33. Podcasting FAQs: Should You Add Video to Your Podcast? And Other Questions!

Uh oh...I've gone unscripted! This week, I'm answering some of the most frequently asked questions during my Podcasting 101 Workshops, including if you need to do video for your podcast and whether or not it's a good idea to use ChatGPT to help you with your episodes.

Thinking about starting a podcast? Grab my free Podcast Roadmap: 10 Simple Steps to Launch Your Own Podcast (No Fancy Tech Required!) at www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/roadmap

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Sign up for the FREE Podcasting Power Hour on Tuesday, November 19th by going to www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/powerhour

Transcript

Hey. Hey, and welcome back. Today is going to be a little bit different of an episode. If you're a regular listener, you may know that I usually script out my podcast episodes. It helps me maintain a clear train of thought. It helps me remember what I want to say and just helps me feel like I'm coming across more professional and polished. And I've gotten a lot of feedback saying that I sound really professional and polished. So I really enjoy scripting my episodes.

However, it takes a lot of time to script out episodes. And I am just having a jam packed week, and I do not have time to sit down and script out an episode. So do as I say, not as I do, and plan ahead. Don't be a last minute recorder. But today, we're gonna try going unscripted. I did a live workshop last week, and I had some questions that came up and they've come up in past workshops as well. So I thought it would be kind of fun to do an FAQ episode and answer some of these questions that keep coming up over and over and over. So I'm just gonna kinda talk off the cuff and answer these questions like I did live in the workshop.

And I would love to know how you feel like this episode was at the end of it. Do you like unscripted? Does it feel more natural? Or do you like the more professional and polished that you're used to from me? So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay. So question number 1, question that I get all the time. Should I record video for my podcast? Another version of this question might be, should I put my podcast on YouTube? And so it depends on where you are in your podcasting journey. If you are brand new to podcasting, I suggest that you put video on the back burner. Doing video with your podcast adds another layer. It requires more equipment.

It requires more coordination. It requires more editing. It is just an extra layer of complication on your podcast. And if you are brand new, just starting out, you're just launching your podcast, like, I know the majority of my audience is, Adding that layer of video can just make podcasting that much harder. And I've seen a lot of people kind of throw up their hands and be like, nope. I can't do this. This is way too much time, way too much energy. I just can't do this.

And so my recommendation is to start with just audio. And down the line, you can always add on video, which kind of leads us into the question of, is video necessary at all? And this is an interesting question because a podcast if you asked what a podcast was a few years ago, the definition would be that it's an audio only format. Pod comes from iPOD, you know, the original Apple devices to listen to your music on. Before we had iPhones, we had iPods. And so you're listening to this broadcast on your iPad. So there we get podcasts. So it's an audio only format. But as the industry has evolved, it does seem like more and more people are doing video.

And I have mixed feelings about that, some of which I'm not gonna go into here today because then we could make this whole episode about video. But I will say that, you know, YouTube is, of course, the biggest video platform, and YouTube is a giant search engine. And so I think it's advantageous to put your podcast onto YouTube. However, whether you are going to record yourself on camera speaking and doing the podcast is a whole another thing. So for me, personally, I've been podcasting for a little over 6 months now, and I feel like I'm ready to take the next step as soon as I have room in my schedule. And I wanna put my podcast on YouTube, the audio on YouTube. And so I plan on putting the audio over top of an image of my cover art and putting it on YouTube. And I'm gonna do some of the YouTube things, making sure my title is optimized.

I think you can put tags on your videos, separate it into chapters. Again, I'm not a YouTube expert, but I believe those are some of the things that help your content be successful on YouTube. And so I'm going to be looking into that. Now I am an introvert. I don't wanna be on camera, and so that's not a step that I personally am ready for. If you're more comfortable on camera, that may be a place that you are ready to go. And if so, more power to you. Again, I think this is not a right out of the gate launching your podcast immediately filming video and putting it on YouTube unless you have, you know, a history in film or, you know, something like that.

But I think it can be advantageous to have your podcast on YouTube, period, because of the search engine aspect of it. Also, remember that most people don't wanna watch a video of a talking head. And so, you know, if you have an interview style show or you're doing interview episodes, that could be more interesting to watch on YouTube. But again, if we're thinking about putting your content on there, editing different views, some people get really fancy and have different camera angles. And so it's it just it's a lot. And to kind of summarize my thoughts here to directly answer the question, This is why I script because I tend to ramble. So the question is, should I record video for my podcast? The concise answer to that would be no, at least not initially. Podcast for several months, get your routines down, and then reevaluate, see if that's something you feel like you can add on.

Okay. Question number 2. Will my podcast, quote, unquote, work if I have more than 1 ideal listener? So in my podcasting 101 workshop, day 1 of the workshop is focused on identifying your ideal listener, podcast. And so this question came about from that workshop. And as I was kind of loosely making an outline for this unscripted episode here, I realized that I don't have a podcast episode about an ideal listener, so I'm adding that to my list to do for the future. But for right now, I will say that the most successful podcasts speak to 1 person. They're solving a particular problem for a particular person. And I know I know that this is hard, particularly if you are someone who is multipassionate or your business has multiple kind of facets to it.

So I'll use myself as an example. I started out helping people start their podcasts. So my ideal listener is someone who is an aspiring podcaster, someone who hasn't started yet. And as my business has grown, as I have had this podcast for 6 plus months now, I am starting to dip my toe into the waters of growing a podcast because that's the obvious next step. Once someone starts their podcast, then they want to grow their podcast. And I find myself really struggling now that I'm trying to incorporate that additional layer because I sit down and I'm like, okay. Am I talking to the person who hasn't started yet and they want to launch their podcast? Or am I talking to the person who already has a podcast, They've gotten their foundations down, and now they want to grow their show. And it gets challenging to create content because you inevitably can't necessarily create content that speaks directly to both groups.

