Should Your Podcast Have Video?

let me take a step back. This topic comes to us from one of our meetups. We had someone that we took a couple of questions. We We did a Q and A round a lightning it wasn't really lightning round, but we did a Q A round at our last podcaster meet up here in Jacksonville, and we got through a lot of questions. I kind of regret not recording that segment, which is kind of strange considering we're podcasters, and we typically record everything

anyways. Lesson learned, but one of the questions that we got that we thought would make for a good video and maybe a fun concept for this one, we're doing something a little different with this one. Is we got the question of to add video to your podcast or not? Should you include video in your podcast? Should you make your podcast a video podcast? So

that's our goal today. Our goal today is to present both sides of the argument using our personal anecdotes, our personal experiences, our thoughts on the topic, and hopefully help you arrive to a decision, if you haven't already made a decision yet, whether you should include video or not. And I wanted to do something a little fun, because the full transparency, the full honesty, is that you're probably listening or watching this episode on YouTube. So clearly, we're advocates for video. I do

video on my personal podcast. I know life does as well, but we also maintain an audio, audio only podcast version as well. So I thought to make this a little interesting is that I told you that I wanted one of us, both of us, to debate both sides of the argument. You decided to represent and debate the pro video angle, and now is going to represent just the audio only angle. And I think that'll be a fun, fun time to see, see what

we come up with. You know, I'm playing devil's advocate, and you're just being you So, or being representative of what argument.

they don't. The listeners don't know this, but we just recorded a very long episode where you did 99.9% of the talking, because it was about SEO, which you should check out. Um, reminder to ourselves, releasing this episode after the SEO episode. So the reference is good. But anyways, would you like to go first or go first? I host a lot of solo shows, so I have no problem talking for long periods of time. This, I think, is the ego. Okay, okay,

aspect. You need to be thinking about where you are going to send your show as soon as it's done, if you are sent standing around and hoping that someone is going to discover your podcast, it's frankly not going to happen. Discoverability is the biggest issue with podcasting, and it has been for quite some time. To alleviate this, you have to be the promo of your own show. And to be the promo of your own show requires

email marketing. It requires social media distribution, a combination of the two, or sending your show to YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet, and because of that, they have their their stuff kind of worked out from an SEO perspective. If you listen to the SEO episode, you'll understand what I'm talking about, but from a search engine discoverability perspective, the algorithm on YouTube is far superior to really, any other content

channel. I would argue that Tiktok is a very close second to YouTube, and so using those two mediums, you would not be able to put your show on either of those two platforms unless you have a video component. Now, some folks will say, oh, you should take the audio version and just throw up a screen grab, or throw up a little audio gram. I personally don't like those

things. If I know that I am looking at my podcast player and I know a new show, or one of my shows has released a new episode, and I know that they have a YouTube channel, I.

complicates it. But I think if you have a situation like ours where it's two Talking Heads, there's only the upside of putting your show on a visual platform and then having the ability to have a video component. It's going to help with your social media

distribution. It's going to help with Discover ability, and it's going to also help build trust, because in the world of AI, in the world of the content that we are creating, in today's world, people want to know that the content that they are watching and that they're engaging with is coming from a real person. Well, Said, I should have said I was going to stop you at the two

minute mark. You clocked in at two minutes, 23 seconds, but you were on such a good role, I didn't want to interrupt you, which is what happened at the podcaster meetup. I think I was like, All right, one minute response for everything. But I was like, Oh, these are really good answers. Anyways, as you can tell, we value the content, we value the strategies that we share, so I'm gonna see if I can do it on mine under two minutes and 22 seconds. So here we go.

All right, so my goal is to showcase the benefits of doing an audio only podcast. For starters, let's get the most important thing out the way. It's less money. You're having your with audio only. You're you're having less equipment and software to buy, less maintenance to worry about. You can do an audio only podcast with three things, a cheap mic, a free editing software like Audacity, and you need a hosting platform. And if you ever need to hire someone, it's a lot cheaper to get them to edit

audio and not do video. Other point complexity and editing, it's less of a learning curve doing an audio only podcast or editing an audit audio only podcast. Look, if you've ever looked at video editing software, it's, it's, it's a lot to take in, all right, there's a lot of complexity to bit editing video and making it seem seamless. You're also gonna have to learn how to work a camera, equipment, lighting, learn new software, obviously, with audio only podcast, you have a simpler

workflow. You can hide a lot more mistakes and edits because you don't have to worry about visual cues or making a funny face or something like that. And it's less time setting up equipment. You don't have to set up a camera, a light microphone, your whole setup audio only gets rid of all of that visual cues that you got to worry about. Also, time. Time is a big

factor. I think it rolls into that video is going to require more time, whether that be from setting up to editing to publishing, if you're going to offer both. Well, now you got to think about, you know, are there things in the video that don't correlate or translate to audio? You know, that is a decision to make, and if we're talking about being a good podcaster that puts out consistent quality content, consistent being the key phrase

I should add that second. But consistent content is adding a video component going to

complicate things where it's negatively impacting your output, where you're spending more time trying to get across the learning curve, or making a video work, where you're kind of disregarding where your your schedule is falling off. And last but not least, uh, no, two minutes. All right, all right. Oh, I had one, you know what? Oh, stop me at the two one mark. Why do I get why does the ref stop me? Okay, can I can I kind of just share my last one, because I'm almost there.

