Should You Start A PODCAST OR YOUTUBE CHANNEL!? (Complete Pros And Cons Breakdown!)

All right, I think it's time to have that age old digital marketing chat. Should you start a YouTube channel or a podcast? So I just heated up my second cup of coffee. Let's go up to my office and talk about what's going to be the right answer for you. I've done some research. I broke it down pro and con style. Also, don't mind the messy quarantine house because let's be real, we've been living here for four months with two small children. Let me introduce myself real quick. If you are new here, my name is Trena and this channel is for business owners, entrepreneurs and content creators who really want to grow their business organically. Organically through online video. I've been doing this now for over four years. And while I have contemplated doing a podcast. As we get dark here, hold on one second. Okay, Back in the night now, while I have contemplated starting a podcast and I've even reached out to a couple friends about potentially starting together, I haven't done it yet. And I've continued to post content on YouTube for almost five years now, so. So since YouTube has been where I've been for the past couple of years, let's walk through the pros and cons of YouTube. First, the biggest pro that YouTube has over any other single piece of content is searchability and the Google power. Since Google owns YouTube, not only can your videos be searched on YouTube, which is the second largest search engine in the world, but your videos can show up on Google, which is by far the largest search engine in the world. What makes this so powerful leads into my. My second pro is that it gives you the opportunity to build, know, like and trust faster than any other piece of content as well. Because people are searching for something when they need it most. They got that pain point, they're struggling with it. They're on YouTube or Google trying to figure it out. And if your video pops up and your video helps them get over that pain point or achieves that problem that they're having, instant know like and trust is built with that viewer. And you can't go on Facebook and type in a question. You can't search on Instagram, you can't search on TikTok. That's the biggest pro that YouTube has and such a huge pro. The third pro is that YouTube content stays forever. I'm gonna pull up some stats here, but Facebook videos are gone in pretty much hours. Instagram stories and Instagram lives are gone within 24 hours unless you save them. And a post on Instagram Only lives for a couple hours as well. But I have YouTube videos from 2017, three years ago, still being watched to this day. And driving leads to my business and getting people to enroll in my courses and ask me about my services and working with me. Because again, that searchability piece. They're struggling with what to say on YouTube, how to write a script for YouTube, and my video pops up in Google insert. Bam. I teach them how to do it. They're sold. They want to learn how they can learn more from me. Another pro that you might think is a con is there's over 500 million YouTube channels. So you might be thinking, trina, Whoa, whoa, whoa. YouTube is way too saturated. But in fact, if you look at it this way, that that's the potential for you to reach more people. People that may be on YouTube and not on Instagram or on Facebook. This is such a huge a potential. So students or clients or followers for you. And then the biggest pro that YouTube has is the video power. Video is king on every single platform today. And what I love is the easiness it is to repurpose YouTube content. I have an entire video on how I break down one YouTube video into 10 pieces of content. I will link it right up here and down in the cards. But I can take this video. I can then put a Facebook ending to it and put it on Facebook. An Instagram ending, put it on Instagram tv, pull clips and put it on my feed, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Pinterest. It is so powerful and saves me so much time. And with a podcast, if you put. Which we'll dig into in the pros and cons here in a minute, but if you just put a still image in your podcast recording on YouTube, it's going to do diddly squat for you. All right. Don't worry. We're rolling into those cons because I know you have some things popping up to your head and saying, but Trina, wait. Con number one is, yes, YouTube does take more time than recording a podcast episode. You don't have to do your hair and makeup. You don't have to have a camera equipment or a backdrop to record podcast episodes. You also need a lot less tech. With a podcast, you basically just need a really good microphone and you're set. Where when it comes to video, you're going to have to deal with the lighting and the audio and the camera and the editing and all those extra steps. I know. Which rolls into another con is yes, it does take you longer post production, too. You Got to edit the video, you got to create the thumbnail, you got to upload it, optimize it, do all those extras to make sure you're keeping people engaged throughout your entire video. Whereas a podcast, it's just one audio file. You're not having to find B roll or add text to it. Another con with YouTube is unless you have a larger following and people who are really loving you, you cannot get chatty YouTube. So most people, like we said earlier, come to YouTube videos to have a pain point resolved. So when you kind of get chatty or if you're talking about something that they're not interested in, you're going to lose audience retention. And dropping in audience retention ultimately hurts that video, which could hurt your channel as a whole. But with a podcast, people are more willing to listen and they are engaged longer, whereas YouTube, it's a lot shorter attention span. The other con on YouTube is the flexibility, the talk about multiple topics. So you guys are coming here to this channel because I talk a lot about YouTube and online video. If I were to then talk about planning, which I have, you don't necessarily like that. So I kind of have the lane that I am in on online video. While it does give me a lot to talk about, I'm not able to talk more freely about other types of topics if I want to continue to grow my YouTube channel, because YouTube is picking me up for topics like video ideas and first YouTube video. And that's the content that I want to double down on if I want