Video Podcasts vs Audio Only in 2021

What’s up everybody. My name is Misbah Hawk. Welcome back to  Podmahal. If this is your first time visiting, make sure you like and subscribe. It really helps support the show and allows me to keep giving you free, awesome content to help you launch your podcast. One of the things I wanted to get into today is, audio versus video. When it comes to podcasting, it seems like over the years, you can’t have a podcast. It can’t be successful unless you have video as well. I want to get into the benefits of both, because this definitely affects your production. How long it’s going to take. It affects the downloads that you might get. And there is no right and wrong here. I’ll tell you what’s ideal for growth.

But one of the reasons I wanted to make this video is because when people think of having a video podcast. It feels inherently like it’s a higher obligation item.

You’re like, oh my gosh, how am I going to edit this? How am I going to, line it up with the audio? How am I going to consistently do this once or twice a week? It can feel daunting. Versus when you do just audio, there is a simplicity to it. It still takes a bunch of time and effort into actually making it a finished piece. But at the end of the day, it’s the less that you have to share and promote to your full episode. Now I’ll start off by saying that if you are somebody who is really hesitant to get on camera. Let’s say a little bit more introverted and you enjoy maybe the speaking element of it. And you can get kind of behind a microphone and you can talk freely, especially if you can edit everything afterwards.

But the thought of being on camera gives you a lot of anxiety. It gives you some pit stains. If that’s you, then I definitely think that there’s still a place for you in terms of being able to use an audio-only podcast. You just have to play the game a little bit differently. Audio only listeners will probably make up a vast majority of the people who listen to your show. Regardless of whether you’re on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Stitcher, you name it. The idea behind having a podcast is to bottle the energy in the room, right? So the energy that’s being experienced by you and or the other person, you’re able to capture that at the moment when you do only audio. I definitely feel like it has this intimate feel that makes you seem like you are in the room, right?

You kind of have to formulate the pictures and the images, and there’s a benefit and a beauty to that aspect of just the audio only medium.

I mean, there are tons of shows that I listened to for years only on audio. I didn’t even know what the hosts actually looked like, but there was this relationship that I developed with those hosts that were like, oh! I’m excited to hear their next episode. I kinda knew or felt like I was friends with them to some degree, even though I had never seen them before. That’s a very cool response to be able to elicit through a podcast right in today’s day and age because video is favored so much on Instagram, on Tik ToK on Facebook, everywhere video is something that people use to also kind of check you out and see the type of energy that you bring to the table. Right? So don’t let that intimidate you.

It’s more so like instead of somebody hopping on a phone call to talk to you. If they can watch a two-minute clip of you on a podcast episode with somebody else, they can get a feel for what kind of questions you ask.

You know your sincerity level, how genuine you are, all those different things that come through in the video. It’s a great way to take advantage of all of the free organic opportunities that are out there, right? YouTube, especially. So building kind of a catalogue on YouTube as well for search purposes is huge. If you decide to go audio, only one of the workarounds to being able to still create a video. And you may have seen this on YouTube here and there is those talking heads, right? So there’s that EKG like wave that kind of, as you’re talking, it goes off. And then there’s also maybe if it’s you and a co-host or you and a guest, maybe your images, that light up whenever one person talks. Or there’s the background of it, that can be the cover art, right?

And then you just have the EKG and captions to what the audio is saying.

That is a classic way especially going forward. Now, if you do have an audio-only podcast that you can use to generate clips, you can use it to generate full-length podcasts. That way I know and listen to some podcasts that are on YouTube. They’re audio-only, but because I don’t go to Apple or Spotify, traditionally, when I’m listening to that show, I found it on YouTube. That’s kind of where I feel comfortable. I just let it play, but there’s nothing really to watch, right? I still get the audio-only experience, but it allows me, somebody, who probably wouldn’t leave the YouTube platform to go search this thing. And allows me to consume it right then and there and a thousand other people.

So it might not be like you get tons of views on this format, but for the right people. For people who want it and stumble across it, it can be a great gateway into kind of the rest of your ecosystem.

Now, if you are open to the idea of actually being on camera, I think this opens up a new world of possibilities for you. You don’t even have to publish the entire video version if you don’t want to, but I always recommend it. If you can get yourself to be a little bit more comfortable with it, you can train that muscle on that skill, then why not record it? Because then you have it as a backup and you can always pull clips from it. You can use it a couple months later if you feel comfortable with it you can edit it down. You’re not obligated to publish the video version if you don’t want to. Right?

So if you can capture it, you have so many opportunities in the future to be able to pull clips. And things like that from it, that would be kind of the route that I recommend going.

But again, I wanted to give an option for people who are so hesitant with the video aspect and maybe just want to keep it simple and go audio-only. You can have that audiogram style post to help promote the show. But it’s even cooler when you’ve got two people side by side it pulls you in because it is conversational. It is two humans talking and people still argue that, okay, the talking heads that still doesn’t go to get a ton of views on YouTube and things like that. And that’s probably true, right? But again, for the right people who are looking into you to purchase a service or a product from you. And they want to vet your energy, they want to make sure they have a connection with you. Having that in place is such a prime piece of digital real estate.

So my take is to go video and audio when you can, because if you go video and you have a good microphone. And you have all this stuff set up from the beginning, you can strip the audio from that. You can pull the MP3 from that and you can kill two birds with one stone. But if you do audio-only, now you’re kind of a little bit limited. Even if you did capture something that you wish you could show, right? So there are distinct advantages when it comes to the promotion and the number of downloads that you’ll probably get overall views and visibility, right? For your podcast. If you have a video version you can use them as clips. You can use them for full-length episodes that get published on YouTube.

But if you are doing an audio only show in today’s day and age, what I would recommend is to figure out other ways to promote the podcast.

So it could be quote cards, right? So you might have your logo for the show, and you might have certain lines that were said that you can very easily pull and turn into a little quote card as a way to expose people to that same information. As I’m thinking about it. One of the biggest things is really the initial setup for your recording. So if you have a mic and you have a camera, or you feel comfortable with your web cam and you have a little bit of a studio space set up, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. It could be on your couch, right? As long as you feel comfortable with whatever’s in the frame. And you’re okay. Kind of sitting there and talking and being observed, I think it’s worthwhile to do a video podcast is absolutely here to stay.

It’s something that will continue to be popular as we go into the future. But remember the essence of podcasting is audio. And that always will be right. That will be a place where people go to consume your stuff the most, unless you have something that specifically pulls people in to the videos, for example, doing product reviews and people wanting to see and feel the thing a little bit. Um, but if you are somebody who doesn’t feel comfortable getting on video, I would not get discouraged. I would absolutely go all in on the audio and figure out creative ways like the actual written transcription of those posts into a blog post, or I would think about quote cards and things that you can pull that are educational and repurpose them on Instagram and your other social media channels.

There are a lot of creative ways that you can do this, including that audio gram that I mentioned to take advantage of video, but in a bit of a different way.

So I hope that was super helpful. If this has been something that’s been holding you back in my experience, it can be because we want to do the video and audio, but it creates an extra barrier to actually getting started and to actually keep going. So I hope this helped in terms of being able to help you kind of find what your comfortability level is with investing time and energy and money into either of these options. If you need help, deciding is an audio only option. Good for me is video great for me. How do I go ahead and make both of those actually happen? Hit me in the comments or head over to podmahal.com. I have tons of free resources to help you out with this. But thank you so much for watching. My name is Misbah Haque and I’ll see you soon.