There is a difference between livestreaming and video podcasting, and you can’t just get your whole livestream and convert it into a podcast. There’s some editing and preparations that need to be done beforehand. Learn a few tips and tricks on how to make repurposing your livestream into a podcast easier. In this episode, Tom Hazzard discusses how he and Tracy do livestreaming for their brand. Learn how to acknowledge your audience, what energy level you should be at during a livestream, and more. Also, discover a few neat tricks that you can do regarding Zoom and slide-sharing today!

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Livestream Recording Tactics That Make It Easier To Repurpose As A Podcast With Tom Hazzard

This episode is related to tips for recording video as one means of distributing your podcast episodes. We’re talking specifically about tips for livestream recording, tactics that make it easier to repurpose your livestream recordings as a podcast. This is going to involve different kinds of tips. Some about preparation for recording livestream, some of the actual tactical things that you might want to do as you’re recording. How to make a live stream recording repurpose well as a podcast and even some technical, tactical details at the end regarding the actual recording of the video itself.

Those are the things I’m going to cover. Hopefully, you will find this of interest for any livestreams that you might do. I know every podcaster does not necessarily record their episodes live on social media. Some do. We work with a lot of people that do and some do it occasionally. It might be something if you’re not doing it at all that you might want to consider doing once in a while. Maybe a bonus episode.

Something that you bring out live, especially if you have a membership community of any kind like a Facebook group or LinkedIn group. You might want to try going live once in a while to give that group some advanced access to some of your content or to some of your podcast episodes. Then it gets repurposed for those that either couldn’t or would not be able to see it live. It comes out as that podcast later and/or videocast.

Tips And Tactics For Live Streaming

Let’s get down to the details. The first thing I want to talk about is preparation for your livestream. Some of us get inspired by something. We might get out our phone and go live. I used to do this a lot when I was out at a live event. When you’re going to go live, you want to prepare. You can certainly go live randomly to provide more content to your followers, but if you prepare, you can make it that much better and it makes it easier to repurpose later. Some livestream preparation tips are titles. Think in advance for a title and decide what it’s going to be.

I did that for this very episode. I am recording this and putting this out as a livestream to my membership community, which only certain people have access to, but when I’m going to put it out to my community, I want to prepare. I did prepare a title. The title is Livestream Recording Tactics That Make It Easier to Repurpose as a Podcast. I prepared it in advance. Be intentional about it. Spend a little time preparing and creating a title.

Also, think about hashtags. Putting any hashtags into your post when you’re going live, especially if there are some key hashtags that are related that you want this live stream to be found for, so think about hashtags in advance and also tagging. You want to prepare and tag guests, especially if you have a guest on your livestream. This livestream is me. It’s what I would call a solo cast.

 

I do not have any guests that I wanted to tag. I probably could have tagged my co-host, Tracy, in this even though she’s not here and maybe some others, but definitely anyone you want to reference in your live stream. You want to be aware of it. You want to hopefully share it. You want to tag them. The other tip for preparation I want to share with you is you might think it’s a pretty simple one, but I can tell you most people don’t do it. Create an outline that has bullet points of what you want to cover so that you do not have a moment of dead air when you’re recording this live, where you’re trying to remember something else that you wanted to discuss.

I have to say. I’m notorious for doing that and making my editors have to cut out some dead air in the middle. With the video, it creates this jump cut for when it’s repurposed and it’s not ideal. Here’s the outline I created. Those of you that are reading this, you might want to go check out the video. I’m holding up a piece of paper that is my outline for what I want to talk to about. It’s a handy reference. I’m not having a script that I’m reading from. I don’t work well with scripts. I’m not acting here. I am authentically bringing you content in a live sense.

Audience Acknowledgment

This is one of the things that’s very important. When you start the livestream and your membership community or only certain people who are there live are seeing it live, you acknowledge them. You welcome them to your whatever this is. For me, it’s a weekly client private webinar or a coaching call that they get first. The rest of you get it later when it’s fully edited, produced and repurposed as a podcast. Although it is live, you need to then, at some point, start what will be the repurposed part for a podcast. Not all of it is appropriate to be repurposed.

Figure out what that point is early on and then start recording that podcast, but what you do is you need to, at that point, reintroduce yourself. Welcome people to the show, to the podcast. For those that heard it live, I say, “Now I’m going to start recording podcast and then we’re going to have some Q and A after.” That’s what I’m talking about, the bookends of what will be the podcast.

There’s a beginning before I’m recording the podcast. There’s more after for those that are there live. They get to ask some Q and A and I will answer any questions they have live, but I’m not sharing that as a podcast either. Decide what your bookends are going to be. That might be simply upfront acknowledging your audience, welcoming those people that are there live, letting them know you’re here for them and you’re present for them.