They have of of course, there's overlap, but they are different groups. And so I find it really challenging when I'm trying to speak to 2 different groups. So if you're just starting out, if you're 1 of the listeners in that camp, I really encourage you to focus on just 1 just 1 ideal listener. Alright. Moving on to question number 3. As far as keywords, does the word need to be specific, or can it be a variation? And this person gave the example of if they're choosing a keyword, does it matter if they choose happy versus happiness versus happier? And I will refer you back to episode 31 of the show, which is all about podcast SEO. If the concept of choosing a keyword is new to you, I really go into that in episode 31. So in terms of picking the keyword and whether or not it needs to be specific, that depends on your specific keyword.

So for me, I have the word introverts in my title. And I did a search. I searched introvert without the s, introverts with the s. And then part of my subtitle had the word introverted in it. And it was interesting because I did not come up in the search results for the singular version, introvert, if I had introverts, plural, in my title and introverted in my subtitle. And so that's really weird to me because that's not how search is supposed to work, because, obviously, the word introvert is part of introverts and introverted. With this example from this person who asked the question happy versus happiness, obviously, we have a difference there of spelling. Happy ends with a y.

Happiness, happier has that I instead of the y. So what I'm trying to say here is that it depends. My biz bestie, Robin, her podcast is called Online Courses Made Easy. And if you type in online courses, her show pops up. And if you type in online course, singular, her show pops up. But the same thing didn't happen for my show. So I encourage you to do a bunch of test searches before you launch your show. And then particularly for your subtitle, you can change that subtitle at any point in time, and you can test different variations of the word.

So for right now, in my subtitle, I have, you know, how to start a podcast and podcasting tips for introvert entrepreneurs. Now that's not exactly grammatically correct. The correct statement would be introverted entrepreneurs, but I wasn't coming up in the search. And I'm thinking most people are likely to search introvert rather than introverted, and so I want to come up when people search the word introvert. And so that is why it's a little grammatically incorrect in my title because in my subtitle because I want to come up in search. So in summary, do a test, search, and see what happens for your particular keywords. Alright. Question number 4.

Julia, you recommend launching a podcast with 3 episodes. Does that include a trailer, or should you have 3 full length episodes straight out of the gate? So a trailer is an entirely separate entity. When I say that I recommend launching your podcast with 3 episodes, I mean, 3 full length episodes at minimum. If you can launch with 4 or 5, that's even better. The goal here is to give your listeners content to binge. I'll refer you back to episode 6, which is all about a podcast launch. And so 1 of the things I mentioned in there is launching with a minimum of 3 episodes more if you can. A trailer is an entirely separate thing, which is like an advertisement for your podcast.

And I don't think I have a full episode about a trailer either. So that's another thing I can add to my list to talk about in the future. But remember, the goal is to give people content to binge and to kind of set expectations. So your first few episodes should be truly reflective of what's to come, both in terms of content, but also in terms of structure. So if you're planning on 20 minute episodes moving forward, I would not have 1 of your first few episodes be an anomaly of an hour long interview episode just because it's a really good conversation. Because that's a first impression, people are going to think, oh, their episodes are going to be about an hour going forward, and that potentially could be a turn off if that's not what that listener is looking for. So whatever your first few episodes are, you really want to, a, give them content to binge, and, b, set expectations for what to expect moving forward. Alright.

And the 5th and final question for today is, do you recommend using chat GPT to help with your content? So in short, yes. However, I will caveat that by saying that use it as a brainstorming tool. Absolutely do not get it to write a full script for you and then read it word for word on your podcast. That's a big no no. But chat GPT can be very helpful, especially if you're kind of sitting down, kind of blank slate. What on earth am I gonna talk about this week? Chat gpt can be really helpful or other AI tools. I'm just using chat gpt as kind of a catch all. But you wanna make sure to include stories.

You wanna include examples or personal anecdotes when we're living in this new age of AI that has kind of taken the world by storm over the past year or so. It's really easy to be completely consumed by kind of cookie cutter content, and we don't want to put out cookie cutter content. That's not exciting. That's not really helpful. And in this age of AI, people can get information from anywhere and everywhere. They're coming to your podcast because they like your particular approach to the topic. They like your personality. They like the stories you tell.

They like the lens through which you present information. They're coming for your uniqueness. There's a saying that I've mentioned here before on the show, but I'll say it again because that's 1 of my favorites, and that's the listener comes for the content. They stay for the host. And so you need to give them the information that they're looking for, but you need to give it to them in a way that they like, that resonates with them. And so absolutely use chat gpt to kind of help you, maybe organize, brainstorm, that kind of thing, but don't leave yourself out of the equation. Alright. So those are our FAQs for today in this impromptu, unscripted episode.

I would truly love to hear your your thoughts about this episode and especially the unscripted aspect of it. Was this good? Do you want to hear me ramble more and more? Because I will ramble. I promise you. There's a feature at the bottom of this episode description that says, send us a text, something along those lines. And so if you click that button, you can send me a text, and I will get your message. You could also send me an email at hello at the podcast teacher dot com. I truly would love to hear from you. And if any of this content sounded interesting, I am running my podcasting 1 on 1 workshop again in July, the very last week of July starting July 29th.

And I would absolutely love to have you join us if you are an aspiring podcaster. I would love for you to head to the podcast teacher.com/workshop and sign up for the July session if you are interested. Take care until next week, and happy podcasting.