410. Which Is Higher Priority: Audio, or Video?

Whether you're already publishing audio and video for your podcast or you're thinking about doing that, which 1 should actually be higher priority? Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. In a world that can't correctly define a podcast anymore, there's a new obsession over and even a pressure to publish video. But if you are able to publish both audio and video, which 1 should actually be your top priority?

If you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode, they are a simple tap or swipe away in the chapters or the notes, or go to the audacity to podcast.com/higherpriority.

Number 1, prioritize audio in production. I've said it many times before. The most important part of video is actually audio. If people can't hear and understand you, it won't matter how amazing your video looks. No matter what your video setup is, make sure your audio is the best it can be. You might feel like it compromises the aesthetics of your video to have a visible microphone in your shot, but you essentially have only 3 choices.

A, use a microphone that's too far away and thus sacrifice your audio quality. B, invest in a high quality mic solution that can capture audio outside the frame or barely visible within the frame, or c, allow a visible microphone in your shot so you can get the best audio possible. Option a is lazy and amateur.

Option b is most likely expensive, but you probably already have the gear for option c. So it would be okay to have a microphone in your shot if it means getting much higher audio quality. After all, some people actually think it's only a podcast if they can see your microphone in the video. I talked about that more in episode 400, what's a podcast anymore. Go back and listen to that episode if you haven't heard it yet. I highly recommend it. Very important episode, I think.

As long as the microphone isn't blocking your face, and it probably never needs to block your face for good audio anyway, your audience would probably much rather see that microphone in your shot and be able to hear you than see no microphone and not be able to hear or understand you.

Number 2, prioritize listeners in your audience. When it comes to your audience, the audio experience is also more important than the video experience. Just looking at the whole audience experience overall, it goes beyond merely the technical production of audio versus video. It's in the content you share and how you present that content. I see and hear too many podcasters make this same mistake.

That is that as soon as they can see each other or that they feel they are on camera, whether they are live streaming, they've got something prerecorded, or even if it's an audio podcast but recorded through a video platform like Squadcast or Rivercast, they will speak as though the audience can see what the podcasters see. That's not always the case. I would actually say it's usually not the case.

Additionally, even a large percentage of video consuming audiences are only listening to the video, or they might be, quote, watching, unquote, with very little attention on the video, like through a smaller picture in picture on their computer or on their smartphone. I love how James Cridland, editor of Pod News, defines podcasting. He says, it's entertainment for your ears while your eyes are busy. You can apply that to podcasting like this.

Can your audience still fully benefit from your podcast if their eyes were closed the whole time? That's how you can prioritize the listeners in your audience, making sure that they can hear the experience and they don't have to see it. Number 3, prioritize video for sharing.

Here's where I flip things around. The best way to make it possible for your podcast to, quote, go viral, unquote, is for you to clip it into shareable snippets. And the best format for those snippets is video. I think this is actually unfortunate, but it's how the world has worked for years, and there seems to be no sign of it changing. Video snippets are more shareable and more consumable than audio snippets, let alone full audio episodes.

And I'm talking about within the context of sharing things and the hopes of things going viral. Get into places like TikTok, Facebook Reels, videos on x, and even YouTube, and you'll see that short video snippets work best for quick consumption and sharing. And when I say to prioritize video for sharing, I don't mean just the video of your talking head. For social snippet based video, go ahead with square video or even, hope I don't throw up in my mouth when I say this.

Maybe even vertical video because much of the consumption of this kind of real based video happens in vertical only platforms, unfortunately. So go ahead and make the vertical video in that case. But when you make these kinds of videos, also bake in the subtitles.

Just please don't animate 1 word at a time, either bouncing the words or displaying only 1 word at a time because that makes it really difficult to consume, consume, to watch, to even get the gist of what the video is about from scrolling through different videos and such. So animate it a line at a time or a phrase at a time. Make it easier to consume. But also include screenshots, images, b roll video, and engaging cuts.

And I know that can seem like a lot of daunting things to do for a 1 minute video, but there are great apps that can make this kind of social video editing much easier. My favorite is OpusClip. But you can also try the built in snippet features in Riverside and Squadcast or Descript. I have affiliate links for all of these things, but I recommend them because I truly believe in them, not just because I might earn commissions from them. And I earn commissions only through my links.

I'm not currently sponsored by anyone. And if you want to try any of these, please use my affiliate links in the notes for this episode, or you can guess the affiliate links because my structure is pretty easy. It's the audacitytopodcast.com/opusclip or the audacitytopodcast.com/riverside or the audacitytopodcast.com/squadcast. See, not very hard to figure out, but the links are in the notes if you want them.

