From Casual Viewer To Die-Hard Fan: Free YouTube Engagement Secrets (LIVE With Fran Asaro!)

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm your host, Tom Hazard with my co host, Tracy Hazzard again.

I'm back.

Great to have you back. Today, everyone, we're going to talk about from casual viewer to die hard fan YouTube engagement secrets with our special guest, Tracy. You want to introduce her.

Fran Asaro's back and I'm so excited to have Fran back. Thrive anywhere. Anyway, Thrive Anyway, I mean, I love that name of her program. And the most important part is Tom. We have got these fabulous connections and partners that we use here. If you've listened to feed your brand for a while here or you're just new to it, what you're going to notice is we don't have guests that often. We have crashers, we call them coaching crashers and we have partners who come on with us and Fran Asaro is one of them and she is just brilliant. And I'm so glad to not have to be our YouTube expert here because it's like another full time job and luckily it's Fran's job. So Fran has the program thrive anyway. She also has senior tubers. She's got her own little group. She specializes in speaking to those who might not be in the know of exactly how all this tech works. They know what they want. We want to get our voices out, we want to get our messages out. We want to share all of that. We don't always know the best way to hack the algorithm and do all of these things. And so we keep bringing her back here to talk about special things. And today we're really going to talk about some of those things that get your YouTube listened and viewed because it's both in the podcast and video world all the way through. Connects up to the rest of your channel, gets them to move through it, gets them to hopefully come back to your site. And so we've got friends, Fran Asaro here. Hey, Fran, welcome back.

Oh, thank you so much. And welcome back to you. I missed you. We communicated. But I thought you were going to be gone even longer. I'm glad you're back sooner.

Yeah, Absolutely. Well, you know, Fran, we've talked in the meantime about even deepening our partnership, which is I'm so grateful for, because there's so much going on in podcasting today. And, Tom, you read this article that you and I kind of both somewhat disagreed on. Was it in the New York Times or where it was saying that video podcasting was, like, the thing? Was it New York Times or.

Yeah, it was New York Times. Thanks for preparing me ahead of time so I could have it here with me.

Yeah, sorry, I just dawned on me.

Welcome to my world.

I actually have it printed out in the next room, and maybe I'll run and get it, because, you know, there are some very interesting things this article said that I completely disagree with. And. What. Because they don't tell you this, but they were talking about the top tenth of 1% of podcasts in existence, not the masses of independent podcasts, when they were talking about that, right?

Yeah.

And so the article was basically saying that video podcast is, like, the thing, and it's where all the money is being made and where everything's going on. But the reality is, is that while Tom and I absolutely agree, and I think you do too, Fran. Right. Video is where a lot is going on in podcasting. It's actually not that big. It's working for those who had it before. So, like, if you take a look at Joe Rogan, he had 11 million viewers. 2.2 of those were podcast listeners. So the majority of it was viewers, but they were viewers before he ever went on Spotify. And so because he was back in YouTube in the earlier days when it was really working for him. So those of us who are joining into that sort of video movement now, it's not working at that kind of pace as it is for the elite 1 percents, but it is working. And what I find that for us podcasters is working, Fran, is this idea of them getting, like, video shorts and some of these little, like, things that are tapping into the view of it and then diving into our library of videos and getting into the long tail. And that's what we're really talking about today is how to do that. But, you know, are you seeing that. Are you seeing, like, more and more people joining your group and joining YouTube and adding video to their portfolio of things that they do?

I see a big turnover in the past few months. A lot of people are joining. I think we doubled our subscribers in our Facebook page, especially in the age group. I'm trying to reach with the senior tubers, but any age. I'm getting people at any age who just don't know what to do and they're tired of watching other people thrive on YouTube and they don't know what to do. And it's just a few things that once you know them, makes it so much easier.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's. It's like. It's like you gotta be in the know. And that's the problem with all of these technologies. Yeah, Tom.

