Why you don't need a camera to grow your podcast!
If you're fed up with hearing people insist you "need to put your podcast on YouTube", this episode will give you a sense of relief.
I've just come back from judging the Independent Podcast Awards and spent time with some of the best indie creators around.
What struck me wasn't how eager they were to jump on video, but how quickly the myth started to unravel once we looked at what video actually costs independent podcasters, in cash, energy, and lost focus.
This episode is all about unpacking the hard truth behind the "you must do video to grow" narrative and how most audio-first shows are actually better off keeping their attention on what already works.
I share a case study of a winning indie show, Floating Space, and its host’s reaction when I pushed back on video hype and explained why going all-in on YouTube rarely delivers for indies who aren’t looking to become full-time video editors.
There’s plenty here that you won’t find in any of the LinkedIn gurus’ posts, and you’ll walk away understanding why "discovery" isn't just about being searchable—it's about being findable and worth listening to.
Chapters:
00:00 The Video Myth
02:00 Hype vs Reality
05:00 Awards Night penny-drop
08:00 “But you publish video…”
11:00 What to do instead
15:00 7-day focus
Podcast Improvement Audit (Lite): https://podmastery.co/lite
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policy
Transcript
This episode contains chapters so you can more easily and quickly skip to
Speaker:the parts that are relevant for you.
Speaker:Every podcaster right now feels like they're being told.
Speaker:You need to do video.
Speaker:Well, look, I've just come back from the independent podcast awards where I was
Speaker:a head judge and I got to meet a bunch of indie creators who were finalists
Speaker:in the category that I was judging.
Speaker:And in this episode, I'm gonna relive with you the experience of
Speaker:watching the penny drop in real time.
Speaker:When we unpack together exactly what investing in video really asks of you
Speaker:and what it really returns to you, spoiler alert if you are an opportunist
Speaker:video bro, stop this content right now.
Speaker:You're gonna get triggered
Speaker:So look, today I am breaking down for you the myth, the reality, and the what
Speaker:to dos instead, while you are saving yourself thousands of hours and cash.
Speaker:Plus, I'll tell you why I still publish a video version of this and why I'm not
Speaker:being a massive hypocrite by doing that.
Speaker:Here's the pitch people are hearing all the time, mostly on LinkedIn,
Speaker:but on other platforms as well.
Speaker:Well, look, technically that's true.
Speaker:YouTube is searchable, but searchable isn't the same as getting found
Speaker:between you and the audience.
Speaker:Sits an algorithm.
Speaker:Ruthless watch time, mathematics.
Speaker:Click through rates on thumbnails, retention data and curves.
Speaker:End screen journeys, title and description, optimizations,
Speaker:chapters and comment strategy.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a thing you don't treat YouTube as its own beast entirely with its
Speaker:own editing standards and best practices.
Speaker:You will not be seeing that magic spike you were promised by the gurus.
Speaker:See, the thing is the audio side has just as much discovery opportunity.
Speaker:You've got search bars inside Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and your titles,
Speaker:descriptions, episode summaries, keywords, they all matter there just as much.
Speaker:if your episode's called episode 14, a chat with Jamie.
Speaker:Look, you're invisible everywhere, no matter what you're doing.
Speaker:So at the awards I chatted with a particular indie host who just won for
Speaker:a beautifully crafted lifestyle show.
Speaker:Look, the show up.
Speaker:It's called Floating Space.
Speaker:Hosted by Katie who is just magnificent with the sound design, immersive sound
Speaker:design, very much an audio experience.
Speaker:And she'd been told at some point as every indie podcast creator is
Speaker:told, Hey, you should do video.
Speaker:When I said, look Katie, your show is an audio.
Speaker:First work of art video isn't gonna suddenly 10 x your audience, no
Speaker:matter what these gurus are saying.
Speaker:I told her that I've seen business shows sink cash into video with little
Speaker:to no benefit over being audio only, and she just like stared blankly at me.
Speaker:Are you joking?
Speaker:It clashed with everything the YouTube gurus had been telling her, and that's
Speaker:the shock that most indies feel.
Speaker:They assume video equals bigger audience, but unless you invest time, practice
Speaker:and consistent YouTube optimizations, you'll likely split your energy and
Speaker:dilute your audio, which is the very thing that your listeners actually love.
Speaker:That's what they want.
Speaker:Primarily.
Speaker:They don't care that you are also doing a video version of this because
Speaker:they're probably not watching it.
Speaker:Yeah, I can hear what you're saying.
Speaker:Il, you publish video too.
Speaker:And you may even be watching this right now if you are on YouTube.
Speaker:Here's the deal.
Speaker:Yeah, I do.
Speaker:and here's why that's not hypocrisy.
Speaker:Access preference.
Speaker:Look, some people only consume via YouTube.
Speaker:I want a presence there so that those people can still hear this show.
Speaker:Because I know what I'm doing with the recording process, getting
Speaker:video and audio at the same time, I know how to do that so it doesn't
Speaker:impinge on the audio experience.
