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I still feel conflicted about the rise of video podcasting. I’ve always felt one of the benefits of listening to podcasts is that it allows for multitasking. Not all podcast formats lend themselves nicely to full-length video episodes (including highly edited narrative shows, which tend to be my listening preference).
When video became the trendy topic in podcasting, a lot of people spent a lot of money trying to find video solutions for their podcasts, with very poor results to show for it. A lot of the time, converting your podcast into full-length video episodes is not worth the additional investment.
HOWEVER, there may still be compelling reasons to add video to your podcast production stack.
I’m still not totally convinced that full-length video episodes are always the solution. But I think it’s worth taking a closer look at what can be done with video clips from podcast recordings.
Video Clips as a Distribution Platform
Recently, I had an eye-opening experience that reshaped my view on video clips in podcasting. My 16-year-old little sister asked me if I’ve been watching Love Island. While I’m a big fan of most reality TV, I told her this particular show just has way too many episodes that are way too long for me.
“You’re not supposed to watch the whole episodes! Everyone just watches the clips,” she told me.
Apparently, the new way to watch Love Island is through the short highlights posted on TikTok. And she considers this “watching the show”. She has favourite couples, she follows up each week to learn what happened, and she’s proficient in conversing about all of the latest drama.
So, it got me thinking: does it even matter if people don’t consume full episodes?
Traditionally, podcasters have thought of social media as a platform to market their shows. But many of us who have worked in the industry could share stories of trying (and failing) to market podcasts on social media. And my personal failures at converting social media scrollers into podcast listeners has made me wary about the hype around podcast video clips.
But I think the problem is in my mindset. Instead of thinking about video clips on social media as a marketing opportunity, perhaps I should have been thinking of social media as a distribution platform.
For brands, what is the real harm in having people consume your podcast in smaller clips on social media? Sure, this consumption platform achieves different things than having consumers listen to a full-length, audio-only podcast episode.
I’ll be the first to point out that listening to longform podcast episodes builds deeper, emotional relationships with consumers, allowing you to spend way more time with your target audience than any other medium (certainly far more time than you’re spending with social media scrollers). There are things that audio-only podcasts can achieve that no social media video clip will.
But even these short-form video clips on social media still help build that brand association with certain topics or stories. They can help strengthen your brand’s connection to high-profile hosts (or guests). They can help you build your brand awareness. These are all things that are beneficial for your brand.
I’m not a big fan of “repurposing” content. I know it’s a big, popular topic now for marketers– maximize your content, cross-post everywhere, reuse content endlessly to wring everything possible out of every single piece of content.
In my opinion, this usually ends up leading to a whole lot of content that doesn’t actually work very well across any platform. I’m a pretty firm believer in doing fewer things better. And most of the time, repurposed content doesn’t actually resonate across multiple different platforms.
Posting just for the sake of posting will turn off your target audience. It certainly won’t lead to building positive brand associations or relationships with your audience.
But the truth is that video clips from conversations recorded for podcasts do perform very well on social media. In fact, they perform so well that many brands are publishing ads created to look like clips from podcasts that don’t even exist.
So really, we should be thinking about these video clips as an opportunity to expand the overall reach of your podcast content. Rather than thinking about how many people will go from seeing a video clip on TikTok, to downloading the podcast, perhaps we should be thinking about how many people will go from watching one video clip, to watching the next. Or how many people will go and subscribe to your TikTok channel.
If you take the time to make sure the clips you’re posting are optimized for social media audiences, and full-length episodes are optimized for audio-only listening, then there’s really no downside to posting clips on social media. It’s an efficient way to expand the reach of the stories, guests, and themes you’re exploring on your podcast.
So What? What Am I Supposed To Do Now?
Letting go of social media video clips as a marketing tool and instead seeing them as a distribution platform changes how you can think about what to post.
It doesn’t matter if social media scrollers go on to download the full episode (though, obviously if they do that would be a huge bonus). This means you should be posting major highlights from conversations on the podcast. Don’t hesitate to post spoilers.
Make sure you’re posting enough clips to capture the narrative arc of the episode, understanding that most people will never go on to listen to it in full. And make sure each individual episode offers something complete to the viewer– there’s nothing worse than a clip that begins without any essential context, or ends on a cliffhanger with no resolution available in any other clips on your page.
I’m still an audio-first girlie. I fell in love with audio as a medium, and that’s not going to change. But even I have to admit that it’s silly to overlook the benefits of adding video to your podcast production process, no matter what format your show is. Consumption habits are changing, and it’s important to meet your audience where they are– whether that’s listening to a podcast while washing the dishes, or lying in bed scrolling through TikTok.
Author
Annalise Nielsen
Annalise is a podcast professional whose love of audio storytelling has driven her entire career. After producing a podcast series for her MFA in Documentary Media she began working professionally in the industry, first as a producer, and later, building and executing marketing and monetizing strategies. She then moved into branded podcasts at Pacific Content, overseeing revenue generation, content marketing and business strategy.