So I want to share just briefly, because you mentioned the New York Times article. I do want to share it. It's from April 26, so it's fairly recent. And the title is, with YouTube booming, podcast creators get camera Ready. And basically what they're saying is the majority of podcasts are launching with video on day one. I don't disagree with that. I do think that's very true. I do think YouTube is booming, no question. And we are experiencing about 75% of our podcasters that we support are launching with video or have added video. If they were a longtime podcast and already exist, then that's why we're talking about YouTube today, because it is so important. There's many things that our listeners and our whole podcast community need to know about YouTube. That's why we have Fran here today. But there's one thing I have to mention, because you wrote the New York Times article, Tracy, because. And this is what I completely disagree with. And they are saying that YouTube is now the top platform for podcast consumption in the United States, overtaking both Apple podcasts and Spotify, according to a survey published last fall. That is garbage.

But it's true, as I just mentioned, it's true for the Joe Rogans of the world, but they already had the larger video audience before they added their podcast audience. Different in the model.

Well, not only that, when you dig into the survey they're talking about that was published it last fall, what it really talks about is they were only surveying a very small number of podcasts, like 10. And they were all top podcasts. Nationally known celebrities.

Yeah. TV and movie and music celebrities. Right? Yeah.

And for their shows, they're viewed more on YouTube than anything else. But I just for the record, in the podcast ecosystem, I want everyone to understand because we see thousands of shows analytics hosted on Potat and on other platforms. Apple podcasts is still the dominant listening app for the majority of them. Okay. Literally at least 50 to 90% of listens happening through YouTube. Spotify is always usually a single digigit percentage of their listenership. The highest I've ever seen. It is 13%. And most podcasters, YouTube channels are not where their largest audience is now.

But there's a reason for that, and that's why we have Fran on.

There's a reason for that and we would like to change that because a lot of people prefer to watch video than listen to audio and we want to make sure the video is the best it can be. So this is not a anti video message. Please don't misunderstand me. We embrace YouTube. YouTube has embraced podcasting, and we all want to go in that direction. Okay, rant over. Thank you.

Well, let's get to Fran, because this is what I really want to have as present and understanding here, Fran, is that YouTube isn't going to just work because you put your stuff on YouTube. You got to work it.

My new term is slapping a video up with nothing to follow it.

Exactly, exactly. And so you got to work it. And it's different level of work. And honestly, I'm excited about it because when we put out a podcast, and that's why podcasts, we literally slap it into our RSS feed and then you can't do anything. There's literally nothing you can do except promote on social, like do the things that you would normally do to promote any part of your business. But you can't do anything within the platforms themselves. But on YouTube we can. Let's talk about some of those things, Fran. Today I identified end screens and info cards as two significant ones. But there's also linking to the longer video or to linking to other videos within that. So the connecting up to those things, those are some of the most significant things you can get to people to do. What I'm most interested in, which is getting them to binge on my content.

Yes, exactly. But I like to call what YouTube gives us for free is real estate. They give us an opportunity to promote ourselves in so many areas. And we're either not utilizing it or duplicating content because we don't realize what we're doing. And so what you said, the info cards and the end screens are some of that free real estate that's going to take your people to a bingeable opportunity. And that's what we want. We want people to binge on our content, right?

Absolutely. So we've put our video up there.

We've.

We normally just title them. We do a few little things, put a little description in. But there's other tools. Let's talk about what are some of those other tools and why are they so important?

Fran, beyond the end screen and the.

No, no. Including those. Yeah.

So with the end screen and the cards, just in case you haven't noticed out there, when you're watching a video and you see a little black banner pop up that's very inconspicuous, that's called an info card. And in that info card you strategically include a video of a playlist or a link that you want people to go to. You can actually sometimes see people say if you want to learn more about what we're talking about here, they point to that link and there's another video that could take them there. So now you know they're going to go there, they're interested.

So that's a step further. Let me just say this. So like for those of you out there starting baby steps here, that's what Fran and Tom and I are all about, right? Like we were like, let's do one thing at a time. And one of the things is first off, try and use the info cards and use them at a timely point in your video. So like if we were going to link to how to create a playlist from your podcast on YouTube, like that's great. The info card should come up above my head at that moment in time with the link to that other video. So like make it timely as to what you're saying and things. So start there and then the next step is it's like point because you know you're saying it right. But also you got to know which corner to point to. And I am terrible at it because I always point to the wrong one. Yeah, I was thinking about it because.

