Video Strategies for Your Podcast—Including No Video

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Sound Off Podcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:10  
Do you know what I'm really tired of? Podcast conferences or discussions where people want to talk about video versus audio in a podcast. It's not a competition. It's not a game of some sort. It's always audio and video, and I've been saying it for years. You need a video strategy for your podcast, and one perfectly acceptable strategy is to have no video whatsoever. There, I just saved you a few $1,000. Others are wondering why someone who produces a video version of his own podcast would say that, because having a strategy means making a decision about your show, your audience, and your time, and your money. It means knowing why you're doing something. I saw another podcast doing it is an observation, but you still need a reason. So back in 2022, I did an episode called "The Top 10 Reasons Why Your Podcast Isn't Working," and one of those reasons was that you didn't have a video strategy. Now I gave that two sentences. Today it deserves a little more attention because having a strategy insinuates that you need to do video, and that's not true. Somewhere along the way, having a video strategy became every podcast needs cameras, a studio, three angles, and someone editing your face. That's a lot of expense to take on before asking a fairly important question: What are we even doing here? Are we trying to help people discover the show, serve an existing audience, build a YouTube channel, or create something people genuinely need to see? These are all different objectives, and there are several ways to approach them. Let's go through seven. One,

Avery Cundill  1:57  
no video at all.

Matt Cundill  2:00  
You make an audio podcast. You make it sound excellent. You publish consistently, and you spend your promotional time reaching people who might actually listen. This is a strategy. Maybe your show relies on storytelling, sound design, or the intimacy of someone talking directly into your headphones. Maybe your guests are more comfortable without a camera. Maybe you have four hours a week to work on the podcast, and adding video would consume three of them. I would rather you spend that time preparing a better interview, editing a better episode, or finding the next listener. There is a cost to everything you add, even if the software is free. Your time isn't, and there are plenty of moments when audio fits into somebody's life beautifully: walking the dog, driving, cooking dinner, going to the gym, doing something that requires their eyes. Your show can be part of all that. So, if you choose audio only, make it a deliberate choice. Have a plan for how people will find you. Know what you're going to do with the time and money you're saving. No video is a perfectly good video strategy.

Avery Cundill  3:09  
Two, use short form video to promote the audio.

Matt Cundill  3:14  
You don't have to publish a full video to make use of video. You can create short pieces like a TikTok or YouTube Short or Instagram Reel or whatever else your audience is going to be spending time with, that might be a clip from the interview. It might be you introducing an idea from the episode. It might be a guest answering one useful question. You can even record these promotional pieces separately. The entire conversation doesn't need to happen on camera just because you want 45 seconds of video to promote it, but give those 45 seconds a reason to exist. A clip should deliver something like an answer, a laugh, a useful observation, a moment that makes someone think, "I would like more of this." Sometimes we put a clip because the editing tool found it. Then we post it because the calendar says we need to have something posted on Thursday. This is how you end up with a beautifully captioned video of somebody saying something that means absolutely nothing. Now go back and watch this clip as someone who has never ever heard or seen your show. Does this clip make sense? Does it get to the point? Would you stop scrolling and decide what you want the viewer to do next? If the purpose is to introduce people to the podcast, make the podcast easy to find. Give them the episode title. Tell them where to go. Make the connection obvious. Then pay attention to what happens. A clip can get views without creating a single regular listener. Those views may still have value. They may build awareness or attract a guest or even a client. Just know what you're measuring.

Avery Cundill  4:51  
Three, put the audio on YouTube as an audiogram.

Matt Cundill  4:56  
You can have a presence on YouTube without filming the show. You. Use your finished audio with artwork, a waveform, or captions. Headliner is a great tool. I've been using it for years that can help you make full episode audiograms. That's probably what I'm going to do for this episode. I haven't made up my mind yet. Who knows if the video that's being recorded now is going to be any good? But YouTube also offers RSS importing in supported regions, which you can turn your audio episodes into videos using your show artwork. It's pretty cool. For the full episode, set up the playlist as a podcast in YouTube Studio. Keep the promotional clips in their own playlist. This is really useful middle ground, by the way. You're making the show available to somebody who prefers YouTube without adding a camera to your recording process, they may press play and listen while doing something else. Which brings me to something we'll come back to: the platform somebody uses doesn't necessarily tell us whether they're watching.

Avery Cundill  5:53  
Four, post the unedited video on YouTube.

Matt Cundill  5:58  
You record the conversation. You upload it. You give it a useful title, a thumbnail, a description, and some chapters. You keep the production manageable. There's a case for this. YouTube is a major place people search for information. Your guest name, the problem you're discussing, the question you're answering, those can all give someone a reason to find an older episode, a conversation you publish today might be useful to someone six months from now, but give them something they can recognize. Episode 284 with Steve doesn't tell a stranger very much. What does Steve know anyway? What's he going to help you understand? Why should you spend time with him? And when I say unedited, apply a little judgment. You can remove all that mindless banter and the five-minute pee that somebody took in the middle of the recording, or when they made a sandwich, and when they had to answer the door because Amazon showed up. We don't need the complete historical record of your recording session. The appeal of this approach is that it's sustainable. You're accepting a simpler presentation in exchange for being able to publish it consistently. That can work. Look at whether people click, how long they stay, and whether they return. Search can help someone find the show. The episode still has to earn that time.

Avery Cundill  7:21  
Five. Produce a great piece of audio and a great piece of video.