Last but not least, I think you should ask. The most important question to ask is, do you want to do it? Is it the right fit for you? Do you even want to be on camera? Does being on camera make you shy. Is it going to mess up your flow? Are you going to be able to function on the camera? Does your audience even care to watch video? I mean, does your topic? Does your podcast need a visual component?

I will admit, for the longest time I was audio only, but in all reality, comic books, which I cover in pop culture, it's a heavily visual thing. I mean, it's what I talk about, the visual of visual medium. So it made sense for me to move over or to incorporate video. So, yeah, I think you have to ask yourself, Is this the right fit? It does video make sense for me? Am I ready for everything that comes with it, that both the monetary aspects of it, the time, the learning

curve. And I loved and I sorry, I like this question that I've seen asked is, are you ready to produce a weekly TV show? Because that's kind of what it comes down to, you know, like, Now, granted, it's not a full production. I think there's ways to make a manageable video podcast, but there's a lot more just things to where lighting, you know, like, Do you know anything about lighting? Do you know about cameras? So that's where I'll stop, clearly, way above the two minute mark. Thank you for the

extra time. Well, I did. I did ruin your your flow a little bit when I was aggressively pointing out I was. Was racing non existent. Watch racing to the finish line. So I I hear the I hear the I don't want to say complaints or concerns or challenges around I don't want to be on video. I don't want to be camera ready.

And I will tell you the most successful YouTube channels that I've ever seen or that I watch regularly, they never put their face on camera, so I would, but that's adding I'm actually going to argue against myself, because that's adding an extra complexity to your podcast. But I will argue with really quick again, really quick. You're talking about YouTube videos where they're showing graphics, they've got images. It's kind of like a a presentation, a video

presentation. Yeah, it's almost you, you take the audio file and then you just overlay the corresponding image that matches with whatever you're talking about. Maybe your Game of Thrones is a perfect example of this. You know, maybe you're talking about, you know, three different things that happened in an episode over the course of a 12 minute video. Well, you could just show that same image. It's probably not best practices

for YouTube. But if you wanted that, if you were doing a game of, let's say, House of Dragon, you know, recap, then you could use screen grabs from that episode and not go through jumping through all the hoops of, you know, putting yourself on camera, getting all the lights and things like that. Alternatively, you could just so I would say I use a tool called stream yard, and I can add in the B roll that I'm going to

use. B roll, meaning the images of the video that I'm going to show that I'm going to be talking over. I can add those in as I'm talking. So as long as I have those things that I want to show bookmarked, or maybe I keep them in a Google doc where they're linked, and so I know you know at what point to click on that link and share my screen. We've shared our screen on these episodes previously, and so using streamyard has really helped me kind of

youtubeify my episodes. And I've really been doing it very heavily on this NASA series, that it's a five part episode series. It's NASA like, of course, I could talk at length in an audio format, but the visual side of things to really hammer home the complexity and the scale of these things that are being built and shot up into space like the visual method goes a long way. So using streamyard, I'm able to show that visual explain it for the

podcast audience. And then after that video is done, I don't really have to do much editing. I could take that video and publish it. I do send it to an editor where he adds in, you know, the host red ads and an intro and an outro, but that's the extent of what he's doing. And then after he does that, he just strips the audio from that same file. So it's not like, you know, oh, you're doubling your work or anything like that.

You're just adding, you know, just one extra step where you have the video that's already done. You could just screen, share and record it that way, using a tool like stream yard and then just pull the audio from that video file.

To me, there's ways to to not complicate it, but to your points, like you do have to stream yard, I would argue, is very easy to learn, very easy to use. But there is a, still a learning curve. There's also a learning curve with editing audio too. So I mean, I just don't, depends on where you want to start. But I think the more important question is, how are people going to find you? How are people going to find

your show? Because if you're making 10 episodes that you spend audio only, and you're not doing any kind of social media or email marketing or website, you know if, if you're not doing any of that, it's going to be incredibly difficult for people to find your content, at least with starting with video, you have options, agreed and that that's, that's, that was my primary reason of starting with video, is to have those options.