When I'm talking about feed your brand and when I have this background I have to make sure I use is this reverse left. It's reverse my left hand to do it. When I was sitting and looking at the perspective of seeing yourself, if you're not thinking about that, you would naturally put your right hand and be pointing on the wrong side.

Yeah, I'm a right hander and I always do both. Usually the left, right?

It's up here, right?

Yeah. So I remember it's where my microphone is. But that's what you're talking about. You're talking about putting these info cards in. But they need to go in a place where you're actually going to take action on them because that's more useful.

Yes, but before we go there because that's really important. If you can pre plan your video so that you are going to announce that card, that's great. What about those of you who've been putting up videos for years, you can still use those cards. They just won't be you announcing them. But there's a way that you could customize those cards to be inviting. For instance, if they're coming in on a video three years after you started the channel, you might say, get to know us, are welcome to learn more about us and send them to your, your welcome video so they know more about you. That's one thing I always put in to my info cards. So you want to make sure that you know you're not too far behind. You can still add them, right?

So we can add them after the fact and it doesn't change anything. So I don't just have to put those info cards in at the time that I loaded my video in first time.

Correct. And if you have any kind of events or specials, you can add those there. As long as they call them teasers, you change the teaser so it doesn't say the name of the video. Instead it'll say what you want them. Click here for our next guest or whatever you want to say for our next drawing or for our next giveaway, whatever you want to ask them to come and click on.

Wonderful. So that's a really great tool and a really great tip. Are there any things that you want to share with us about, like when you put them in and where you do them and how many can you do? Like mind?

I read my mind. Except for like when you do to me like you do to Tom and you surprise me. But that's okay. I've gotten used to that. So the first thing is that you can have five info cards and you want to make sure that your first info card does not come before 30 seconds in your video, because your first 30 seconds is what ranks you as a view if they stay on for the first 30 seconds. So the first thing I do is put one on in 35 seconds and then I don't care how long your video is. But if you're not getting views all the way to the end, you can tell through your analytics, don't put your cards throughout that video. Put them in the first few minutes, 10 minutes at the most, and get them going every 30 seconds, every one minute, whatever you want to do, and keep it so they're going to see them all. And when you click on it, when they click on it, all the videos that you have or all the playlists that you have are going to actually come stacked. So they'll be get to see all the other Things that you put in there, even if they don't see them pop up now.

So when they click on that link, if you're saying, yeah, go to our podcast playlist and you've given the link in there, when they click on that, that's what they're going to see as dropping down from that link. That's fantastic.

It'll drop down. You have a little 30 character head way. You can say learn this and learn more, whatever you want to say. But it also open up the link to that video and an image. And if you have other info cards, those are going to show up too, right beneath it. I love that you asked about some limitations. If you are not a YouTube partner, you cannot use the link feature until you are. And that link is really great. If you have events coming up, products you want to sell, take people to your website, cannot use those until you become a YouTube partner.

So let me clarify that. So you're saying you can use a link to another video within the things. So you can put videos up, but you can't link outside of your YouTube.

Correct. You can put your a link to your video, a link to somebody else's channel or video, a link to a playlist. So you can do several things, just not the link outside of YouTube. Remember, YouTube's trying to keep you there anyway. So if you do have that as a. You can use it because you're a partner. You still don't want to overuse it because then they think you're taking them off platform. Yes, Tom.

So I'm sure a lot of people listening or watching this on YouTube right now are thinking, okay, you have to be a YouTube partner to do that. I think they might be wondering what does it take to become a YouTube partner?

Yes. So some people get overwhelmed by this, but it really doesn't have to be this astronomical. It takes 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch time hours for every rolling 12 months, which equates to about 333 watch time hours per month. But not exactly right because it'll carry over. And once you become a YouTube partner, you have a lot of advantages. Not just the link. There'll be so many other things. I don't know if you want to wait till another time when we talk about that, but what you do is there are certain strategies you can have and that would have that happen faster than others.

