Can Short Form Video Help Podcasters?
There’s a reason that movies have teaser trailers. That TV shows have short “hits.” “Tonight, on a very special Blossom,” came from somewhere.
They are designed to create buzz, and entice viewers to go and watch the entire movie or episode when it comes out. And while they are a tried and true method for TV and movies, do they…or something analogous…work for podcasts?
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NOTE
This file was generated by Descript
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Joe: There’s a reason
movies have teaser trailers.
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That TV shows have short hits.
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Tonight.
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On a very special blossom.
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Came from somewhere.
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They are designed to create buzz and
entice viewers to go and watch the entire
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movie or episode when it comes out.
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And while they are a tried and true
method for TV and movies, do they.
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Or something analogous work for podcasts.
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That’s what I want to
talk to you about today.
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.Welcome to podcast workflows, where
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you get daily tips to
improve your process.
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by seeing how the pros do it.
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Joe: I’m your host, Joe Casabona.
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And today I want to talk to you about how
short form video can help your podcast.
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Now this.
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My friends is actually the
sixth entry in our podcast.
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Advent calendar.
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I have a small confession to make.
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Every five days, I do a giveaway,
but that giveaway is going to be over
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before this podcast episode comes out.
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So I’m skipping those episodes.
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All the more reason to sign up
over@podcastworkflows.com slash advent.
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So, well, this will have the number six.
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That’s the fifth and our audio.
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From article series.
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In any case.
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Ken short form video
work for your podcast.
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I think it depends.
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At play here.
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In the headline of this very episode.
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Is a conflict.
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First of all I’m saying
can, instead of do.
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Anything can work and some
podcasters surely believe it does.
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And number two is something called
better edges law of headlines that
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states that any headline that ends in a
question mark can be answered with no.
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So maybe the better question is how can
short form video work for your podcast?
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I’ve tried a couple of experiments
with short form video over the
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past few years, my most recent
attempt had me working with.
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A video editor running
similar experiments.
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He take the full video of each
episode and extract clips.
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He thought were good.
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Add some music and branding.
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And then post them on Tik TOK.
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YouTube shorts, Instagram reels.
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And X slash Twitter here
in referred to as ex.
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Importantly for a tic talk and X, they
were posted to my personal accounts.
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For Instagram and YouTube.
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They were posted on the podcasts accounts.
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So what were the results?
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Well, they were aggressively average.
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We don’t even need to talk about X.
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I may as well have not
posted on there at all.
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On Tik TOK.
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I got within 10% of the views.
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For the videos.
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So a 10% of the same views on each
video, all being in the mid two hundreds.
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This proved to be the
most consistent platform.
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But I don’t think it was successful
and I’ll get to why in a minute.
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Relatively speaking, the pinned
videos remain my top performers.
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Ranging from 1200 to
over 2000 views on those.
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Plus, I don’t really use Tik TOK
much for a combination of reasons.
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This likely hurt me as I’m not posting
more organic quote, unquote content,
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nor am I engaging in comments.
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The most interesting results
came from YouTube and Instagram.
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On average, those videos deeply unpack
underperformed compared to tick tock.
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With averages in the tens.
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But there were two
videos on each platform.
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That did three to five times more
than tick talks, 250 S average.
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One of the videos I posted on
Instagram reels got 2000 views.
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And I think that’s more the goal
I have with short form videos.
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Take a bunch of shots
and see which one scores.
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But that’s not the real goal for
me, nor should it be for you.
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Hopefully I’m stating the obvious here.
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I want short form videos to
lead people to my podcast.
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The easiest place for
this to happen is YouTube.
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The shorts are posted to the same
channel as the podcast episodes.
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So discover discovery
should be best there.
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People are seeing the shorts and
maybe subscribing to the channel
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where they’ll see the full episodes.
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Tick tock also lets you connect podcast
episodes to videos, but it’s impossible
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to see how well that converts as I
couldn’t find the stats anywhere in
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Tik TOK and the Tik TOK app doesn’t
appear as a player in my analytics apps.
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It’s also hard to know the impact
of my most recent experiment.
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As iOS seven.
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17 just made an update that deeply affects
daily downloads for podcasts overall.
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Though initial data shows my downloads
per a new episode are about the same.
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All of that is to say if there was
any conversion, it was not noticeable.
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I’ll still continue to experiment.
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Perhaps there’s a better type of
content to help promote the show.
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Linda straight clips from the show.
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But I think that there’s a
better workflow in general.
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I think about calls to action
on social media that take users
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off the platform like this.
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Imagine you’re swimming in the ocean.
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And someone comes up to you on a boat.
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With a bike.
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And says, Hey, I got this bike for you.
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You should ride it right now.
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Even if you want that bike, you’re
not ready to ride it at the moment.
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Telling someone to stop scrolling their
timeline to listen to your podcast
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is kind of doing the same thing.
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They are in one specific context.
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And they’re not ready to change contexts.
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Instead, I think the better play is
to get them on your mailing list.
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Then you can promote your
podcast to the mailing list.
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This was super effective for
my friend young Sue Chung.
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The subscribe to my mailing list.
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Call to action.
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Isn’t a 20 to 60 minute commitment.
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They can do it quickly, then get
back to what they were doing.
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And then you’re gently reminding
people who have opted in to what you
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have to say, that you have a podcast.
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And you’re giving them the
option to subscribe and listen,
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when it’s convenient for them.
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It’s like giving them the option to
ride a bike or swim before they start.
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Not interrupting what they’re doing
to do something totally different.
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So, what should you do from here?
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I think that really
depends on your audience.
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You should determine where
your audience hangs out.
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Determine what kind of
content they like to consume?
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And post on the appropriate social
network, the one where they hang
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out regularly and with purpose.
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Make sure you have your call
to action clearly stated.
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You want people to come off that
platform and join you where you live?
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You can also use tools like Riverside
or Descript to help you create clips.
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I think the AI route is best here while
you’re still learning and experimenting.
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This is a numbers game for you.
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It’s about the number
of shots that you take.
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You don’t know what’s quality
until you have quantity.
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As for me, I’m going to try two things
aside from making my call to action.
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Join the mailing list.
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For this show.
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I’m going to release the
full episodes on Tik TOK.
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They have a 10 minute limit and the short
episodes are less than seven minutes.
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For how I built it and longer
podcast workflow episodes.
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I’m going to borrow a strategy from
our friends in the movie industry.
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I create content during the
episode, just for the teaser.
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Maybe you’ve noticed that not all trailer
footage appears in movies or TV shows.
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Studios we’ll use interesting scenes
from the cutting room floor or in some
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cases create scenes just for the trailer.
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That sounds like a fun, low
effort thing for me to try.
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What do you think.
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If you liked this episode, you can
get every entry in podcast, advent
00:09:24.020 –> 00:09:27.800
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By going over to podcasts,
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You’ll get daily emails
with tips and tricks.
00:09:35.450 –> 00:09:41.270
Of course, recommended tools and
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You’ll also be able to view
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Thanks so much for listening.
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And until next time I can’t
wait to see what you make.