Experimenting with "Video First" Podcasting

One of the most common questions I've been getting from live streams, webinars, emails from subscribers and people in my audience is how do I handle video podcasting? And the question is reasonable, right? Because YouTube is getting into podcasting. TikTok is getting into podcasting. I'll link both of those in the description slash show notes. By the way, uh, I have articles over on the podcast host about both of those things, but the general consensus, the general feeling in podcasting right now is, Podcasting is more than just audio. And if you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would've said, No, you don't need video, or you don't need compelling video. Right? There are services like Repurpose and Casto, which will take your audio, slap your artwork into a video and send it over to YouTube, or there is a, a great. Uh, that you can get on the Mac, uh, called Fusion Cast, where you can do the same thing. I don't know if that's the answer anymore though, because YouTube and TikTok are pushing us towards possibly more compelling video. So in today's episode, I wanna tell you my process for my mini podcast. For this podcast, Make Money Podcasting. For how I'm creating video without adding a lot to my stack, my recording process. So first, this is only for Make Money Podcasting. I haven't really experimented with video over on how I built it yet for a few reasons since this is my mini podcast, it's just. I have no sponsors for this show that's on purpose, and so I don't need to worry about adding in sponsors after the fact. I don't need to worry about combining audio and video. It's just me talking to a camera into a microphone. So that makes the process a lot easier and. I might experiment with, with that for how I built it in the future, but I'm gonna need to really change my process and make sure it's rock solid. I use Riverside for how I built it, and the last time I tried recording super high quality video, like my 4K video, the recording kept stopping. And, and I can't have that happen with, with what is my flagship show, Right? That's the show that makes me money, uh, like real money. So, I'm less likely to do big experiments with that show. I'll use this show or my WordPress focused show to do these little experiments or these big experiments, and then pass what I learn on to you and implement it over on how I built it. So that's number one. Second of all, this is a video. Process. So what I'm doing is recording the video and repurposing the audio. The tough, the, what's the best way to put this? The, the tough thing to think about here is I wanna make compelling video and me just talking like this to a camera is not always compelling. And so I try to integrate some sort of screen sharing. So if you're listening and you're like, Hey, I wanna see this, I should go over to YouTube, or if you're watching on YouTube right now, soon you'll see my process, right? But I need to word things in such a way that it doesn't fully rely on the video. So that's something I try to keep in mind. And again, that's easier to do with this podcast than is with a, with a interview podcast, right? Because I am mindful of that as I record this, my guests, I don't want my guests to have to think. How I'm presenting my content, if that makes sense. So first, let's take a look at my process. So what I'm gonna do here is share my screen. And again, you, you don't really have to see this, but if you are watching on the, on the YouTube. On the YouTube, uh, you can see I record an e cam live now instead of recording directly to. Descript or descript, which is what I've been doing for this podcast, audio only style. But I like recording an eche live better because I can, I don't need to do as much editing. I can do more dynamic stuff, overlays, screen sharing transitions and things like that without having to do a ton of editing, which is really helpful. I have eche live up here and you can see the overlays and things like that cuz I'm doing like a full desktop share. And this is my control center. This is what I use for my live streams too. I walk through, I'll, I'll link this in the show notes, but if you go to casabona.org/live stream, that's live dash stream, uh, you can see my process. Creating these live streams too, and it's very similar. So the nice thing about Eche Live is that I have all of these things set up so that I don't necessarily need to do a lot of post-production editing. Once I finish recording in Eche Live, that's when I bring everything over into script. In script, I have a project, it's called Make Money Podcasting Video, and this was serving two purposes. For a while. My VA was taking the audio only version of this podcast and making a glorified audiogram essentially, but lately, And you can see this, the last couple of videos on the podcast lift off YouTube channel have been this, where I record an E cam live. I move it into script and then I do some light editing. Light editing is like, is trimming the beginning and the end and any long gaps, but there's not a whole lot there. I, I try to. Be like one take Johnny Once I try to be like Michael Bay, get it in one take. But I do a little cleanup and then once I do the cleanup, I'll add the end screen. Right. And that's like a image. That's an image that is about 20 seconds because that's how long the end screens will, will show. That's like the longest you can show an end screen on. On the end screen is where you'll see like the subscribe button, the video, like the recommended videos and things like that. So I'll add that to this video so that I have like a clear call to action end screen. And then I will use the share function right in script to share to my YouTube channel. So that is, that's the video part, thinking about the content and making it compelling. YouTube is, I think, the hardest part, right? YouTube has its own way of doing things, but as far as the, once I have that kind of in mind, right, And I'll, I'll, I don't really script, uh, for, for these episodes. Recently I've been writing, I've been thinking about the episodes I wanna have, and then I've been writing these like Twitter thread esque outline. That's what I've been using for the content for this show. So you can see I, my intro is, is a longer version of, if you look at the script or the, the Twitter thread that I'll link in the show notes. You can see my intro is a, a longer version of the opening salvo for that Twitter thread. And then I'm moving along to record an E cam live, mention my livestream setup, bring it into script. So, That's how I'm putting the content together, and then I'm recording it here in M Live for video so that it's, it's at