Should you YouTube podcasts or should you not? If you look at it from the SEO standpoint, you should. Google owns YouTube. Every keyword and every tag you use when you publish that video will show up in Google when people are searching for that keyword or tag. This means you get more visibility. As a podcaster, it is always a smart choice to re-purpose your content in whatever way possible and in as many places as possible. Whether you’re doing a live video or just a pre-recorded one, going for a YouTube podcast is an easy step to make if you’re aiming for more Google power.

 

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Quick Guide To YouTube Podcasts: Everything You Need To Know About It

We’re going to talk about one of the most frequent questions that we get asked at Brandcasters. It’s about YouTube.

Should you YouTube podcasts?

Should you not? I’m glad people think about it and ask it all the time. There’s not an absolute right or wrong answer here. Podcasting in and of itself is such a wonderful thing. You don’t have to worry if your hair’s perfect. You don’t have to worry about the background behind you. What’s on the camera? What’s not? Are you in your main office, your home office or you’re out in the world? These are lots of things. It is inherently more involved to record video than audio but a lot of people do, and there certainly are a lot of benefits to recording video as well as audio. Should you YouTube podcast? Let’s discuss it from a purely SEO perspective.

 

From an SEO perspective, YouTube is owned by Google. All your keywords that are in your description of the YouTube video, that are in the title of the YouTube video, all the tags that are in the YouTube video are very important. It’s owned by Google. Anytime someone searches those keywords or those tags, it’s going to show up in Google.

Google does not use tags anymore. Tags don’t really help you in Google Search in and of itself. YouTube absolutely uses tags.

You can categorize your search to only show you YouTube videos when you’re searching in Google as well. It would benefit you there as well because it should just be bringing up the same search you would get in YouTube. It’s super important that if you do YouTube podcasts, that you YouTube them with all your keywords and all of your tags that you would do with a normal podcast.

If you’re doing it live on Facebook, for instance, if you’re interviewing someone for your podcast and you’re using Zoom and you have video, Zoom lets you go live on Facebook as you’re recording it. A lot of you do use Zoom to record your podcasts because you want to see your guest and it is video. You could do the split screen side by side broadcast of that over Facebook Live and get a lot of exposure on social media. That’s even a more beneficial thing than putting it on YouTube.

If you’re doing that, you do want to go put that on YouTube because that Facebook video is not going to show up in a Google search. That YouTube video will. That YouTube video can also be embedded on your blog post, which is also going to give you higher SEO value for that blog post.

That’s even a more critical thing for people that are going to YouTube their podcasts. You don’t just put it on YouTube and leave it there. That’s the only place people can consume it. You want to be directing your traffic and owning your own web traffic for your brand and the content you’re creating. The best way you can do that is to embed those videos into your blog posts on your website. It’s another way people can consume your media. If they don’t have time to pay attention and watch that video, they can listen to the podcast. You talked about something really interesting or there’s something about seeing you that they want to see you, then they’ll watch the video. They can still be watching it on your website or on your blog post.

It’s super important to be mentioning that the video will be in the blog post throughout the episode. That way if you do have something visual, you say, “Yes, then that will be in the blog post for those of you who are listening and want to check out what I’m talking about.”

YouTube video play is a play. It doesn’t matter where people watch it, whether they’ve gone to YouTube and found your channel or searched and found your video and they’re watching it while they’re sitting on YouTube. If they’re watching it while they’re sitting on your website that counts as the same play, YouTube does not care that you are sitting on your website versus being on YouTube.

If you’re going to YouTube podcasts, the end game isn’t normally how many views your YouTube podcasts gets. It’s normally to help your SEO value increase. That YouTube video is going to give your blog post that it’s embedded in more key words because the keywords are in that YouTube video’s description, title, and tags. It’s also going to bring more traffic to that blog post which is going to increase your searchability as well.

It’s really about cross referencing and making your content available in as many different places as possible. I’m not saying that every podcaster needs to be recording things as video and putting them out on YouTube. I don’t believe that. I’m not even a big fan of taking the audio of a podcast and putting a static image up and throwing that up on YouTube. You can and maybe from an SEO perspective, there may be a little value in that. I don’t think people go to YouTube as a destination to go listen to things only. Do they?