Yeah. And we've talked about this in the past, but we're going to talk about it again in the future. So today we're going to stay focused on our info cards and our. Our promo tools that almost everybody has access to without being a YouTube partner. But we're going to keep deepening this over time. That's why we keep inviting Fran back, because we want you to understand what it takes to get to a level of YouTube partnership is so critically important because that's when you're going to get into the viewership level you really need for your podcast to work on YouTube.

Yeah, I always tell people you could start making money on YouTube today without being a YouTube partner. But the perks that you get as a partner are just amazing. You can have memberships and you could have your merchandise right there on your page, on your channel, but definitely you could start making money today with what you have.

And isn't the same criteria to become a YouTube partner that the same as what you need to be able to actually make money through YouTube ads? Through your videos?

Yes, AdSense. Yep, exactly that. So you'll get notified when you reach the criteria and then you'll have an invitation to join the. The program and to join AdSense.

So let's go beyond info cards. What's an end screen?

Oh, end screens are great. If you don't put up an end screen that lets YouTube put up whatever they want after your video is over, what do you want people to do after your video? That's what you get to decide if you utilize end screens. So what happens is you have a choice of up to four elements, and those four elements are going to be viewable anywhere, depending on how you set it, between 5 seconds and 20 seconds at the last portion of the video. So 20 seconds before is when you could actually have one pop up. And one of those elements can, but doesn't have to be a subscribe option. So sometimes you'll see people's faces or around circle. That's a subscribe element. And then you could put up videos. And if you. The more strategically you put it up, the better, people will take action. So if your video was about one thing and you have some videos that elaborate it, or playlist that will elaborate, that's probably the next video you could use.

So you can do the same thing right in the end screen. So you can have subscribe, you can have playlist, you can have the next video. What else? Is there any other options?

You could have a link, but you can't until you're a YouTube partner.

So you still can't link out. So it's the same kind of model as the info cards when you're a non Partner or not yet a partner.

Some of the things to know about that is that where you place them and the time you place them in that last 20 seconds is very important because you might be covering any of your calls to action or the other person who's speaking. So you want to position them and then play the video to test it to make sure they didn't cover anything. That's one way of doing it. Or not putting as many elements up. But if most people use Canva these days, if you go into Canva, you can build your own template for your end screen where it gives you blanks for where you can put your videos on and you subscribe. So it's leaving squares in a circle. You can have them customize where they're animated, tell people what you want them to do next, and you add that to your video at the end before you upload it to YouTube.

So you put it in your final bumper. And so for all of those of you who are poditized clients or who, who are a membership of our community or anyone who reaches out to us, we actually have the template already all lined out for you. So we have our usable area and it outlines like if you put one of the end cards here, it goes here on the right, it goes here on the left and gives you the spaces to leave so that you put your text or anything that you want to do or where you might put arrows and animations, it shows you exactly the space you have left to do that. So we actually already have that done for you. So we'll have that in the blog post for this episode@podcastersunited.org and, and you'll be able to access this is also in our tip library and resource library over there on Podcasters United. So we want to make sure everybody has that. We typically Fran, just so that everyone knows when we do it for our done for you clients, we put it in so that it's the last 25 seconds of, of any bumper that they do. So if you're doing your outro music and your outro voice, the voiceover is going. But we hit that end screen. That's what we call the end screen, right? So that we hit that at that moment in time that it's so that it'll be there if they want to do a full 22nd. And so that's what we do. And usually we'll do like a quick little 5 second animation of their logo going in and out and then it blanks out and leaves the space.

Okay, you just Might want to check so that it's not blank squares and a blank circle for too long.

No, no, we don't leave. And that's one of the things we recommend. Don't put the squares, but you leave the blank space. So you might have your, like subscribe to the binge factor. Like, that's my show. Right. And it has little arrows and everything. And it's above where those other spaces go. So that's still there animating on the screen.

Okay. So it's showing up, but it's not showing up as empty squares for five seconds.

No, we don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah. Don't put an outline around the space because what if they change their size? Like, then you're stuck.

