Is it clickbait or click-worthy?

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Hey honeys and hustlers,

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. In this instance, the “ship” is short-form video and the “wish” is podcast discovery. As I sat down to write this, an irrevocable truth became unmistakably clear: as a video podcaster, I was an early hater of short-form video repurposing from video podcasts. It’s not because I didn’t see the natural connection, but because, as a filmmaker, transitioning from long-form video to short-form video felt foreign. Gimmicky. Blasphemous.

I was so deep in my unwarranted hatred that the first short-form videos I created for my show were audio grams, which is crazy because I had the video of my guests. Then, when I moved to short-form video, I didn't really understand it or see an ROI because I didn't stick with it long enough. And that’s often the key, isn’t it? To stick with something long enough to actually learn it? Repurposing clips from video podcasts as a B2B marketing tactic got really popular, so I stuck with it out of principle. Which really means I tried to pawn it off on my video podcast editors, and that didn't really work because I hadn’t truly taken the time to figure out how to make short videos that I liked.

So I took that responsibility back, because the visual style of my show should come from me. I made time to research the medium, find my style, and learn how to make a podcast episode trailer and format. Researching examples of short-form videos from podcasts was the most difficult part of this process. Unfortunately, but also predictably, I didn't find much inspiration from other podcasters besides Colin and Samir, Rich Roll, and How I Write, so I had to look outside of the video podcast medium. I had to start thinking like a filmmaker. When I did, that opened up a world of possibilities. I began to take a lot of inspiration from the Boston Celtics, Hasan Minaj (who started working with Tyler Babin), internet comedians, this guy, Scatterjoy, and some other unlikely places.

There's an NBA analogy that really hits home for me as it relates to social videos. The NBA didn't start with 3-point shooting. When it was first implemented, many coaches and players didn't like it, lamented it, and vowed not to do it. But after a while, they realized they couldn't trade 3s for 2s and hope to win games. There's not an NBA, WNBA, or college basketball team without a skilled, designated 3-point shooter. I really thought I was done with the basketball references last week, my bad. Can you tell I’m ready for the WNBA season to start?!

My creative agency specializes in long-form visual storytelling: newsletters, podcasts, and films. But I also embrace social videos as part of our creative practice and will continue to expand on the formats we use. I got to a good place with season 4 of the podcast in developing a short video style: a mix of highlight trailers and short clips from our guests with distinct captions (thanks for making this easy Descript!). The trailer for our short film, Trail Therapy, and the short video I created to announce my daily podcast challenge were also big hits. As we expand on the show format, you'll see a lot more trailers from us. Thinking of social videos as trailers, rather than influencer-style quick-cut videos that are super flashy but don’t say a lot or convert viewers to develop deeper relationships with your brand, really helped me reorient my association with the medium.

The YouTube Caveat

YouTube allows you to connect YouTube Shorts with long-form videos on your channel, thus making the transition from short-form to long-form easier for viewers. So why not just go all in on YouTube Shorts? I have found, as have others, that simply repurposing 4-7 video clips per episode doesn’t always equal a return on the time spent doing so. I have found it more beneficial to put in the time to construct what amounts to a podcast trailer for the episode (like a movie trailer for a film) that coincides with the release of the episode. 1 great social video that teases continuation and sparks intrigue is more valuable than 5 mediocre AI-selected videos that either give away too much or don’t do enough to generate interest.

Platforms like when you make content specifically for them. For all the people posting their audio-only shows to YouTube with their podcast cover art, this just won't fly, and I'll never recommend it. I don’t care what anyone else says, and I'll stand on that. Many people are opting to do this who don’t watch videos on the platform and just want to check a box. How likely would you be to listen to an episode that’s just a static image on YouTube when there are tons of other videos and video podcasts with actual production value? It's also likely your titles and thumbnails aren't optimized for the platform, and you'd be better off making content specifically for YouTube, even if they weren’t video podcast episodes.

We're in the early days of people making videos about podcasting on YouTube so there's a huge gap to talk about how you appraoch research for a limited series, the fact-checking process in podcasting, reporting in podcasting, podcast setups (people love desk setups), what podcast tools you're using, how you plan a season of your show, and the list goes on! If you're going to use YouTube or create short-form videos, get creative and actually have fun doing it!

TL;DR

Short-form videos are here to stay, and if you want to build a creative business or grow your video podcast, they should be part of your marketing strategy on any platform. Short-form videos aren’t the end-all be-all to podcast discovery and conversion, but they are a way to strategically get the right episodes and topics in front of the right audiences who would be interested in listening to your show. If you’re looking to get started, here are a few short-video formats you can try besides creating a trailer:

• blooper reel

• rapid fire Q&A

• adding b-roll to a section where the conversation refers to a specific moment in time

• a behind-the-scenes video

• a solo video of you introducing the episode (if you don’t have guests on your show)

What other short-video formats have you tried?