One of the most exciting parts of evolving media platforms is the opportunity to use established formats like podcasting and YouTube in new ways. Even though most people in our space think of podcasting as a long-form interview style show, there are so many other ways to use podcasts and YouTube channels outside of that format. Since YouTube shorts and clips are becoming more popular, as well as podcast mini-series, we’re sharing more ways to think about how to make media for these channels.
In this episode Tiff and Christine give ideas for using podcasting and YouTube channels to create media that falls outside of long-form interview shows.
“You don’t have to feel that pressure of posting your full podcast on YouTube.”
Tiff Tyler
Topics covered:
- (0:54) How to make YouTube shorts that are unique to you
- (5:30) Ways to use podcasting in non-traditional formats
- (8:13) How to use private podcasts to cater to your core audience
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Links mentioned:
- Looking for pro support to build your podcast? Find out more ways to work with us!
- Tiff Tyler
- Christine Baird
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Many thanks to our production team
- Worthfull Media for audio editing
- Mosaico Productions for video effects
- Amela Subašić for artwork
Transcription of this episode:
(auto-generated, please forgive typos)
Christine (00:04):
Welcome to Think Like a Producer podcast. I’m your co-host Christine Baird.
Tiff (00:09):
And I’m your co-host Tiff Tyler. Being in the podcast industry, being in the content creation industry. This is what we learned, and this is how you can get out of your own way and get started.
Christine (00:20):
You name it. We’ve probably done it. This podcast is about bringing all the wisdom to you. Tune in weekly, to learn how to think like a producer.
Tiff (00:35):
Welcome to this episode of think like a producer. Today, we’re going to talk about alternative ways to use podcasting and YouTube besides long run shows. So a lot of people, a lot of the main podcasts you’ll have an hour 90 minutes, sometimes two hours plus, uh, shows. And when we get new clients, a lot of people are like, I don’t really want to, or possibly have the resources to record these long movie length shows and post them on YouTube. Uh, is there something else that I can do? And so this was almost like my whole job for the last five or six years, coming up with content and marketing that was separate from the long 90 minute, two hour long show. And when you’re thinking about this in the pre-production process, this is everything you’re doing before. You’re recording. You want to just think about what do you enjoy doing and what you enjoy consuming?
Tiff (01:29):
Because I find that, um, when clients ask me, like, what should I do? What are people watching? What’s going to really get the most views and different things. There’s no answer for that. Really, to me, it’s whatever you love to consume. And you really like, you’re going to enjoy doing as well. So if you love to what to watch blog channels, and, you know, as things are getting safer, people hopefully are, you know, being safe and traveling a little bit more right now, travel blogs. Sometimes, sometimes people will do things where they are just doing like staycation type stuff, wherever my city is, I’m going to explore it a little bit more and show a little bit more. Or I’m building my home office. I’ve committed to working at home and doing my podcast or my show at home or creating media and content at home.
Tiff (02:15):
And I’m going to show you how I do that. I’m gonna show you the behind the scenes of me building this, why I decided to do it, the concept that I’m going with, you can go on and on. So when I get that question, what should I do? What’s going to be the most like really? It’s what you love to consume. What do you like? What’s going to bring you the most joy. If you’re not going to show the entire show that you’re doing, you’re not going to have the entire long podcast of there’s so many different ways that you can get people to, to watch and to get to know you as a person, especially if you’re deciding to be the host of a show, it could be a solo kind of podcast. It could be interview kind of podcast could be educational. It could be a group of people talking at a round table, but I’m sure, uh, Christine would agree.
Tiff (02:56):
The more that people know the main person or people in the show, the better the show does overall, because at the end of the day, there’s not too many original concepts anymore, but you as a person, no one could ever duplicate. No one can be you. No one can live the life that you’ve lived. So you are what makes us unique. So as you’re coming up with these ideas, I’m going to do some YouTube shorts. Maybe I’m going to have 62nd videos of me trying out new cameras for my show, as I’m building it up or doing some audio tests on teaching myself, how to edit. And here’s one thing I learned on Adobe audition today for 60 seconds in case you’re learning how to edit your podcast too, you can show that kind of process. I talk more in technical terms, cause that’s mostly what I’m doing is editing and doing the technical side of this.