Yeah, okay, good. That's good. And that's. And so, yeah, for some people who are going to make their own, they need to know that. Don't put it in for more than 20 or 25 seconds for you. And make sure you leave room for changing things up later on. Because you can change end screens anytime. So if you have new updated information, new welcome video, or new link that you want to send now, you could send links. You can change that anytime.

That's my favorite part about this tool, Fran, because this is one of those tools, both the info cards and these end screens is that they are not locked. So you can do them and. And change them in the future. So now if you were doing a promo for a video that you've got for a book that is coming out and the book comes out now, you can do. If you're a partner, you could do the external link to the book page. Right. So. And you could put them side by side. I love that model that that YouTube has created. It creates a dynamic promotion for whatever's relevant today.

Yeah. One of my favorite features, which was gone for a while and whoever's heard me here before, you know, I use TubeBuddy. It's my best friend for YouTube. Right. TubeBuddy has a feature when you're doing your end screens and your cards that you can save it. If you say, you know what? I like this. I don't want to have to keep doing this at every video I upload. They now have a template capability. So you say, I like this. You save it, you name it, you can have a few of them. So you say, this one I'll use for all of my videos about my events, or this one I'll use for all my interviews or podcasts. And then you just click on it and they go right into the right spot and the right timing.

That's fantastic.

Yes.

Let's talk a little bit about YouTube Shorts. So YouTube Shorts doesn't quite work the same way in terms of like end screens and info cards and stuff like that. But it does have a link to the, what's to the longer video. So like if you've got like a little clip excerpt from this show, we could link to the full length video. Is there anything else available in the YouTube shorts we can do?

Well, first of all, you can use, most people are using Opus Clip or whatever they use to make shorts and when they do, they could use that to go to any video. It can go to any long form video. And they usually use the long form because shorts are good for getting you subscribers and people showing up, you know, views. But the long form is where the money is, right. That's where you're actually going to make your money. So you want to bring them there, you want to set, you want to make sure it's very strategic. They have to be highlighting what your video is about and enticing them be like a trailer. So the more the better. And I also use clips, I don't know if anybody knows about clips. They're free and you can take clips of a portion of a video up to a minute and send it to somebody and it could be a part of your long form video that you just want to share with them. And if they like it, the only option they have is to go to long form video. There's nothing else for them to do. So it's really a good feature too.

Yeah. So what Fran's referring to is that if you're in any video and you're watching any video, you can take a clip from any section. So if I was like, Tom, this is so cool. You should listen to this like piece of what somebody said. It's a great piece of advice. You can clip that, share it with them and then when they get it, it sends them right back to the full length video and the clip is highlighted. If I remember right, when they get into it. So they could go straight to the clip or they could watch the whole thing.

Yeah, the clip is actually a separate entity until they click on see the full video. So and so what shows up is just 60 seconds or 40 seconds and then nothing else to do but to share it. So it's really good for posting on social media. It's good like you said, you see Tom and you want to share a piece of it to remember, put it in a little library of these clips because you get to save the link and you get to use it for wherever you want. Other social media.

Right. And so this is also a tip if you're having trouble with your guests sharing your video. So you had a guest on the show and they were really great and then they didn't share on social like they should. I found this as a way to get them to do it because you're doing the work for them. So if you clip the piece that you really want them to share. Right. And so typically we do it, we send them the video clip so that it's easy for them, but they don't always do it because then they have to upload it. But if you share a clip, tag them in it and say, hey, this is where you were really brilliant, like you said, this was such a great tip. You said very often they'll reshare that. And that is just really easy, an easier way to get that momentum going.

I love that. I love that.

Sounds like video ego bait.

That's right. That's exactly what it is.

Well, so Tracy, we've talked about these clips you can do through YouTube and while that's very convenient and obviously we're hearing about some great features of it, YouTube isn't. Doesn't have any AI that's suggesting the clips yet, is that right? You have to actually go and choose the beginning and end of the clip yourself, right?

Correct. And I hear that it's been around before shorts, but I didn't know about it till after shorts, so I can't tell you exactly, but I think it's a great feature.