They do, surprisingly. It’s mostly with millennials because YouTube is free and music videos are always on YouTube. A lot of time these days, music artists that do not have a music video with their track will put it on YouTube with the art work for that album. You can listen to full music for free on YouTube. Whereas Spotify costs you monthly and Pandora you have to listen to ads. YouTube normally you get ads as well, but some people prefer to do it through YouTube. I actually know quite a few people who do that.

For music videos and music, I can understand that. Podcasts are free to listen to on iTunes already.

If someone’s already listening on YouTube, it’s another destination. They might want to listen to that. Is it as popular? Maybe not, but it’s still done.

Many of you know who’ve recorded videos that it’s inherently more involved to record a video than it is audio. Not with you Alexandra, but sometimes with me and Tracy we’re recording a podcast. We’ll do it at 11:00 at night. I’m in my PJ’s and so is Tracy. We will go and just record. No one knows. No one sees us because we’re not on video.

A lot of men particularly will find it easier to just throw on a nice shirt, comb their hair for a second and go ahead. They can do the video. You can’t do it at night because of lighting. Maybe you have a great lighting in your home and you could do it at night. Maybe for you it’s not as difficult. If it’s not as difficult because us women, unfortunately, the standard of beauty is much higher. We have to have our makeup done and our hair perfect. Although that is just a social standard, I know many women who would not want to do a videocast without that being done. If you’re a person who doesn’t care so much or it’s easier for you to get ready more quickly and it doesn’t take that much time, you would want a video. You would want to YouTube your podcast.

There are some podcasters out there and some of them that we work with who are hyper marketers. I’m going to say Scott Carson from The Note Closers Show is one of those. He is already multiple days a week. Three to four, sometimes even five days a week. He is recording an episode through Zoom and putting it out as a Facebook Live video as he does it. That’s a part of his social media marketing strategy. We produce that as a podcast and that video goes up in other places afterwards as well. It makes sense he’s already doing it. If it’s not already a big part of your social media marketing strategy or your plan as a company, you’re going to find that recording videos is a whole lot more time consuming than podcasts. You have to weigh those options. The benefit of putting your content out more places and benefiting from additional SEO opportunities versus the amount of time it takes you to create the content.

With Scott Carson, he already does his Facebook Live every single morning. He has a time slot for an hour. He does it every day and that’s what he turns into both his videocast and his podcast. He’s a repurposing that content and he already had that as part of his routine in his week. If you set up a routine with it like he does, it’s easier to do. If you’re not going to set up a routine like that, and you’re going to do what we do with Feed Your Brand, where we record a bunch of episodes in one day, you got to think about, “I’m going to be wearing the same shirt in every single video,” is that going to be okay? We change up the order so that way it looks like I’m wearing different shirts, but I’m really just wearing the same one.

When I’ve done things like that and I’ve been recording several different video segments. I’ve done that not for putting out on Facebook but for recording different video segments of different content and I’m doing several in a day. I do go and change my shirt each time so I don’t look the same in multiple videos, regardless of when they’re going to be distributed or who’s going to consume them. I do think you have to consider those things. I’m glad you said it, not me.

I think I would’ve gotten some critical emails and such if I’m the one that said, “It’s harder for women and they need to do more to get ready.” I didn’t want to potentially offend anyone and be seen as, “Not being fair.” I live in a household where I’m the only man and there are three other women and this is what I hear. It is more difficult for women. I think it’s easier to be a guy. Just change your shirt and your hair, no big deal. Most of us have shorter hair. Certainly if you ever watch any Scott Carson’s videos, you can see that his hairstyle is the same every time. It’s ultra-short.

 

Speaking of Scott Carson though, a lot of times we get the question of, “I’ve decided I want a video my podcast. I want to do a video version. Should I Vimeo or YouTube my podcast?”The answer is you YouTube podcasts, because it’s owned by Google and it’s super important that you did that. The reason why Scott Carson reminded me of that is because he had his videocasts already going before we had started working with him. He already had an active Vimeo channel, so that’s where he uses it. We made an active decision not to put those Vimeo videos into his blog post because it’s Vimeo and not YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google, you want to watch out for that.

We’re just putting the YouTube videos in his blog posts?