I guess this is where I will argue with my own point, which I mean I expressed in the beginning. We both incorporate video into our into our personal shows, as well as this show. I mean, if you're listening to the podcast version of this, I literally just stripped the audio from the video like Blythe had mentioned. Now I what I would recommend, because I do agree with all your points about having video and it being a great marketing tool, great way to promote your show.

Have promo material. You know, there's nothing like having sometimes a visual to, like you said, if you have a point or a specific topic, you know, having a visual component or showing what you're talking about, you know, show, don't tell, sometimes comes into play. And I think a what I find value in is I don't do a lot of heavy editing, uh, in the video versions of. My podcast, okay, where I really, I think, you know, play around and really get kind of fancy. The editing isn't, isn't

the short clips. And I think that's my my advice is, make it, make it easy, right? Like, maybe you don't want to edit an hour long, hour and a half video and incorporate B roll everywhere, and as well as simultaneously edit the audio and things, we'll just take a, you know, a bite size, you know, can you edit a 32nd or one minute video for Instagram reels or YouTube shorts? You know? Like, fine. I think that's where I gravitate

towards. I take the video and I try to make it bite size where, you know, I'm trying to give someone a hook so they can check out the full, you know, the full content itself. And there's, I mean, you brought up a couple of, I mean, you brought up a lot of benefit to video, but you can, I mean, why not just record video and just strip the audio and work with that if you only want to be a video, audio

only. But there's something about at least having video in case you want to use it, if you find a use for it, I don't see where the I don't see where the the the not benefit. But the disadvantage is, and at least having a camera set up, maybe you don't need all the fancy equipment. Maybe you just use your, you know, your iPhone, and maybe you just have a ring

light, you know? Well, I'll give an example of, you know, how you can because you're really when you're talking about adding video, it's not, of course, it's the distribution that's sort of the marketer in me that is thinking about that first. But I there were years ago I listened to, and I might have told you this story, but I was listening to Princess Diana, like outfit, like her famous outfits that she had worn, and it was a podcast episode, but they created posts

to go with the podcast. They linked it in the show notes. They mentioned it frequently throughout the episode, but I it was the first instance that I was listening to the podcast episode, and I had the blog post also open, wow. And so as they were talking about these different outfits that she wore to famous events, I could see what the outfit that they were talking about, and just scrolled with the show as if they were

talking about it. And so I remember that being like, a really powerful way to show off your content in a different format, but it's also a compliment to the content that you're already making. If that makes sense, that to me, I think anybody could do that. You know, adding, I don't think you can add images in like a buzz throughout. I don't think you can do that.

Correct me if I'm wrong. No, I don't believe so what I've done is I will upload it to a photo, to Google Drive or something, and I'll just like, have the link to that, you know, and I'll make mention of in the initial Hey, I got a link to this thing I'm trying to tell you. But, you know, with video, you kind of eliminate the need for that. But I do see your point. If you do want to stick to audio only. There is ways to make it a multi kind of a multimedia experience.

Yeah. And one more thing too, like, if, if you don't want to do video, but you still are thinking about the distribution side of things, there's no reason why you still can't make a short form clip, like what you're talking about, and just don't be on camera. Just have images that you have rights to, or video clips that you have rights to, use those in your cap make like a short, you know, second, yeah, a voiceover as you're talking. And you don't have to put your face on the

camera. You can let the images speak for themselves. And so that's another way that you can think about you can still capitalize on the distribution side of things, but only focus on, you know, creating a really great audio episode, versus trying to learn how to edit a video. I remember when I started dabbling in video, and I took your and I did exactly what you

said. I didn't have a camera, but, you know, I knew I had audiograms that I, you know, got generated Buzzsprout, and I would just edit, like collages, you know, I would just do a, you know, it was like a fancy PowerPoint presentation, you know, it was like very rudimentary and simple editing and showing a graphic and it

pans and things like that. But I immediately saw a positive impact, because I was getting messages from people on on the these platforms are sharing it Instagram, in this example, where they were like, Hey, this is cool that I get to you. You're showing this visual representation of what you're talking about. Now, granted, I think it goes to my point where it makes sense for my show, because I'm talking about a visual medium. I'm talking about comic books. I'm talking about

the art. I'm talking about the action. Things are happening. I think your Game of Thrones and House of dragons example is a perfect example where, you know, having a visual component to to showcase and really drive home the point of a clip, or, you know, your episode goes a long way. But I think at the end of the. Day it is like most of us are doing podcasting as a passion, hobby, as a side hustle, as a second thing to our other thing.