least more than just me talking to you for 20 minutes without any kind of change in screen or anything like that because those things, those like hard cuts that change in screen, that's what keeps people's attention on YouTube. And the other thing to keep in mind, If you are considering this path is 35% of American adults discover podcasts on YouTube, right? So even if you don't have the most compelling video, if you have some sort of video that grabs people's attention, that has your podcast content, They'll discover and they'll move into whatever their podcast app of choice is if they're interested. Right. So that's what I did with, uh, Alt Shift. X is this great, uh, YouTube channel that breaks down Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. And for the most part, you don't really need to watch the YouTube video. And so he's been releasing the audio. On as a podcast via Anchor Perfect use case, by the way, for Anchor, I think because YouTube is where he makes his money. Like he doesn't really care about the audio or the podcast that much. It's just like a convenience for his listeners or his watchers, uh, viewers, if you will. So that's just something else to consider. But that is the process for video. Record an Eche Live, move it into script, do some clean. Trim it up a little bit, add the end screen, upload it to YouTube. Once I do that, I will remove this end screen. And then one of the things that I, the cleanup is when I record this raw, I leave a couple second gaps in the beginning. Uh, a couple seconds gap in the beginning, and that's for me to. My intro music, I don't include this on YouTube because people don't care on YouTube, right? The discovery method on YouTube is different. You're going to search for something, or YouTube is gonna recommend this video to you because you've been asking about script or something like that. You don't need the 33 second welcome to Make Money Podcasting. You don't need that. Because you kind of know what the show's already about. You're on that channel. People who discover make money podcasting via podcasts. It's either recommended to them or they, they heard me on a different show and they may not know any episode. Could be their first episode, and they may not fully know what the show is about. And so that intro is 30 seconds. It tells them what the show is about, and then if they like that concept, they can subscribe. So I leave the intro out of YouTube. That is a piece of advice I got from uh, Haley at. Kins. Oh my gosh, Haley, I hope I I see your name so clearly, and I hope I'm saying it right, but Mo motion hatch over on YouTube. Um, she, she told me that she's like, People don't really care about that part. Right? People want you to get to what you're getting to on YouTube. So I leave a gap when I record and then I cut that out for the video, and then I will add the intro music and uh, and the intro. Here in script. So that's really the, the big difference for, uh, the, So you can actually, if you're watching the video, you can see the transition here. Right? I added a transition to move from, um, me doing the intro music to just cutting it out. That was the first time I tried that process. Now, Leave the gap and I add it in. That's, that's easier editing for me. And you can see that right here. Again, if you're watching the video on YouTube here is where I create a 32nd gap clip and then the pre-recorded intro and music play there. So after I do that, I go back to export and I export the audio to Buzz Sprout. So, A great thing about script is that this is one app for me to, to send the video and the audio to their respective places without me having to export it somewhere else. So that is my process for recording video and audio. Then I use the same description and, and. I use the same description and title for both. I create a thumbnail for the YouTube video and I schedule 'em to publish it about the same time. I want them to come out at the same time in both places. Uh, and then for the YouTube, uh, description, what I need to start doing is I will do this by the time this video comes out, is add the subscribe link to. The description for this, because if people do want the audio only, right, this is a podcast mostly, then I want them to go subscribe that way, right? If, if, if people are discovering podcasts on YouTube, but not necessarily staying, I want them to subscribe wherever it is. They, they listen to all their podcasts. So, uh, the other nice thing about recording video first, Is that over in Buzz Sprout, they have the dynamic ad insertion or the dynamic content insertion. So you could see if you go into, if you have Buzz Sprout, there's a dynamic content section, and you can add a pre-roll that automatically gets added to every episode. In the old, with the old process, what my VA was doing was downloading the finished audio from the website and adding it in. So all of those dynamic pieces of content are embedded in the YouTube video, and some of them are time specific, right? I was promoting my mini podcast webinar for a while. As I record this, I'm promoting a different podcast, a different webinar. If I don't have a webinar to promote, then there's the gen, the more generic, join my mailing list or get this freebie. And I don't want any of those specifically to be embedded in YouTube. Again, people on YouTube want you to get right, like cut right to the quick. They'll look at the description if they want to learn more. So this is a better process for that too. But that's it for this episode. Uh, to recap, uh, I record an ECHE Live, which allows for minimal video editing. I import that video to script, make some, do some polishing and upload it to YouTube. I add the intro, the intro, and the intro music, and uh, after it's uploaded to YouTube, I add the intro and intro music to Des and then I upload that audio to Buzz Sprout, and then I create the title, description, and thumbnail and schedule everything to go on the same day, which is usually Thursday. So that's my process. It's a work in progress, but I'm really happy with it. So far. It's been, uh, fun experimenting in this way. And of course, if you have any questions, uh, you can, uh, send them via Twitter, j Casabona, or my email address, joe casabona.org. But that's it for this episode. If you wanna get all of the show notes, uh, you can get them in the description wherever you are consuming this content. Or you can head over to Make money pod.com/ 2 1 9. That's season. Episode 19. We only have a couple episodes left in season two. I'll take a break for the holiday and then we'll resume in January. But again, that's make money pod.com/ 2 1 9. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.