The timelessness of a podcast is very important. Click To Tweet

Give them a little expectation of what you’re going to cover in this live session. I say, “I’m going to record this as an episode of my podcast or at least a portion of it and then after that, we’ll have Q and A.” Audience acknowledgments are one of those things that you should do that are not a part of what would be repurposed as a podcast, often or not. Then any housekeeping for members, letting them know what’s coming up next week or are there any other current events, anything you need people to know and you want to make sure they’re aware of. This is your opportunity to give them some unique value for attending live.

Everyone else that is listening to the podcast that is published after might learn, at least in this episode, that there was more available if you did it live. You may want to mention in your podcast, “Those of you that are listening to this as a podcast, there’s actually more available for you if you are able to listen live. We do this at this time of day, on this day of the week, every week,” and invite them to become of a live experience. That’s another thing you could do.

Context And Timelessness

The bookends, I’m talking about things that are maybe not appropriate for your podcast listeners. You can do that at the beginning and the end. You’re going to have a specific point. The largest part of your live stream recording will be repurposed. You want to think about the context of what you’re saying. What is live will be repurposed as a context. Make sure what you say within the podcast will be in the proper context so that it makes sense when people hear it later or when they hear it at any time.

When I’m talking about context, I want to take a little deeper dive in one aspect of context that I think too many podcasters who do livestream recording and repurposing of their podcast don’t always think about. That is timelessness. The timelessness of a podcast is very important. It’s ideal when you think about it because people will listen when they’re ready to listen on their time, even if they’re subscribing and they’ve gotten your episode downloaded to their device. They may not be listening for days or weeks more. They may stack up a whole bunch of podcasts that they have downloaded to their device and listen while they’re sitting on the beach on vacation.

You want to make sure that everything that you talk about on your podcast is appropriate no matter when people listen to it, if it can be. There are some podcasts that do a daily sports talk thing and there’s always going to be things grounded at the moment. They’re publishing more in real-time, either that day or the next day. It’s not weeks removed or months removed. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about the majority of podcasters that are prerecording episodes and/or going live with them but intending them to be published some number of weeks later. You want to make sure you do not frame anything that’s grounded in a specific time. I wouldn’t want to be talking about something that occurred in the news or a world event if I don’t want it to be obvious that I recorded it at that time. That can ground your content in time. People might think, “This is old content,” and you don’t want to make that obvious.

 

You want your podcast listeners to be listening and thinking, “This is great content.” If it’s timeless, they won’t have any disappointment, frustration or confusion that can come up. You may talk about something that seems obvious to you that has occurred at this time, what’s occurred within the 24 or 48 hours before recording. You may think it’s going to be obvious to people if you make a reference to that, but when they’re 1, 2 or 3 months removed from that point in time, what you say might be too subtle. It might not be obvious. That’s why we want to be careful.

If you’re going to refer to something that’s a current event or something that’s happened recently, you want to think about the context of this podcast recording and how you can frame it. You might want to say, “At the time of this recording, this has happened.” You’re putting some context on it and reference it because you may want to use something grounded in time as an example. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m saying you want to frame it properly, put the right context on it and make it so that it’s going to make sense when people hear it later. They’re not going to feel like, “This isn’t appropriate now.” No, if you use it as an example, it can be completely appropriate. The whole episode can be timeless, even though you’re referring to some event that did happen in a specific context in time. I do this a lot on one of my shows and I will talk about current events.

I have a co-host on a show and we do end up talking about things that are current event related but we try to put proper contexts like, “At the time we’re recording this, it’s this point in time or this happened and I want to talk about this because it’s important for this other reason.” If you put a little context on it, people will accept it.

Energy Level

This is more important for the livestream recording than it is for the repurposed podcast later. Your level of energy. This is very important when you’re going live because people are going to be served up your live broadcast when they are getting on their Facebook app, if you’re going live on Facebook. If you’re lucky enough to have the ability to go live on LinkedIn, which now is a gated thing, you have to be allowed or invited in to do it, anybody who is live on that social platform, who you’re connected with, gets alerted. “Tom Hazzard is live right now,” and they can start to see it, but it will be a random point at which people are seeing when they’re getting on the platform.

It’s a random point they’re coming into of your live broadcast, so maintaining a strong and consistent level of energy throughout that live broadcast is important because people are going to tune in and randomly see you at different points. Maybe you’re at a low point or you’ve stopped because you’re thinking because you don’t have an outline that’s helping to keep you pacing forward through the content.

If they get to a point where they’re looking at you and they’re hearing crickets or they’re not seeing a lot of activity or energy, then you may lose them. They may keep scrolling through their feed. You have a couple of seconds at most. It might be one split second or up to 2 to 3 seconds to capture people’s attention and get them to tune in and listen to the remainder of your live broadcast. You want to pique their curiosity. You want to get them to keep listening and watching.