Tiff (03:40):
But you can kind of think outside of the box, but really if you make yourself your own study and focus group, what do you consume on a regular basis? What do you actually take the time out to, um, comment on, on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube? You know, if you’re that kind of person that just consumes all the time, but you don’t like or comment what actually made you stop in your tracks and like, and comment and why, what did it bring out of you? What emotion did it strike? All these things. And what I talked to clients about in our kind of our, we call it clarity calls when they’re getting ready to do their show and start to create their content. Because I tell them like, like I said, kind of three times already, whatever you love, that’s what you’re going to want to create.
Tiff (04:19):
And it’s going, it’s going to bring you the most joy as you do it week after week. Um, but that’s really mainly on the YouTube kind of Instagram side. There is a world where your full podcast is not need to be recorded on video. If you’re choosing to just let the audio be there and you can kind of create what we talked about in season one, your personal brand, there’s other places that people can find you and get to know you as a person. And then, oh, you have a podcast too. I’d love to sit down and listen to you for an hour. So you don’t have to feel that pressure of posting your full podcast on YouTube or even some people are doing it, you know, 30 minute IGTVs or longer, or doing some Instagram lives where they’re interviewing guests. This is a good time for you to test.
Tiff (05:00):
If that’s something you are interested in, if you find yourself watching 30 minute live videos or hour long live videos on Instagram or someone else’s interviewing someone live, maybe that’s something you would like to do too. If that’s something you consume. But if you’re like, I never watched live videos, there’s a good chance. You may not actually enjoy doing hour long live videos. So again, it’s good to know what the, what the marketing world is doing. It’s good to know what trends are happening, but it’s also good to know what you like and try to duplicate that during your production process. Um, but that’s, for me on the video side, Christine, what are some other alternatives that people can do besides kind of posting their entire show?
Christine (05:42):
Yes. I love thinking outside of the traditional ways people have podcasted because most people are actually well-suited to doing something different than a long form conversation. We’ve talked about this on the last couple of episodes, but now I’m going to really get specific about how people are using podcasting specifically to do a whole bunch of different stuff and their brands that have like, almost nothing to do with the traditional styles. So really good examples are seasonal shows. You could have a five episode season that you drop twice a year, and those five episodes could be like beautifully produced, maybe record them all at once. You know, everybody’s speaking on the same theme or you’re coaching on the same thing, or you do, you know, one of the first podcasts that blew open the Pod-o-sphere to the public was Serial, right? It was like an old radio style type serial show where you were following a journalist uncovering a story.
Christine (06:40):
So like every episode, I mean, that’s still a very powerful way to use podcasting. And you could do that within your brand. Like you don’t have to be a journalist following an old murder trial to use that kind of podcast. So seasonal shows are huge. I talked to everyone about them because they’re actually really effective and they make production way more manageable on your budget, your time, your energy. Also, something that I’m really excited about lately is mini series and limited run shows. So these could be either bonus podcasts within your podcast, or they could be standalone shows. And the whole point of them is to be small and limited in one time only. And some really great examples of this. I’ve seen like two people who are peers in an industry decide to do a limited run podcast. So maybe like eight or 10 episodes on a super niche topic within their fields of expertise, they come together and do a collaboration.
Christine (07:37):
It’s like the only project they’ve ever done together. And it’s a standalone show. That’s only meant to be like eight episodes long, forever, and they’ll create, you know, a little website for it. And it has its own artwork and title and feed like it’s its own show, but it’s never meant to be more than just that one limited edition collaboration. These are really exciting to me, whether it exists inside, you know, the feed of a bigger show and you do a little mini series bonus, you know, for a certain concept or maybe a trending topic that everyone in your space wants to know about, or you decide to do a collaboration and do a limited edition show. You could do a limited edition show on your own, and you don’t even have to have a cohost. Uh, there’s just like the sky’s the limit here, right?