My favorite is OpusClip because of how good its AI seems to be with automatically finding great clips and partially editing them. And they have some other nice features in there that the AI makes it a little bit easier to do some of these things, like the subtitle animations and even adding some b roll screenshots, footage, and such. OpusClip does that pretty well. It's not going to be perfect, but it is better and it's certainly much easier than manually editing it yourself.

Whereas Riverside and Squadcast, I think, give you more control over these things. Although they also have some AI powered features as well. I think they're just a little bit more manual. But if you want more control, definitely use the tools inside of those platforms. Keep this in mind though. Social videos will not grow your podcast very much. That's been the unfortunate thing that many people have seen. And you just think about it yourself.

How often do you see a short social video snippet, and then you go watch the full video or listen to the full audio? Probably never, I would guess. Or it might be very, very, very, very rarely. Unfortunately, that's the way it is, that it won't necessarily grow your podcast, but these kinds of things can grow your reach and your overall authority and influence. And I think that's far more valuable than growing only the size of your podcast audience.

Would you rather have 100 podcast listeners plus a thousand video snippet viewers or only the 100 podcast listeners. Both both. Both. Both is good. Number 4, feeling overwhelmed?

Then prioritize audio. Yes. You have the potential to get your content in front of a much bigger audience if you publish video in addition to your audio. If you can't do any of the special things in your video, then at least some video is better than no video, even if it's simply talking head video. But if you're not able or comfortable to do any video, then do not feel guilty.

There are countless successful podcasts that are still only audio, and there will be plenty of other popular and even top ranking podcasts publishing only audio content. Just look at me. That's rather ironic to say here in an audio podcast, so I should say, just listen to me or look at what I do. I'm a full time dad running my own business, hosting a podcast, and homeschooling my son.

Although I actually have been recording video of all my recent episodes, I've not done anything yet with those videos because, frankly, that overwhelms me right now, and I can't afford to delegate the editing to someone else or something else, at least not yet. And so I focus on what I can do best right now, and that's the audio. But I will continue recording videos of my episodes just in case I can ever get around to publishing them or using snippets from them. I do not have to publish video.

I want you to say that with me. I do not have to publish video. Now emphasize it however you want to. I do not have to publish video. I do not have to video. I do not have to publish publish video. If this has resonated with you, then please share this episode out with other podcasters that you think would benefit from this. You can share the link from your podcast app or go to the audacity to podcast.com/higherpriority.

Special thanks to Bryan Entzminger from Top Tier Audio who gave 501 Satoshis streaming through a modern podcasting 2 app. And special thanks to Adam Curry and Dave Jones who had me on episode 237 of podcasting 2, their show about Podcasting 2. And we were talking about podcast chapters and pod chapters. And by the way, speaking of pod chapters, if you've checked it out and thought, oh, I'd love to try it, but I don't wanna pay upfront just because I wanna see first before I really commit to it.

Well, you're in luck because now PodChapters has a free trial. So you can try it for a week, which should be enough time for you to try either your latest episode on PodChapters or try your next episode on Pod chapters and see how it works for you. You can generate your transcript. You can have it suggest the chapters using AI for you, and it does a really good job. Or you can even give it your outline, and it will find where those chapters need to go.

Go over to podchapters.com to sign up for a free trial, and I'd love to have you using it. And let me know what kind of results you get, especially if you play with and keep in mind that it costs extra if you do this, but playing with the good, better, best models that are in there. I think the good model or even right now, there's an experimental model that does a really good job.

I think those do really well, but you can try some of the others if you have some extra credits to burn and let me know what you think of the results. Also, special thanks to Dan LeFebvre from Based on a True Story who sent me a long but very thoughtful message in response to my previous episode, number 4 0 9, which was should you share your faith, politics, and morals in your podcast.

I'm saving that message and potentially others for an upcoming episode to share and respond to feedback about the serious and, quote, controversial, unquote, issues that I've been addressing lately. There's still time. If you have some thoughts on those things I've shared recently, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can send those written or recorded through podcast feedback dot com slash audacity. And that's powered by Podgagement, which I have not abandoned.

I've actually recently launched a new feature on Podgagement that lets you compare your historical podcast rankings to other podcasts. That could be your own podcast or even your competition. That's over at podgagement.com. And now that I've given you some of the guts, especially if you've been feeling stressed about doing the video and feel like you can have the guts to do just the audio, and I've taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your

own podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from The Audacity to Podcast dot com. Thanks for listening.