So I've been using it for a while. What I'm really waiting for, and I think they're going to do next, is that you'll be able to take the clip and make it a short.

Oh, that would be great.

Actually cut it. You know what I mean? Like it's coming. But this is what I hear. But I haven't seen it happen yet. But yeah, so I think that that would be. So then you could just clip, clip, clip. So can you imagine? I mean, it's going to put Opus clip in some of those companies out of business. Because you'll just go into YouTube. It'll. It's AI will suggest up the sections. Then you just go and clip it and say, make it a YouTube short and it's done.

Exactly.

It certainly could hurt those companies like Opus. Although you wonder, is YouTube going to make it easy for you to download those clips from YouTube and use them on social media. I don't know YouTube. I mean, other than letting you share any long form video, I guess they let you share shorts the same way on social media.

Who does opus clipper?

Does YouTube? No, YouTube. I mean, can you.

You just have to copy the URL and drop it in somewhere. It doesn't really work as well, but.

Anyway, I think that it's a great feature And I hope YouTube keeps expanding it and making it AI help select clips. But then how else can you use them? Are they going to limit it and really only want you to use them within YouTube?

Right, well, that's why I'm surprised they haven't done it so far. Right? Like, because that would keep you within YouTube. It was so much easier to put it in a YouTube short. Why would I even bother to use TikTok? Right? Like that's, I think should be their thinking. But we'll see, we'll see what happens. Well, Fran, is there any other ways that you can sort of, kind of, I'm going to say, cross promote between shorts and your long form video?

Well, first of all, a lot of people don't use all the shorts they can get. All right? They're sharing one or two. I'd suggest that you use as many as you can and don't forget to use them over again. So some people use them once and the amount of people who get to see that short is a fraction of the amount of people that you're exposed to that you have access to. So share it again in a month, share it again whenever you can. Most people aren't going to see it, but definitely use those short shorts beyond YouTube. Put them on Tik Tok, put them on Instagram, put them as your stories and your reels. Now those will not be shorts from YouTube. Those will be ones that you save to your desktop. So you'll have to make anything that has a link to YouTube you should share on any platform that will accept a link. Right? But if it doesn't accept a link, then use that same short, but you save it to your desktop. This is where people get a little.

Confused to say the little video up. Right, right.

So you know where your platforms are now? That's where Opus Clip comes in. Because you could share on all the platforms you want to share it on, right? From there it doesn't matter.

But yeah, and I think this is really important for everyone to remember. Like I've been doing social media from our podcast for a really long time, like almost a decade now. And it has been the thing that we don't seem to understand that we think because we shared it in our Instagram, it's there. But the reality is, is it lasted about two hours in TikTok, it lasted about 30 minutes. So it's not really there. To anyone who's getting fees, who's getting served up things, it's not repetitive. It is on LinkedIn though. I do not recommend resharing and resharing and resharing the same thing on LinkedIn. And I do not recommend doing that on Pinterest. Those are the two places I wouldn't reshare that often.

Pinterest. You can move it around though.

You can, right?

You can just move it around.

It already is and move it to another board. You can move it, you can repromote it, you can do something with it. But you're right. But do not upload it more than once. Like it just find it to be. It just doesn't work in Pinterest. And it's there within your boards with LinkedIn once a month. So if you reshare something more than once a month, that's too often now you can share a different clip, right? Like, I mean, that's the great part about it. It's like if you've got 10 different shorts from your video, you got 10 different ones to share, you don't need to keep sharing the same one again and again.

Here's a tip that you can use and I've been trying to find out what the best way. What do you do with all those shorts after you're up there that you end up with thousands of shorts? And how will people binge watch those shorts? So what you could do is I started creating playlists for a short about a particular long form video. And so I create that playlist. I made a section on my. This is all in test, right? So I haven't perfected it yet, but I created a section on my channel page for shorts that go to long form videos. And then I also created a link to that. I have a link to that playlist and I put that link in the long form video description so to see them.