Christine (08:22):
I just want you to start thinking differently about how to use your voice and a microphone and these podcast apps in ways that we haven’t traditionally, because people are doing such cool shows. Now that look totally different. Another idea, and we’re going to talk about this a lot in a future episode is private and premium podcasts. So this is kind of like the breakout new frontier for podcasters that want to monetize their shows is having paid feeds. So people subscribe to your show for a small fee, like three, five, $10 a month. And that way you can give them better quality content. That’s maybe even more focused because it’s something they’re actually paying for. And you could have that also be like a companion to your paid course or membership, or, you know, if you have a group of clients who all want to hear your lectures or your trainings on audio, you could have a private feed that they subscribe to as part of their membership inside of your paid products.
Christine (09:25):
Like the list goes on and on and on. And we’re going to talk about those private, private and premium feeds. In another episode, one of the things that I think is really exciting right now that business owners are using that I’m playing around with, with my own business right now is doing like a super mini sized podcast. That’s private, that’s a sales funnel to enroll people into your group coaching program, or to come work with you instead of the traditional old kind of like webinars series with like the three part email sequence. If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about, I’m seeing people starting to do that with a mini private podcast. So that potential customers who are interested in kind of vetting you and figuring out like, do I want to work with this person? They could listen to a custom little private podcast you made, maybe it’s just like three or five episodes, and that can give them a really good taste of what it’s like to work with you.
Christine (10:20):
And you can guide them through, you know, the path that you would normally do on like a sales call or a webinar series. So I could go on and on, but I just want you to start expanding your mind and thinking about using the tool of podcasting totally bigger than long form interviews with cool people that is still awesome, but it’s been done a lot and it’s not most people’s forte and it’s expensive and a lot of production. So there are so many alternate ways to use podcasting and YouTube, like to have said that don’t involve long running shows and having worked on long running shows, we can tell you that they have a ecosystem of their own that needs to support them. They’re incredible. And there’s amazing things that come out of those shows, but for most people, that’s probably not going to be what makes sense, especially at the beginning. Okay. Hopefully we’ve got the wheels spinning. Anything else we need to add to it before we send people on their way?
Tiff (11:25):
Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention, I kind of like thought about while you were talking, um, you know, if you are going to go that traditional route with interviews, think of, you know, something that your guests may not have done on camera before. If you’re just going to, like, we’re going to record five minutes. Uh, at the end of this year, a musician, uh, we had one, um, host that we worked with before that liked to play the guitar kind of casually as a hobby. And so sometimes when he would have musicians come on, he would play with them together, you know, for five minutes, have them sing something for three minutes, two minutes, and just use that as a promo for the show. That’s a little bit different than them just sitting down, um, you know, opposite sides of the table at the camera and being a bit more playful and genuine and having a cool connection.
Tiff (12:08):
And truly, I think it worked for some people that he didn’t know before the show to build a cool connection or to do something fun. Some people don’t have time, you know, but if you mentioned that before people start to come on the show, Hey, we’d love to do two minutes of us just, uh, playing a guessing game or, you know, something fun that just takes it out of sometimes the seriousness, especially if you might go deep or something on the show and just making it more of a playful environment. That’s just another idea. But Christine and I do this very, um, uh, I want to say meticulously is that the only the right word that I want to use Christine, uh, like we want it, we customize this strategically. We customize what we do typically for people when they hire us, um, uh, you know, to come into their production, to help them with these kinds of concepts.
Tiff (12:57):
So we love giving these ideas and these concepts away for free, because we want to support the community. But if you want to work with us more individually and have more of a one-on-one type of session or, um, clarity call or this wonderful thing called an incubator that I really think you should click on the show notes and see what that is all about. You have that opportunity to do that with us. So I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that we love going over these terms. We love teaching. We love answering any question that you sent us on Instagram, but if you’re like, man, I’m ready to really start a show, get this going. I want to have audio video. I want to have the whole thing. I want to get into this incubator with Christine and Tiff. Please go to the show notes to learn more because that’s something that obviously we love this. We talk about all day every day, but we want to help more and more shows grow and just do good in the world, you know, just do, do good things in the world. So thank you again for listening for watching this show and we will see you next week on think like a producer.
Christine (14:25):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Like a Producer. This has been a Worthfull Media production. Massive thanks to our team who makes the show possible. Worthfull Media for audio editing, Jorge and Veronica from Mosaico Productions for video effects and Amela Subasic for our amazing artwork and graphics.
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