Maintaining a strong level of energy throughout a live broadcast is important because people are going to tune in randomly see you at different points. Click To Tweet

That is why your energy level is important. You want to maintain it. I’m not saying you want to be contrived or you want to be larger than you are in normal life. I’m saying you want to be engaging. You want to hook people. You want them when they’re tuning in to be like, “What is Tom talking about? Wait a second. I got to turn on the sound. I want to hear this and I want to keep listening. This is good stuff. I want to do that.” Think about your energy level in a live broadcast. It will also help you in the podcast, but you want to be authentically yourself.

You want to be real with people. You don’t want to be contrived because, especially your regular audience, if they’re subscribing and coming back for every episode, they know who you are. They know what you’re like. You want to be consistent and real about who you are, but on the livestream, it’s a little more important to make sure your energy level is up.

Being real as a podcast is more important than it is in a live stream. You may want to amp up your energy a little more on a livestream if you can because that’s where you’re going to have more random people who aren’t subscribed to your podcast and don’t see you as often, tuning in and checking it out, so energy level is very important.

The Importance Of Video

I want to talk about a few more technical details for all of you to consider with regard to video. This isn’t as much the aspect of being live because some of these things I’ve talked about are going to be true energy level. The sound of your voice, the things that you do live are true, whether it’s an audio podcast only or an actual video that you’re seeing as the podcast portion or the whole livestream video. What I’m going to talk about applies only to the video. A couple of technical things I want you to consider and make sure you make an intentional decision for how your video is going to be presented to and viewed by your audience.

I don’t want you to overlook these things because it’s important. It’s much better you be intentional rather than random about this. This might mean you want to test. Do a test video recording, playback your own video and see what it looks like, especially if you’re going to have a guest and you’re going to share any content like sharing your screen with them. That’s what a few of these things are about.

I want everyone to realize this when you’re recording on a tool like Zoom or it could be StreamYard. I had somebody email me in the last 24 hours about they’ve been recording using Skype, which I was surprised to hear because I think fewer people do that than they used to. Full transparency, my very first podcast for guest interviews that are remote, Skype was my go-to tool. It was the thing I used, but over the years, I found it to not be as good as some other tools and it was cumbersome for guests because they had to have a Skype account, whereas if you’re using a tool like Zoom, you send them a link.

They don’t have to have an account with Zoom, they have to click the link and they can get on even through the web. Since most people that we’re experiencing nowadays with podcasting are using Zoom to connect with remote guests and record their episodes, be aware of how Zoom works because very often, what you see is what you get in terms of video.

 

I’m one person on Zoom. If I did have Tracy with me, we could be in different locations and demonstrating this. That’s unfortunate that we’re not able to do that, but when you’re on Zoom and you have a guest, you have the option to use Speaker View, which is my video is filling the entire screen, or you can have Gallery View. It’ll make your video half of the width or less of your whole screen and put you and the guest side-by-side in two boxes.

If you have a third person on the call, which happens sometimes, it’d be three boxes. Four people, there’d be four boxes, then it starts to feel like the very beginning of The Brady Bunch where they had nine people on the screen in all these boxes. You got to realize if you’re going to use Gallery View, be aware of how small each of you will appear on that screen. It reduces the size of you, your face, your torso so much smaller doing Gallery View than Speaker View. You want to be sure that you are aware that whatever you see is what Zoom’s going to record.

When you’re doing Speaker View, it will switch. It will detect who is speaking more and it will switch between speakers and make each of you as big as you can be. Most of the time, that works better and is more engaging. You’re occupying the vast majority of the screen space. Think about looking at it on your phone. I have myself live on Facebook on my phone and on Zoom. It’s doing a wide orientation. If you had Gallery View, think about how small each of you would appear on somebody’s phone. It’s small and can be hard to see.

I would recommend using Speaker View in most cases. If you do have 3 or 4 people, that can be interesting and more dynamic because there are multiple people, not two side-by-side. Honestly, whether it’s 2 or up to 4 people, each of you in Gallery View would be seen at the same size because the width is the same. It stacks the 3rd or 4th people on top of each other and grids out the entire view into four. Whether you have 2, 3 or 4, everybody’s going to appear the same size. When you have a larger group of people on the live broadcast, think of it as more than one guest or a panel of guests.

That’s where I think it can be more dynamic to use Gallery View. I would recommend considering using that because you can see other people’s expressions reacting to whoever’s talking and that can be interesting, but again, it is much smaller, so be aware of that. Mostly, when it’s a one-on-one situation, Speaker View works better. It will switch between you based on who’s talking and create a better video experience. One other thing I want to share, and this is the last tactical item that I want to share, is to be aware of your context when sharing your screen and video.

