What Should Podcasters Do About YouTube? - The Podcast Report Episode #65

What should podcasters do about YouTube? It's the podcast report. Episode number 65, show notes, links, conversation and more. Thepodcastreport.com 6 5. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. YouTube can be a leverage point for your podcast, or it can be a sinkhole for your brand. It's your call. Hey, this is Paul. This is the podcast report. You're a podcaster. You're looking to make your podcast a real business or do more business as a result of your podcast. You've come to the right place. I've been in podcasting since pretty much day one. I love this industry, I love this crowd. I love you, the podcaster. And yeah, I got some books and yes, I do some consulting. But this is the podcast report. This is my gift to the community. Thrilled to do it. Show's never been a massive play. You're not going to see this on a top 10 list anywhere. But you are a podcaster. You want to go deep. That's what this show is about. So this topic, let's chat about this. Now, podcasting is not my only passion. It's my biggest one. It's the one that excites me the most right now. But I play in the YouTube field as well, and I do that for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is it's just a pretty massive audience out there at YouTube. I've got three books about YouTube as well. All of them hit number one. I do well in that space too. I'm doing my second annual podcast day webcast on September 30, 2015. You can find out more just go to the podcastreport.com65. I've got a link to that. And after we do that, we'll have the replay to that as well. I'm doing that on YouTube Live, so it's on the mind. But the other thing is I'm just watching a lot of podcasters do YouTube really wrong and not waste their time on YouTube or not just do something silly on YouTube but actually do some real damage. And I don't like to see you do damage to yourself. So that's what this episode is for. That is what this episode is about. Now, whenever I speak on stage about YouTube and this isn't going to be today, but I always just give some stats about YouTube. I've got a link to the big stats page. YouTube's crazy. The momentum's crazy. The numbers are crazy. I'm looking at their stats page right now. I'VE got a link to it in the show notes@the podcastreport.com 6 5. But right now, YouTube over a billion users, about one third of all people on the Internet. Every day, people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube generate billions of views. YouTube mobile alone reach 18 to 34, 18 to 49, more than any cable network in the U.S. the number of hours people spend watching videos is up 60% a year. The number of people watching YouTube per day is 40% up year to year. The number of users coming to YouTube who start at the homepage is up three times. 80% of YouTube's views come out. If you're from outside of the US you know, and the list goes on and on and on. YouTube is impressive. Its place is there, and it's almost gone to the part to where the quotes become silly. There isn't a podcaster. I don't believe any of you. I don't believe you don't see the value of YouTube. And so maybe you're trying to implement YouTube in your podcast strategy. And what do you do there? I want to actually encourage you to think a little bit deeper than those stats. Think about Google. You know, we all know Google's the number one search engine, but here's the funny thing. YouTube's number two, by the way. But if you look at Google search, you see YouTube results in Google search, but the funny thing is you don't see Google results in YouTube search. So my question really for you is, who is the number one search engine? The number one search engine really is YouTube. And think about it. You know, if you're looking for information, which is all we go to search for anymore is looking for information. If there's nine articles and there's a video, we're watching the video. That's what we do. So the impact of YouTube is tremendous. The other thing about YouTube that we need to understand is that I always joke, my mom's on YouTube, but so is your mom, and so is the mom of your audience. And YouTube is safe. YouTube is accessible. YouTube is the type of thing where you don't have to worry about what a podcast is and how do I get one. And that type of thing getting to where the real world is is really important. If we're going to see podcasting growing. You know, podcasters, we tend to get so excited about the latest tech, the shiniest tech. The last couple of episodes I've chat about things like Blab and Periscope and all these features. Well, the fact of the matter is mom knows what YouTube is, our audience knows what YouTube is. And there's all the tools and there's all the technology to go live on YouTube and it's all free and it's all awesome. So some big picture YouTube stuff, but some smaller picture YouTube stuff, that's just as important. I did as a test, I did a 12 part video