect they have on consumers in terms of addiction and other things. And also owning your RSS feed is there's something unique about that, that you don't get with, you know, uploading your videos to YouTube.

Justin: 59:25

If all of those platforms died, or shut you out, people could still find your RSS feed and listen to your audio. And I think there's something significant about that.

Jeremy: 59:37

My perspective on the from the consumer angle is that podcasting is a category of content. And for anybody who has not read April Dunford's book, obviously awesome, it's a book about positioning, and it's written for businesses, but positioning matters for anything you create that you are trying to get people to pay attention to and help them choose from a competitive field of options. One of the big things that she talks about in the book is that choosing your category automatically seeds a set of assumptions and expectations and even competitors. And so when somebody thinks about a podcast, now they are comparing among a certain kind of selection of things. And so I think that podcasting is a useful phrase on the consumer side and on the creator side to be able to understand what do people who listen to podcasts expect from a podcast and let's try and match something with that because we're probably not gonna be able to do a great job of convincing people who think of themselves as non podcast listeners.

Jeremy: 01:00:30

That's something that can happen over time. That's really heavy lifting marketing. It's way easier to align with people who identify with podcast listeners and think, okay, what is a podcast? And it's not going to be a consumer is not gonna say, well, has to have an RSS feed. Mhmm.

Jeremy: 01:00:43

They may be able to find it in their podcast app, but they also may be able to find it elsewhere. But I'm guessing it's more of an experience, a specific type of content experience that they go to podcasting to get. And this is something that we talked about in the algorithms episode as well. Mhmm. And so I think that that is is one of the areas where it is helpful both on the consumer and the podcast side to keep this term.

Jeremy: 01:01:02

It's a term that's going to evolve as podcasting evolves and as content evolves. But on the other side of things, on the, like, self identity side of things, I think this is an interesting area to dig into where self identity can be such a powerful influence both for good and for bad. Mhmm. And I think that it's important to consider, like, how you identify and if that is holding you back in some ways. I've created many podcasts.

Jeremy: 01:01:27

I have zero identity as a podcaster. If anything, I think of myself most as a writer, maybe an entrepreneur, but each of these comes with connotations that I don't always like because of how they're marketed and things like that. I think of myself almost as a writer who podcasts and does other things and creates products. Austin Kleon, he introduced himself as a writer who draws, which I I always thought, ah, that's such an interesting, like, way of presenting himself. Because, like, he is kind of an artist.

Jeremy: 01:01:51

He's also a writer. He also does all this other creative stuff. And so I personally like adopting an identity that is not tied to one medium Mhmm. That is expansive, that allows me to dabble in a bunch of different areas and not feel like, oh, I am this thing, and so I'm only gonna do this thing, and I'm not gonna do anything else. It can be a powerful thing to adopt an identity of I'm a person who does this thing really well.

Jeremy: 01:02:10

I think for me, being a writer carries a lot of positive connotations that I feel like I want to aspire to and live up to. Whereas, you know, other things, I'm like, yeah. I don't really feel that that is not the North Star that I want, and so I'm not gonna hold that identity too closely.

Justin: 01:02:22

Yeah. I'm just an attention seeker.

Jeremy: 01:02:26

Perfect. Alright. So to close this one out here, we actually had, one of our longtime listeners, Barrett Young. He has a show called The Art of Succession. He actually launched the show after listening to season one of podcast marketing trends explained and commented on many of our videos.

Jeremy: 01:02:39

One of our most loyal listeners, he actually, I believe, became a transistor customer, after listening to our show as well. So, great data point there on the, the value of YouTube. He discovered us through YouTube, became a customer of transistors. Interesting. Yeah.

Jeremy: 01:02:50

Discoverability, customer acquisition.

Justin: 01:02:52

I like it.

Jeremy: 01:02:53

He sent over some data. He commented on one of our previous episodes and said that he's been experimenting with both audio podcasting and YouTube. And he had a little interesting experiment that he ran that actually ties into something we talked about here. For the kind of overview here, he's got sixty minute podcast episodes. He releases two episodes a month.

Jeremy: 01:03:10

He also releases custom YouTube burst videos twice a month, and he does his show in seasons. So 12 episode seasons. He's currently got a small show around 50 views an episode on the YouTube videos, around 22 downloads an episode on the audio. So pretty small show right now. But what he did for season one, he published the full versions of the episodes on YouTube, the full sixty minute episodes.