to grow my channel faster because YouTube is already picking me up for that. Onto pros for podcasts, if you feel uncomfortable on camera or you hate the way you look on camera, obviously podcast is a lot easier to do because you're not on video. Plus, audio is still a great way to connect with your audience without being on video. Another pro with podcasting is you don't need to be camera ready. You don't need to take the time to do your hair and makeup, maybe make sure your kids are out of the house so that it's quiet. So podcasting is a lot more of a quicker process. Right. Again, we talked about the equipment. The pro here with podcasting is you just need a microphone. Another pro of podcasting is that people can take you on the go. A lot of people who do podcasts are getting people who are, you know, exercising and listening to while they're running or while they're commuting. Although commuting has tend to go down right now, but you can grab their attention longer because they're usually doing something. So they're not likely to leave your podcast two, three minutes in. They're more likely to get to the end. You can also be more chatty on podcast because you kind of do have this trapped audience because they're doing something and they want to listen to something. You can get a little more personal, a little more chatty, get a little bit off topic and not lose that listener. Now this pro can go two ways for me, I've heard a lot of people say it's a lot easier to collaborate or interview somebody with a podcast because the person on the other end just needs a microphone. And you can literally do it one person in the United states and say one person in Australia, right? But with YouTube it's a little bit more difficult because most people are recording them together in one room. I've done collaborations before on my YouTube channel that have been great. And what we actually do is just swip, swip, swap our videos. I will intro my guest or my collaborator. My collaborators video will then go into my YouTube video and I'll wrap it up with a call to action to subscribe to them. And the person that I collaborate does the same. She will generally introduce me, she'll plop my piece of video in, and then her outro will tell people to subscribe to my channel. So while podcasting, collaborating and interviewing can be a little bit easier, I also think it's totally doable and I've done it for YouTube. Another pro on the podcast side is there's only around a million podcasts right now, so it does look a little bit less saturated, but it is something that people are doing more and more of. So it's not something that is going to stay a million. Like I said, more people are thinking about it, thus why you're watching this video. Okay, let's talk about the cons, because you know, I got some for podcasting, otherwise I would be doing a podcast, right? So again, the biggest con that podcasting has is the searchability, right? You cannot be searched on podcasting or people are not going to their podcast app to get their problem solved. So you need to get it shared or maybe even in a trending or maybe in a top 10 list. But it's really hard for you to break out on a podcasting app than it is on YouTube because whether you have one subscriber or a million subscribers, you still have the chance of showing up in search results. Along that line, the con of podcasting is it's really hard to start a podcast at zero. And I mean, if you have no audience whatsoever and you publish that first podcast and you don't have anybody to share it with, it can be really hard to get traction. Whereas on YouTube, as long as you're following the best practices on YouTube, people are clicking on it, watching it, you could grow an audience much quicker than you could with a podcast. Now, I haven't dug into podcasting like I said, but I've heard the analytics aren't as great on podcast apps. Whereas YouTube literally gives you everything you need in your analytics to know what to do to get better and to grow your channels, they're giving you audience retention, they're giving you click through rates. More recently, they are unrolling a way for you to actually see what videos people are watching after your video so you can really get a sense of what your audience is enjoys and create more of that content. Whereas podcasting really doesn't give you that information. Now, while podcasting does get sponsors, you don't get paid posting a podcast. So once you get a thousand subscribers here on YouTube and 4,000 hours of watch time, you're going to make some AdSense. Now I talk about this all the time. You're not hanging your hats or banking on AdSense money, but it is extra money that you're getting for just creating content. Whereas podcasting, you're not getting that extra money even after you've hit like a thousand downloads or something. So which one do I think you should do? Well, you just need to pick one that you feel comfortable with that you know that you can show up consistently on and go all in. Don't get fomo, don't have fear of missing out, that I need to start a podcasting in a YouTube channel all at the same time because that is way too much. Don't repurpose your podcasting audio onto YouTube because it just doesn't work and it ends up hurting your YouTube channel in the long run. When you do want to get to serious, just pick one, go all in with it and focus on it. That's why I'm not starting a podcast yet. It's still maybe in my mind of maybe a 2021 type project, but I'm not going there. If you're going to pick YouTube as your place to hang your hat, which I really hope you come join me, you need to grab this roadmap that I created. It's going to walk through 15 pages of everything you need to do to make sure when you publish that first YouTube video you're driving more views and more leads to your business. It's going to walk you through a bunch of different tutorials and you're going to know everything you need to know about YouTube. At the end of those 15 pages, the link to grab that is on your screen and down in the description box. And then once you have that, make sure you watch this series of videos on your screen. Right now, it's my first video series. It's going to tell you everything that you need to know to get your first video on YouTube. What to say, how to edit, how to publish it, everything that you need. It's literally a mini course in and itself. So watch that playlist next and I'll see you over there.