series and I took the video series and I the exact same titles and the exact same descriptions and I published them to YouTube and I published them as a podcast on itunes. I did no promotion of either one of them. And here's something that's really, really interesting. At the end of the day, at the end of the test, I had more views from my video podcast than I did YouTube. So don't think YouTube is as the end all, end all. Sometimes those billions of views and those hundreds of uploaded each minute and all those things we hear, things get, you know, lost in the, in the noise of it all, but it's still important. Now YouTube, at least the search part, is a search engine. And then of course, the part that isn't search also relies on search. What do you mean by that, Paul? Well, the job of Google, this is why Google bought YouTube. The job of Google is to give the best search experience possible. If I send you to a page and you look at that page and you click back immediately, I know that page isn't the page that you wanted. I mean, think about it, it makes sense. So if you click through to a video and you only watch the video for a couple seconds and you click back, I know that isn't the video you wanted. A lot of people buy views. You know, you can go to fiverr.com and you can buy views and you buy 10,000, 100,000 million views, but they're all about four and five seconds long. And YouTube knows therefore that thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have seen this video and have left a couple of seconds into it. The purpose of a search engine is to give you the best search experience possible. If people don't like what they see and leave, this isn't going to come up in search in a minute. You know, I mean, podcasters, we love to do this thing where we take a graphic from our podcast and we place it up on YouTube thinking that the world's going to watch it there. You know, they're not. Maybe in some very particular cases they're not. But man, if you come to a YouTube video and it's just a picture and it's a guy or a gal, or a guy and a gal or a guy and a guy or a gal and a gal just talking, you're going to leave now. If you leave and the video gets a low retention rate, guess what's going to happen? YouTube is not going to rank that video in search. And then all the ideas of all the things that we get from this, you know, just kind of go away. And it's kind of sad. Some podcasters are suggesting, you know, with the ad insert model, one of the big ad networks right now is counting YouTube views. But the fact of the matter is, I don't know, I kind of see it as cheating. You know, I mean, they should count the YouTube view if somebody listens all the way to that ad. But again, if they're coming in and they're coming out, a, they're not consuming the content, B, yeah, you might get a view or something, but you're doing damage to yourself and YouTube and this is huge. Now I've got a video for you that shows you how to check your YouTube retention rate. If you think that people are coming and looking at your audio of a podcast with a picture and listening all the way through. If you want to check that, go right ahead at the podcast month program. Podcastmonth.com actually yesterday's gift, but if you sign up now, you can still get the gift is a video that shows you how to go right into YouTube and look at the retention rate and look at the charts. And I've got a video for you that is a video of mine. It's got over 100,000 views. So it's a good statistical analysis of how things are going. And I show you how to track that. But the fact of the matter is most people with just an audio podcast aren't going to get the views, aren't going to get the rankings, aren't going to get found. YouTube is going to consider them less and less important and they're really going to do their self damage. And that goes back to this idea that I had here for the big idea of the show is it can be a leverage point for your podcast or it can be a sinkhole for your brand. Imagine you start to branch out in video and YouTube has pegged you as someone who's not worth watching on video. Think about it. So how do we react? Well, a couple things we do. I mean, the first one's really, really simple. Stop making videos that do damage to your search results. Check out your retention rates, even if it's you Know, really easy in the beginning. And gosh darn, even if you know you're getting some easy money in ad inserts at the beginning, stop making videos that damage your search results. Okay, consider using YouTube Live to change the game. Whenever I do YouTube Live, it does well for me. It shows up high in search. I get a new audience, I tell them about the podcast. It's always a lot of fun. If you feel like you have to post a video of your audio podcast, here's a little trick for you. Here's a little treat for you. Put it at Facebook. Facebook doesn't worry about the retention rates. Facebook doesn't worry about these things. So, you know, if you have