Matt Cundill  7:26  
This is what we do with the Sound Off Podcast. We produce an audio experience with a video experience, and both deserve attention. But we are always audio first, and 88.1% of this show's consumption is via audio. That's 88.1%. This is where I get a little bit wound up because I keep hearing that everybody wants to watch the podcast now. Everybody? Then who are all these people listening to mine? I produce video. I see the value in it. I want people who enjoy watching the show to have a good experience. But when I'm deciding where to put our efforts, I have to look at how people actually consume this particular podcast, and the overwhelming majority is audio. Now, I suspect that some of you would discover something similar if you took a proper look at your numbers. So send me your time spent listening and your consumption stats from Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Give me the same date range; could be 30 days, 60 days, whatever you got. Let's look at how much time people spend with the show, how far they get, and what the platforms can actually tell us about listening and watching. I'll bet the audio is doing more of the work than you think, and if your numbers show the opposite, excellent. Now you have something useful to base a decision on. But please stop putting a YouTube view beside a podcast download and assuming they represent the same experience. I'm here to tell you they do not. Someone who spends 40 minutes with an episode has given you 40 minutes of their life, somebody who spends 40 minutes with an episode has given you 40 minutes of their life. Somebody who leaves after 30 seconds has given you 30 seconds. Those are different levels of attention, and even time spent on YouTube doesn't automatically mean eyes on the screen. Ask what that metric actually means before you use it to redesign the show. For us, audio means a listener should be able to follow the entire episode without feeling like they're missing something. If a guest shows us a chart, we explain what matters. If something funny happens on camera, we give the listener enough context. If we use a clip, we introduce it properly. You really have to see this is a fairly annoying thing to hear while you're driving. Maybe the video needs its own care. Good framing, useful graphics, sensible edits, a presentation that's worth watching. Making both versions well takes time and money. Choose this approach because both experience. Serve your audience and your business.

Avery Cundill  10:03  
Six, make a video show, then distribute an audio version through your podcast feed.

Matt Cundill  10:10  
This is a much different starting point. You're creating something designed to be watched, then you make an audio edition available through your RSS feed. That can work well for an interview, a discussion, or a panel, it takes more thought when the show relies heavily on demonstrations, screen sharing, physical comedy, or somebody pointing at things. This is something we go through once a month on my other podcast, the Podcast Super Friends. Yeah, we're video first, but we're always cognizant about the audio, so we listen to the audio before we publish it, we actually listen to it, and if you hear things like "click this" or "move that over there" or "check out this chart" and stuff like that, those are words you should stay away from. You might need a short explanation. You might need an edit. You might need to discover that a particular segment doesn't really work in audio. Giving people an audio option is worthwhile when that option delivers a complete experience, and if video is going to be a substantial part of your podcast business, use a podcast host with HLS support. We recommend Art 19. We also recommend Captivate, Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Omni. HLS, by the way, stands for HTTP Live Streaming. The practical question is whether your host can deliver video properly to the podcast apps you want to serve. Apple Podcast now supports an HLS video experience through participating hosts, some of the ones I just mentioned, with availability depending on that provider and rollout. Just ask the specific questions: Can this podcast host deliver video to Apple Podcasts. Does it support video through an open RSS? Which apps can play it? What does it cost? What reporting will you get? Supports video, by the way, can mean different things. So if you got a megaphone, they support video. It's not HLS video yet at the time of this recording. In the end, you want to find out what your audience will actually be able to do. You want people to have a straightforward way to listen or watch, and you want to understand what you're paying for.

Avery Cundill  12:12  
Seven, make horizontal and vertical versions.

Matt Cundill  12:17  
Now we're talking about planning for different screens. You might produce a horizontal episode for YouTube and create vertical material for people watching on their phones. That could mean short clips. It could also mean a longer vertical edition if you have reason to make one. We actually tried that recently on the Sound Off podcast in last week's episode. But turning a horizontal recording into a good vertical video requires more than just chopping off both sides, like where the faces, can you see the demonstration? Are the captions covering someone's mouth? Is the person even speaking in the right frame? Yeah. Plan for those questions before you record. And here's a development worth watching: Instagram has announced a limited test of a format called Features, allowing selected creators to publish horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long, it's another potential home for a full-length horizontal show with vertical clips helping people discover it. So right now, I'd file that under potential. Potential is the word I'd underlined there. Check what's available with your account, then ask whether your audience has a reason to watch the show there, because the fact that a platform will accept 90 minutes of video does not mean you owe it 90 minutes of video. And if you do make horizontal and vertical editions, make sure you can sustain the workload. A plan that exhausts you after three episodes needs to be reworked. So there you go. Those are seven approaches out of the 1000s out there. You can make audio only. You can use short video to introduce people to the audio. You can put an audiogram on YouTube. You can publish a simple recording of the conversation. You can produce separate audio and video experiences. You can build a video show and offer up an audio option at the same time, and you can plan for more than one screen. You can also choose what you want and do any combination of any of the suggestions I've made. Seriously, this is all interchangeable. You can change your approach as the show grows. Start with what you know about your audience and what you can afford to produce consistently, then give the strategy a fair test. What's a fair test? Probably three months. You can start there. Are people finding the show, and are they spending time with it? Are they coming back? Is the extra production helping you accomplish something you care about? Those answers should guide the next decision. We make video here at the Sound Off Podcast, and we know that 88.1% of our consumption is audio. Both those things inform us of how we should produce the show. So yes, have a video strategy, and if your strategy is no video, it's very possible that's the best.

Tara Sands 15:01  
Another Sound Off Media Company podcast.