YouTube stirred some excitement among podcasters when they announced that they will be offering $50,000 to individual creators and $300,000 to podcast networks to encourage them to create video versions of their podcasts. Last year, YouTube hired Kai Chuk as the lead of the podcasting department. What’s more? Kai Chuk is also slated to speak at Podcast Movement’s Evolutions.
While YouTube is (finally) making moves in the podcasting space, industry pundits and insights have long pointed out the platform’s potential.
Edison Research’s Super Listeners survey found that YouTube was the #1 place super listeners discovered podcasts. (A super listener is someone who listens to at least five hours of podcasts per week.)
Last year, Tom Webster of Edison Research pointed out YouTube as an opportunity podcasters could potentially be missing out on, “because it is the universal content search engine.”
It was not just the industry insiders that indicated this was an opportunity.
A University of Florida and Futuri Media study revealed that 70% of all podcast consumption occurs on YouTube. Spotify and Apple are a distant second and third with 33% and 32% respectively.
Here’s why this is a good thing…
Content on YouTube is relatively easier to optimize than Spotify and Apple, especially with originals and subscription channels competing for listeners’ attention.
Just as you would optimize a website for search engine rankings, your podcast needs to be optimized as well for it to be ranked on Google. Fortunately, YouTube makes it easy to add the right keywords, tags, descriptions and titles without any SEO or programming experience, so your content can easily be found by those searching for this subject matter.
But that’s not all.
By allowing podcast “viewers” to rate and comment on the videos they watch, podcasters can get immediate, real-time feedback to their content. This offers a great opportunity to engage with your audience, gather valuable feedback, and respond to their questions.
Bottom line: Choosing whether or not to participate in the world’s largest content search and recommendation engine is no longer a “nice-to-have”, but a “must-have” requirement for serious podcasters.
The challenge however…
A static thumbnail while a host is talking in the background might not always cut it. People have come to expect YouTube to be a video platform and a low-quality low-effort video might turn them off, no matter how great the show itself. This is, in fact, how most podcasters upload their episodes on YouTube. But what choice do they have? Podcasting is a tough job and your time is precious.
So, how to add visual elements to audio content efficiently?
This is where Adori’s YouTube Publisher comes in. It allows podcast developers to add visual and graphic enhancements to their work. Moreover, Adori has got your back; this tool leverages several little-known YouTube features most podcasters may not even know about
But what makes the Adori's YouTube Publisher truly unique is not just what it does, but how it does it - guiding the podcaster step-by-step through the entire graphic and visual integration process.
1) Import podcasts from RSS feeds or upload audio files
2) Enhance them with visualizations
3) Upload those enriched assets directly to YouTube
And as a special treat…
Adori will integrate with YouTube’s little-known chapter marker feature. For every image you upload, you can create a “tag” or chapter marker which shows up on the bottom of the screen as the video is playing. In addition, Adori will use information such as Title, Description and Keywords from your RSS feed to optimize YouTube SEO thus making your podcast more easily discoverable on Google and YouTube.