to put it, put it there. So, a, stop making videos that do damage. B, use YouTube Live to change the game. Do it. Start broadcasting live. Get away from blab. Get away from Periscop. It's just a different game. If you've got an audience that isn't computer and or social media nerds. If your audience is social media nerds or computer nerds, well, you're probably not listening to this show anyway. But if they are, just consider YouTube live. It's just, it's a better situation. Understand that simply audiences are much more into YouTube than the other options that are out there. I chatted in previous episodes about maybe recording your podcast live via a video stream. And you know, your most audience. Again, if you've got that audience that loves the blab and loves the periscope, great. But as podcasting gets bigger, and I know most of you don't have that audience, consider going to again where mom knows. Stop getting all blab giddy, if you will. And then the other question just about Facebook is what does your channel page look like? If I go to YouTube.com your channel name, is there a graphic there that looks good? Does it look good on the iPhone? Does it look good on the Android phone? Does it look good on the television set? Does it look good on the browser? That's the channel page. Important stuff. Or does it cause the fizzle? I mean, have you ever gone to a YouTube channel and seen that generic YouTube graphic and seen that they have like eight subscribers and didn't even take the moment to put up their icon and you walk away and going, yeah, these people are not playing with video. Video is going to get more and more important. I'm looking at my shiny new iPhone 6S plus right now. The bad boy does 4K video. Video's getting more and more important. You need to think about Having a presence there. What I'm doing, I'm not putting episodes up. I'm not putting my. My audio episodes up at YouTube. And I'm just never have and I never will. I might do some recordings of them or that type of thing, you know, but I can put additional stuff, stuff that sends people to my podcast. I could put additional stuff, live stuff. I could do short segments. I could do keyword rich stuff. That thing where I told you that if you want to see how to get your retention rate, subscribe to podcast month. That's the process where I get you into the opt in program. I'm using YouTube very strategically and it's working for me. And I'll tell you this, you know, I've kind of got a bit of a new spin on YouTube. I'm looking at the results of the webinar I'm doing and some of the different things I'm seeing. And gosh darn it, I'm gonna start bumping up YouTube in the editorial calendar. What can you do? Well, first of all, just kill your YouTube strategy. If it's just episodes. If it's just episodes, get out right now. If you need to get a channel page up quickly, you can use Canva Canvas, easy Canvas free. If you're doing, I mean, if your show page has the fizzle or your YouTube response has the fizzle, maybe you get out, maybe you reboot the channel, maybe you delete everything or do something like that. If you want to go aggressive, I got two tools for you. I do have my book, YouTube strategies 2015. There's a link to it in the show notes thepodcastreport.com 6. 5. There's also a really interesting tool called tubebuddy. And I got a link to that, the podcastreport.com65 as well. TubeBuddy is a tool that helps you build out your audience. Again, it's not gonna build out an audience of people who are looking at an image and then, you know, audio commentary. But you know that that's why you're listening so far into this. And thank you for listening so far into this. So those are the links I've got for you. Those are the tools I've got for you. If you'd like to respond, head out to the PodcastReport6.5 or the PodcastReport.com Twitter or the PodcastReport.com Facebook. Let's interact with. If you haven't subscribed, you don't realize the power of podcasting. I want to send you episode 66 and episode 67 and episode 68 automatically. And that happens when you subscribe or follow or whatever it is your podcasting client calls it. If you go to podcastreport.com iTunes that's where most of you are coming from. And for the near to immediate future, most of you will come from there. You can subscribe. You can also leave a review thepodcastreport.com stitch or thepodcastreport.com pocketcast, tunein, spreaker, iheartradio, overcast, they're all there. If you want to send me an email, it's the podcastreportoutlook.com if you want to leave a review at itunes or Stitcher, I told you that before. Go ahead and do that. Would love to have you there. But think about YouTube strategically. Don't do anything that's going to damage your brand. Don't do anything that's going to tell YouTube that you're not worth watching because you are worth watching. That's why you're doing this. Think about YouTube strategically. You'll be at a great place. Chat with you next week. Bye.