Jeremy: 01:03:33

And then on season two, he started cutting them in half and turning every episode into two videos on YouTube. And he basically his retention rate just, like, went through the roof here. And so, basically, his total watch hours are three to four times greater than last season with a 20 to 30 retention rate versus less than 10% retention rate. So an interesting kind of data point that, I'm really glad that he reached out and shared this with us. And so that kind of is another tick in the box in favor of maybe it's not worth putting the full podcast episode up on YouTube, but actually chopping it up into other videos.

Jeremy: 01:04:07

And, yeah. I don't know if you have thoughts on, like, this this data that he shared with us.

Justin: 01:04:11

Yeah. As a content creator, I think you should be running experiments. One thing is to not have too short of a window. Like, anything you start, whether it's a new blog, a new YouTube channel, a new podcast, or all three simultaneously, it's gonna take time to get better at it. It's gonna get take time for people to notice your show.

Justin: 01:04:30

It's gonna take time for people to care. It takes time. So publish, you know, a hundred times, and then decide if it was worth it. This is great. I think this is great.

Justin: 01:04:41

And I would keep doing that. The one thing that you absolutely should try to do is create a listener survey or a viewer survey, and put it in every episode, and just see what data comes in. And you might only get one or two responses every couple months. But my guess is, what you're trying to do is figure out who are these people? How are they consuming this?

Justin: 01:05:06

What job is this doing in their lives? And I think you're going to see some meaningful differences. For example, someone who chooses to listen to your podcast episode before they get in the car to drive to work. They are locked in for thirty minutes. As opposed to coming home from work, sitting on the couch, and they have a world of entertainment to choose from.

Justin: 01:05:30

Are they going to bounce off your video? And so you might want to start surveying your listeners and viewers, and then start targeting the job to start targeting the mode that works for what you're trying to accomplish.

Jeremy: 01:05:44

Yeah. And you know, this is something that we didn't really mention here. Think we'd mentioned it before. Like, YouTube, it's a double edged sword where it is great for discoverability because YouTube does such a good job recommending engaging videos to each user, but it is actively working against you in many cases as well, where somebody's watching your video, but in the sidebar, YouTube is now recommending other videos. And so you do see this behavior is different where YouTube tends to get very short average view duration compared to podcasting, where on a sixty minute video, a really, really good sixty minute podcast video might get think you had one recently that was like eighteen minutes Mhmm.

Jeremy: 01:06:19

Average view duration, which that's like almost unheard of. Like, I would expect more like eight to nine minutes. Whereas a podcast episode, you might get forty minutes average view duration or average listen duration Mhmm. Or 50 even. And so I think that that's something where it is a different environment.

Jeremy: 01:06:33

You're gonna have lower hours consumed. Although, as as Barrett kinda showed here, this is an interesting way to to think about it where it's like, actually, what if we chop that up? And, you know, it makes sense that he's getting more views now in season two, which is because he's basically doubled his video output by turning every video into two. And the only thing I can think of here is that there's some kind of sunk cost thing going on where you get like seven minutes into a fifteen minute video and you're like, well, I'm already halfway through. It's only seven more minutes.

Jeremy: 01:06:59

So you push through. Whereas you get seven minutes into a sixty minute video and you're like, well, there's no way I'm watching another fifty three minutes, so I'm gonna bounce. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, there is something to that, that it actually does make logical sense that shorter videos, can actually increase overall consumption time on the channel, if not in and maybe even also in individual videos.

Justin: 01:07:18

Yeah. You referenced that video I had. So it got 2,000 almost 2,300 views, and the average view duration was eighteen minutes. This is a one hour episode.

Jeremy: 01:07:28

Yeah.

Justin: 01:07:29

Over on Apple Podcasts, that same one hour and eighteen minute episode has an average consumption of nearly 80%. Mhmm. So way more. People are listening to about really about an hour of the episode on Apple Podcasts as opposed to eighteen minutes. Now and that eighteen minutes is great for YouTube.

Justin: 01:07:52

But this is why what mode do you want people in? Like, do you want them engaged? They're out for a walk with the dog, and they're just listening to one thing for that whole time? Even watch people watch YouTube. As soon as things get slow, they open their phone and they're doing other things.

Justin: 01:08:07

So there's just Yeah. Think about this stuff. You know, look at your stats. It's like, okay. Well, we had 763 audio downloads for that episode, 2,300 YouTube views.

Justin: 01:08:19

But then go into Spotify analytics or Apple podcast analytics and go, okay. Well, but what's the consumption? And Yeah. You're making an hour a show that's longer than an hour and people are listening to 80 of it? Mhmm.

Justin: 01:08:35

That's like hitting a home run. Yeah. You're killing it. And so what kind of attention do you want as a creator?