Should You Add Video Content to Your Podcast?
Your favorite podcast probably publishes video content. This is because podcasters can use video content to grow their audience, create better engagement with listeners, and provide increased accessibility for listeners with hearing impairments. Podcasters can also boost their earnings through increased ad revenue and subscription models for video content.
Grow Your Audience with Video Content
It’s a simple formula: increasing the number of platforms you post content to will increase your overall audience. While we believe there’s a podcast for everyone, some folks simply prefer visual content and it’s worth accommodating this preference. By posting to sites like YouTube, you may pick up a new demographic of listeners who don’t traditionally consider listening to podcasts. In addition, creating video content may give you the SEO boost you need, as any video content will act as a content-rich referral page back to your podcast.
There are really two routes you can take when considering video content: live streaming or posting edited episodes. Live streaming has an estimated market value of $70 billion, and millions tune in to watch live debates, games, and conversations. Live streaming is surprisingly intuitive, as sites like Twitch and YouTube make it as easy as possible to go live.
If the idea of live streaming is too daunting, you can always upload edited videos at the same time you post podcast episodes. This helps you retain control over the content you publish and will alleviate some of the pressure associated with going live.
Create Better Engagement
Podcasts allow you to dive deep into the subject matter and are the platform of choice for anyone who wants to engage in long-form conversation. However, you might find that including a Livestream of your podcast will lead to greater audience engagement, as you can react live to what your audience is saying. For example, if you’re streaming on Youtube, your audience's comments will appear alongside your stream. This means you can easily highlight the listener's input and can respond to any questions they may have.
If you think your podcast could use some more listener engagement, but you don’t want to deal with a barrage of comments and questions, then you can implement memberships that require people to pay a small fee to comment and post questions for you to see. In addition, if you have a large following, you can set up automated responses for frequently asked questions. These can be adjusted in real-time and will save you time and effort in the long run.
Increased Accessibility
If you only have an audio recording of your podcast with no subtitles or transcripts, then you simply aren’t delivering accessible content. Many folks who are deaf or experience hearing loss cannot access the medium of podcasts because creators have not supplied subtitled content. Beyond the obvious ethical issues at hand here, you are losing a significant chunk of the population, simply because you haven’t accommodated them.
Subtitling your podcast is easy if you are already producing video content. You can either choose to employ freelancers who will type up accurate subtitles for your show, or you can choose to write up subtitles yourself during the editing process. When streaming, services like Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube provide an automated caption service (with varying degrees of accuracy).
Subscription Services
Diversifying your offering with video content will drive traffic to your podcast and generate ad revenue for you. However, the golden ticket in producing video content is subscription services. Subscriptions allow you to give your audience levels of access to your content (e.g. those who pay a little more might get access to additional videos. Those who pay quite a bit more might get access to behind-the-scenes content and audience engagement events).
By creating a leveled subscription service, you can charge more for exclusive content and will be able to give your listeners a sense of insider access. This is particularly useful if you run a podcast that responds to what marketing experts call micro-moments. Reserving certain insights on contemporary trends to tiered subscription services means that you can prove the worth of your membership packages, as listeners will get more valuable content for their money. This does require a little foresight, as you want to make sure that top-tier service is worth it, but it is certainly in your best interest as a growing podcaster.
A Word of Caution
Your video content has to be strategically woven into your podcast offering. If the streaming aspect of your podcast is interrupting your podcast, you risk lowering the quality of your service and will lose listeners. The best way to get started is to take small steps:
● Stream the podcast without live audience engagement at first. Slowly build engagement into your routine through short Q&A sections.
● Make small improvements over time. For your first recorded episode, just work on making the background a good fit for your podcast.
● Do your research. See what similar podcasts chose to present as video content, and consider following suit until you gain an intuition of best practices.
● Start by posting short highlights of video content. This way, you save yourself hours of editing and will be able to redirect potential listeners to your podcast
● Over time, you can learn to become an emotive presenter, but you don’t need to maintain perfect body language in your first few weeks. Instead, just wear clothes that fit your purpose and try to keep your hands away from your face.
By taking it slow, you can maintain high-quality content while you adjust to the learning curve associated with producing video content. As you gain experience, it will become easier to produce more video content alongside your podcast which will earn you a larger following and increase your earnings.
About the Author
Dan Matthews is a writer, content consultant, and conservationist. While Dan writes on a variety of topics, he loves to focus on the topics that look inward to help develop one's self, in turn developing mankind to make the surrounding world a better place to reside. When Dan isn't working on new content, you can find him with a coffee cup in one hand and searching for new music in the other.
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