No, he doesn’t use YouTube. He uses Vimeo. He used it previously, but we do not put it in the blog post because it’s a Vimeo and not YouTube. Google is not supposed to be doing anything because our competitors. They’re not supposed to be dinging you. We didn’t want to risk it at all so we decided to leave the video out because he uses Vimeo. He has so much social exposure that for him it doesn’t matter. He’s at that level now where it doesn’t matter for him anymore. When you’re just starting out it’s super important that you choose to YouTube podcast rather than to use Vimeo because of the difference in ownership.

I hadn’t really considered that. I remember as we were doing video stuff, we have established YouTube channels and not really gone the Vimeo route. I didn’t realize one of the reasons we may not I’ve done that is because of the power of Google. Like it or not, Google does own the internet. They really do. I don’t think that’s an overstatement. They hold the keys to the castle for exposure on the internet. YouTube is now a big part of that since they bought them. I’m not a big advocate of video. Podcasting is wonderful, flexible, and relatively easy. It’s much easier to sound your best then to look your best. Even me, we aren’t on a lot of videos and I find that I don’t smile enough. I need to smile more when I’m on video, but when I’m podcasting you don’t even know that I’m smiling or not. It just makes it much easier.

It is an easy step to make if you’ve decided you want to give your blogs even more power and give your website even more Google power, you can do it through YouTube podcasts. It’s not that much more of a difficult step, it’s the whole getting ready and being on camera is not as big of a deal to you.

Facebook Live videos, how more frequent and common they are now, has conditioned audiences and viewership out there to accept less polished videos. People are holding up their cell phone like a selfie and doing it. You can tell there are higher production value videos and lower production value videos out there. There’s something to be said for a higher production value, no question. There’s just a lot more user generated content out there in the video world. If you are going to do that and you are going to record all of your podcast as videos first, I do still highly recommend you use a good quality microphone and that you think about the audio quality of your video.

There’s only so much that we can do to improve the audio quality of what is recorded in the video. If you haven’t done a good job of that, your podcast audio quality is only going to be so good. It’s different from viewers watching videos who may be more accustomed to user-generated content and willing to accept a lower production value of video. People that listen to a lot of podcasts do want the audio quality to be as clean as possible. If you don’t have a good quality audio, they might move on, “Next. What’s the next show I wanted to listen to?”

You can use the same microphone you use for your podcast now to videocast. Most people already do it through Zoom to actually execute the guests’ interviews on their podcast. It’s just making sure that mic is hooked up correctly and it can work with a video.

Mic hooked up correctly and also the audio input for whatever program is recording is set to use that microphone. Double check that because even in our early days, we made some rookie errors. We had this great microphone sitting in front of us that we’re talking into and the audio wasn’t actually using it to record. It was using the other ambient microphone that was nearby. Remember not to make that rookie error.

The small part of me that is a little bit into activism and whatnot wants to be like, “Women out there and anyone out there who wants to do a video cast, if you don’t look your best, it doesn’t matter. Just do it.” People will still want that content. Nowadays we have people doing no makeup Mondays and all these sorts of things everywhere. It depends on you and what your brand is. If it fits in with your brand and your podcast to do a day or two here and absolutely you’re not polished that day. In this day and age, people are more willing to accept that for sure.

That’s probably a statement that there’s going to be a lot of people that don’t agree with you and the people that do agree with you. People are going to be all over the map on that one. It really depends on your brand, your image, and what you want to project out there to your audience.

If you are a health and wellness brand that’s all about being the healthiest you, then that would totally fit in with that brand because you’re doing no makeup Mondays to give your face a break, to give your skin a break.

If part of your goal is to use your podcast and videocast to elevate your perception as a speaker and to get more stages, I think you want to have a more polished appearance, presence, and quality of video. Because jeans and tee shirt and winging it on the fly isn’t probably going to get you the best speaking gigs.

There’s pros and cons to everything, like with YouTube podcasts.

No right or wrong answers but a lot of things to consider.

I want to thank everybody for listening to Feed Your Brand. Remember, please go to FeedYourBrand.co. Follow us anywhere on social media @FeedYourBrand. This has been Tom and Alexandra on Feed Your Brand.

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