Being real in a podcast is more important than it is in a livestream. Click To Tweet

Zoom allows you to do this. It makes it easy, but the one thing I don’t like about it is that it makes the slide be full screen. This doesn’t matter if you’re doing Gallery View or Speaker View. When you go into sharing your screen, Zoom makes that screen the dominant element and then it is going to put you and/or your guests and video small up in the corner. A real thumbnail or a postage stamp might be a better description of how with a size that you’re going to appear.

You lose video audiences in livestreaming when you share your screen because you’re putting this still image on the screen and from a video perspective, it’s static unless you’re sharing a video or something moving. Most of the time, most of us, when sharing a screen to show a slide, it’s going to be a still image. When people are scrolling through their social feed on social media, it looks static.

A Little Tip For Slide-Sharing

They might not even realize it’s a video and then they’re going to potentially keep scrolling if they’re not interested in that still image. I do think visual aids can be useful and done well but be aware if you’re going to share slides. If it’s an important slide, show it, make sure it’s clear why you’re showing it, then stop showing it, get it off of that video and get back to you and/or your guests being the primary focus. There is one exception to this that I’m going to share with you.

It’s a very advanced topic and most people aren’t going to do this. I’m going to share it because I do this and so does Tracy. When we do a virtual speaking event, one of our webinars that’s a masterclass in something, we like to not use Zoom’s default screen sharing feature when we share a screen. Instead, we like to do something that’s a little bit more like broadcast television would do on a news program, or you might be used to the meteorologist on television if you’re watching the TV weather. You’ll always see them on screen and usually, they’re on a green screen, which I happen to be using as I’m recording.

I have a background that’s a green screen. You can use a green screen to change what is beside you and around you as a visual aid instead of removing you from the screen. The low-tech way of doing this would be to have multiple slides that are loaded into your video streaming program like Zoom. I’m not showing you content or slides, but I’m going to say, “I have a different background.” You can see a picture frame that has the Feed Your Brand logo in it and then a paper on this bulletin board which has the Podetize logo in it.

That could be anything you want. You can create these sorts of slides with information on the right or on the left. You can have multiple of them and you can change those on the fly. Another one, you could put yourself off to the side a little bit and present some content there. My point is you can use Zoom in a low-tech way to have slides presented with you on the screen, so you’re presenting them all the time.

 

I’m showing you how you can use Zoom in a low-tech way. Load a few slides into zoom and share things but not have you be hiding behind the slides. That may not sound very good. I use that expression for myself and I’m not trying to say any of you are trying to hide behind your slides, but I’m saying for myself, I don’t like to put slides up and have me not present and engaging with you, having virtual eye contact and communicating with you. I don’t like to hide behind my slide, so I’m speaking for myself and I think you all might consider that as well.

This is next-level stuff. I don’t even recommend this and provide any real support for this with even our clients because it’s ultra-complex, but when we do virtual speaking engagements, virtual keynotes, we use a broadcast editing software that we prepare a whole lot of slides ahead of time. We have that do more advanced things than using Zoom backgrounds where we have things motion in and out. We have things that are framed around us and we’re behind it or put something up to the right, up to the left.

All we got to do is click the next slide and advance to make it live and things change. My video can be up in the corner of the whole field of view with other information and the rest of it and it moves very smoothly. It’s hard to explain. Tracy gave a virtual keynote at the Utah Podcast Festival and we used that software very successfully when we do any event like this where it’s a real event with a lot of people attending.

We use that software because it makes a much more engaging and dynamic presentation which keeps people’s attention. They’re like, “How are they doing that? I see what they’re wanting me to see, but I’m also still seeing them within the scene.” It’s next-level stuff. It’s very advanced. The software to do it is not cheap. It’s like $500 or $600. It takes some advanced work and training experimentation to be able to use, but once you figure it out, it makes next-level presentations that wow people.

That can be very helpful when you do a livestream. I’m not using that. I didn’t prepare those as an example because it’s not a major focus and actually talking to you about that is not on my outline. I went beyond the outline a little bit to share that with you, but it’s something that you can consider. The one we use is called Wirecast.

We’re not even using it completely in the way it’s intended to be used. We use it a little differently because we want to make it easier for us to use. It’s made for a live video engineer to do for you, less than you do yourself. We livehacked it to make it work almost like PowerPoint where you’re advancing another slide. It takes a lot more preparation, so fair warning there. I love it but it’s advanced and it takes a lot more preparation, a lot more work.

Conclusion

That’s everything that I wanted to share with you about livestream video and how you can repurpose it as a podcast. I hope you’ve gotten a lot of good tips out of that. Thank you very much, everyone, for reading the next installment here on this show. I’ll be back with another episode in this series, so stay tuned to that. We’ll look forward to talking with you or seeing you then.

 

Important links

• StreamYard
• Wirecast

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