So I think what I want to stress is the importance of, can you make it work? Is it? Is it going to distract you from being consistent, from from putting out quality content? I think always put the quality content and ensuring that you're engaging of your audience first and foremost, whether that be audio only or video. But I mean, there's, I mean, that's kind of like where, where podcasting is heading to, you know, it is

video. And I think there's just a lot of benefits to going with the flow, but making it work, you don't need to do a full production setup. No. I mean, if I was an audio only podcaster interested in making distribution clips, because, frankly, no one is going to hear about your show unless you have a distribution plan in place.

That means email marketing. That means, if you have the cape, one of these things, you should be sending it to YouTube, you should be sending it to social media, and you should be creating a newsletter for your audience. If you do two out of those three things, then you're well ahead of the majority of creators. But to add, to make it a little bit easier on yourself,

there's a lot of debate around sort of AI tools and their use and their, I guess, longevity, but it's never been easier to make content online, and where these AI tools really shine is taking the content that you've created and giving you an extra pair of eyes or an extra pair of ears on the stuff that you're Making. So for example, you have an audio only podcast that you want to create a social media

friendly clip for. Take the transcript of your podcast, upload it to chat GPT and ask it to write you a 32nd script based on this transcript of what an audience member is going to take away what they give you, you might probably and you should tweak it, edit it, put it in your own voice, but at least you're giving the groundwork to these programs to create something that's in your voice, that's in things that you have said, or things that are said

during the show. And then you can use a tool like capcut. Frankly, if you're on social media, you gotta learn how to do video editing. And so if it, even if it's on your phone, Cap cut, I think, to me, is fantastic. We both use Camtasia. I do love Camtasia, still, Cap cut is just really, really beneficial from a desktop environment to a mobile environment. Camtasia doesn't have a whole lot of mobile editing that is useful to me. So, you know, just trying not to learn all of the different

programs. I'm trying to stick with one for a little while and just learn the intricacies of that program. But you can add up a bunch of images use that script that chat GPT helped you create. Because you might think, Oh, it's a 32nd video. Oh, it's an, you know, a minute long video. A lot of times, those are

the hardest to make. Those are the easier ones to make, versus, like a 20 minute one, where you can just shoot from the hip, and you know, talk about anything you want when you got to get in in 30 seconds, every word matters, every second matters. And oftentimes that can be more challenging, and so use some of these tools to help you get there faster. Well said. So in closing, to answer our original question, to video or not, should you include video in your

podcast? I think if you were to ask us, yes, because we have video in our podcast, we've shared some of the benefits from it. We have found, you know, benefits and return on investment and incorporating video, but you don't have to. If it doesn't fit your show, if it's not something you want to do, then you don't have to do it. I think there's still, I think having a audio only podcast is still a viable way of podcasting.

You are giving me? Well, yeah, I'm giving because what's going to happen is, if you don't have a distribution plan in place, and you're only focused on audio podcasting, then you're going to get really frustrated after and you're going to be one of those statistics that quits overwhelming majority of podcasts is only 90% of podcasters quit before 10

episodes. So we don't want you to be one of those statistics, and so you just have to have a realistic mind frame that discoverability has been the biggest problem in podcasting. It remains one of the biggest problems in podcasting. And so to get around that, you have to have a distribution plan in place. And is that distribution plan going to include video or

not? I think is probably the better question, because you could still do an audio only podcast, but had the video clips to get that distribution agreed, I'll go in and concede on that point, and I will double down on the fact that there are so many tools to make video a reality and somewhat easy. You just got to figure out how it'll work for your show and how far you want to take it. I think that is you. Know whether that just be bite size things only focusing on video for promo items, and your

show is mainly audio. But I think to blythe's point, having a solid plan in place of how you're going to promote your show without video components, seeing as how it's only growing in size and attention and priority. You know, you may have uphill battle, but it's not impossible, so I guess, once again, it comes down to what you

want to do with your show. What are your goals and how you want to proceed, how much you want to, you know, make it difficult or easy on yourself with that said, it's going to turn the tables on our listeners and subscribers. Let us know what you thought about this. Do you have a video in your podcast? And if you're someone that recently started incorporating video, I would like to hear what finally, maybe put you over the edge, what made you decide I need to go ahead

and do video, and vice versa. If you're someone that is doubling down, I'm on my audio only podcast, and I'm not going nowhere. I'm not going I'm not incorporating video. I'd like to hear why. So let us know your thoughts on this. Let us know if you're pro or against a video on podcasting. We'd love to hear from you, whether that be in the comments in the YouTube section, or fan mail, if you're listening to the podcast version, there's a link to send us fan mail in

the show notes. We'd love to read what you got to say, but that's everything we got for you. Thanks again for tuning into the jpu show. I'm botter. That was Blythe. We'll catch you around right bye. You.