Now I have a question about that friend. Because Tracy and I were looking at YouTube recently in the context of considering a customer, a podcaster's website who wanted to have a playlist of their podcast episode videos, the YouTube podcasts playlist, right? And you can do that. You can create a playlist of those long form videos, put them on a web page. Your latest video would Always appear there first and then it'll keep going back through the others. We wondered if there was something similar for shorts that you could put a playlist of shorts and embedded on your website. And we didn't see that you could do that. So this playlist you're talking about of shorts, is that only able to be used on YouTube?

No, a playlist, I believe. Whether it's because I have playlists that mix and match, I can put some long and shorts in them. Once they're in that playlist, that playlist can be embedded on your website.

Well, we must have missed how to do this then.

This is the thing. So I did some experimenting, Tom, after we saw that. Yeah. So it doesn't look like a regular YouTube short playlist. You know, it's not a vertical. It actually has the big black bars out to the side. It puts it into a regular YouTube playlist. So you can create a regular YouTube playlist of any set of videos. So let's say we said, okay, we're going to put all of our Fran Asaro clips and videos all together into one big playlist and we have a Fran Asaro playlist. And then that way we could embed it at the bottom of our blog and say, hey, if you want to, you know, binge watch everything that Fran has to say, go here. And it's an entire playlist of everything. So you can group them by topics and other things like that. So you can do it. But it looks awful is all I'm saying. If it's like. Because it has the big black bars out to the side and it's like a wide video format, so you want to put the long video at the front of it in your playlist so it doesn't look so bad when you put it on the blog.

That's.

That's what I did. It's a great idea. But Tom, I could see that being something they should adapt later on is make that the playlist for short playlist that's just.

Yeah, like nice and vertical and pretty.

Because what we do on a lot of client blog posts is we'll take their video shorts from the episode and they're put onto YouTube. A lot of times they'll put them in YouTube on YouTube shorts and then we can embed just one short and it is the vertical and it doesn't have all the other things. But it seems like a miss on the playlist feature. Be great to have a playlist of only shorts that would be vertical so that you could not imagine having A blog, and you have text and it wraps around that tall format video, kind of like you wrap around an image, you know, like on a magazine page, which is how we like to do our blog posts. It'd be nice if you could do that and not have to take a huge amount of real estate.

So I'm very sure they'll come up with that soon.

I'm going to go play now. You've been working on a Tracy, and I'm going to go work on it. But while we're talking about playlists, can I just throw in something I've been sharing with people? Because I. It just came to me this week after, what, 20 years or however long YouTube's been out. If you have these sections you have on your channel, you really could maximize your time there. One of the things you could put create those sections any way you want. And one is you could put a playlist of all the podcasts you've ever been on. So you can't use somebody else's material, but you could put it there. They'll still get the benefit if they hit on it, but. But everybody's going to see everything you've ever said if you want it there, which is a great thing to share.

We do this all the time. You're getting interviewed or whatever that might be, put them on the channel at the bottom. It's like, it's like, hear more from Tracy. Hear more from Tom. Right. Hear more from Fran. And you could put all the groupings of all of those things in playlists. And we do have an entire section on ours that way. And I. We recommend this because it's a great way for somebody who's thinking about hiring you to hear you on somebody else's show. Right. And not just all your own content. Right.

And we also do this with just your podcasts. When you've been like the audio, you've been a guest on other podcasts. In our Showcaster player for people hosted on Poditize, you can create a player, a playlist that is embeddable on your website or just one tab within your player of your show that has all your guest interviews that people can hear you on other shows, and that keeps people on your website. And you could do this with a playlist of their videos from YouTube too. Like you said, Fran, not only leave it in your YouTube channel, but you can embed that on your website to.

On your about page or your media page or whatever. And because you have them grouped into a playlist, you can get them to go from one to the other to the other. Which is so much better, Fran. Right. Because otherwise YouTube will decide what it serves up next.

Exactly. You do set. Get to sort it. The other thing that I was saying that I just thought of this week is if you have a lot of things that you offer and you think that you could possibly be overwhelming your viewers on your channel, create a section that says start here. If you don't know where to go, start here. And then you put the videos in the order that you want them to learn. It could be one playlist, of course, but it might not. Be. So you can just start a section that way and keep people like, let it be like a whole map of you unfolding so they. They get to know you.

I love that. Fran. Yeah. We suggest this to our podcasters, too, for having a playlist of their podcast audio. Again, sort of. You have that window player that has every episode you ever publish, and the latest one's always at the top. But how it does, you can have a tab in that player that is your new listeners start here playlist. And so you can have your, you know, maybe these are your core 12 episodes. People find the show, they listen to the latest one, they like it. But if you curate for them a list of these are the most important episodes, you want to get caught up on this show that has over 300 episodes. Start with these 12 and then jump forward.

Yeah. And I recommend this to someone who has a podcast style or video style where maybe you're doing interviews and you're also doing lessons. Right. And so you could pull out your lessons into your own playlist, because that's. If I want to learn from you, I want to go straight through them. And the interviews interjected in them is fine from a listening experience on a podcast, but maybe not so fine if I want to sit there and binge learn. Right. Something. And so you can create that section and tab both on your podcast and you can also do it in your playlist. It's such a great idea.

Yeah. Get creative. I. I know I have my senior tubers. Anybody who joins my membership, I have a whole section of all their channels. So people could come and see what they do. Other senior tubers could go and visit some of their colleagues and see what their channels and support them on their channel. So you can put your clients on there. It's their channels. You won't be putting their website, but you can put anybody who means something to you. You can create a whole section on the channel. It's so customizable.

You could do all your guests.

Yes, all your guests would be really great.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I used to have a playlist. I had a hard time keeping it up personally, like, because it really needed to come from me. But I had where I was picking my favorite episode from the podcast and put it into a playlist. So I would have all the channels of all my guests, the bottom of the binge factor, and then I would have a playlist that was just one episode from each of their channels that I thought was some of their best. But it got to be a little complex in terms of, like, because it got. It felt personal to me. Like it needed to be my personal curation.

Yes. That you can curate, which is great. But when you're doing a playlist, for those of you who don't know, playlists can be customizable and you could have them sorted by oldest to newest and vice versa. You could put them in the most popular. So all your most popular podcasts or whatever you want in that playlist could come up first. Or you can move them where you want to manually. It's up to you. So I recommend you put them in the order you want because if you have something that has 30 videos in it, it's going to show. It could possibly that it's set up wrong and they're showing the last video first. So you can put it in the order that you want it.

That's so important. Well, there are so many great tools that give you lots of flexibility here in YouTube to be able to promote your other stuff. Right. And to be able to get people to flow through and navigate. Because the best thing we can do in YouTube is to get them to go down our YouTube hole. Right. And not. And not what? YouTube decides to keep serving them up. So if we can do use all the tools to make that happen, we're going to be better off. Right, Fran?

I say we're microcosm of exactly what YouTube's doing. They're trying to keep you on the channel so they make money and they want you to be doing the same thing. So you keep people on your channel so that you could be making money for you and for YouTube. So there are some. I think you just gave me an idea, though. I think I'm going to make a list of all the free real estate on our channel and remind people to go ahead and use their free real estate. Where are you not utilizing it? Right.

What parts are you using on YouTube? I love it. Then there's so many things and so much fun. So as always, podcasters, united.org you'll be able to find all the details on this a blog for this episode. But there are lots of Fran's tips in our tip library. So sometimes we take things she says here we break it out because we gave you a lot of information today and Fran and I are very accused of fire hosing all of you, both of us are. But we've dialed it in and so you'll have individual tips there. You'll have ways to navigate that. You can go and find all of Fran's episodes every time she's been on the show and definitely link to her because she gives us fabulous links into her community. She does these beautiful YouTube audits which are so, so valuable. So make sure you go to the blog post for this episode, click through it and join Fran and her community Thrive.

Anyway, yeah, thank you for having me here. I love it. I love the way our we dance together, right? Hopefully we haven't exhausted anybody, but I am used to people having the deer in the headlights look afterwards. But guess what? Next week you'll say, oh, isn't that what we just learned? And you'll start getting the bug of what it's like to optimize your channel.

Absolutely.

Thank you both.

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