Speaker:And if I didn't know how to do that, this would be a podcast with a YouTube version
Speaker:that's just a static image and a waveform animation, just like every other lazy
Speaker:podcaster that the gurus love to shame.
Speaker:Into parting with their hard earned.
Speaker:Also, experimentation is my jam.
Speaker:My growth plan is audio First, Video is a bolt on.
Speaker:It's not something I'm looking at to grow the show and honestly, my YouTube
Speaker:views, they're not great 'cause I'm not running a full YouTube machine.
Speaker:I'm not doing bespoke edits, thumbnail, factories, hook first, scripting,
Speaker:community comments, all that stuff.
Speaker:I do put some effort in and I've studied the best practices, but to be
Speaker:honest, when it comes to my own staff.
Speaker:Investing an extra four hours per week just for maybe an additional 25 views.
Speaker:It doesn't feel worth it to me.
Speaker:And that's kind of my point.
Speaker:If you don't go all in, don't expect all in results.
Speaker:you've been feeling video pressure and you are breathing a little bit easier now.
Speaker:Well, good news, first of all.
Speaker:Here are your immediate next steps to leverage this breathing
Speaker:room that I've just gifted you.
Speaker:Option one, better than nothing.
Speaker:YouTube presence.
Speaker:So export what they call an audiogram.
Speaker:That is your artwork and a waveform and chapter markers.
Speaker:It's better than not being there, and you can easily make these in
Speaker:either headliner or in D script.
Speaker:Upload to YouTube with a clear search friendly title.
Speaker:In other words.
Speaker:Present the problem, the benefit, and the main keyword.
Speaker:Put in a proper description with key phrases and links, timestamps, and
Speaker:end screens pointing to a playlist.
Speaker:Accept that this is mainly for access, not discovery.
Speaker:So in other words, you're ticking a box to be nice and audience friendly.
Speaker:For some of those that might be harder of hearing, and it's not to
Speaker:inflate your ego or your results.
Speaker:Option two, skip the video element entirely and grow faster
Speaker:in audio, which is probably my recommended route for most indies.
Speaker:Fix your episode titles this week.
Speaker:Make them searchable and specific.
Speaker:In other words, how to or YX fails, or seven ways to achieve X. This
Speaker:is the language that your listener types at 11:00 PM Maybe not the
Speaker:specific numbers, but the how tos.
Speaker:Also tighten your intro.
Speaker:Earn the attention in the first seven to 15 seconds.
Speaker:Give a clear promise and then deliver on it.
Speaker:It's amazing how many podcasters are not doing that.
Speaker:Also, upgrade your show page, SEO.
Speaker:In other words, the stuff that Apple podcasts and
Speaker:Spotify B browsers are seeing.
Speaker:And on your main website, you do have a main website, right?
Speaker:You need a main website.
Speaker:Make sure your core keyword appears in the title first paragraph.
Speaker:At least one of the H twos in your episode description.
Speaker:Above all this, what you can do is you can get to the head of the queue with
Speaker:a podcast improvement audit to identify where you are losing listeners, what's
Speaker:unfindable and what you should fix First, I'll give you a priority list
Speaker:so you stop guessing and start growing.
Speaker:If you fancy booking onto this, go to pod mastery.co/light.
Speaker:That's LITE, pod mastery.co/l ITE.
Speaker:Here's the bottom line.
Speaker:It's not worth trading hours of video grind for a handful of
Speaker:distracted viewers that are probably not gonna be loyal to you anyway.
Speaker:They're just looking for that specific content.
Speaker:So make your audio so good that people are recommending
Speaker:it and you're growing that way.
Speaker:So recently I played around with D Script's, AI translation, dubbing.
Speaker:I ran a recent episode through its test, a Spanish dub of this show.
Speaker:I was left feeling like none of it was that great, honestly.
Speaker:Yeah, it's clever tech.
Speaker:In an ideal world, it would be a nice to have, but it's not ready for publication.
Speaker:Here are some of the issues that I found.
Speaker:Lip sync Drift.
Speaker:Yeah, the Bruce Lee effect.
Speaker:It's very primitive, this text still.
Speaker:So you did find that there were some parts where the AI couldn't match
Speaker:what was being said with the video.
Speaker:So you had a lot of kind of enter the dragon style or you want to
Speaker:fight, fight me kind of stuff.
Speaker:A lot of the key frames were ignored as well, so my music bed absolutely
Speaker:drowned my voice in places.
Speaker:Also worth mentioning, it's bloody expensive to do.
Speaker:Eats all your credits, you're gonna find it's gonna eat up your
Speaker:monthly budget within one episode.
Speaker:Oh, and it took an age to render.
Speaker:Here's what I do instead.
Speaker:Translate your transcript properly.
Speaker:Publish it as a localized blog post with an embedded audio player, and
Speaker:then use that to reach other languages while keeping your quality intact.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is the part of the show where we feature your questions,
Speaker:and this week's email is from.
Speaker:Layla, I wanna say in Auckland, New Zealand.
Speaker:Neil, I binged your episodes recently and found the episode on Crafting Stronger
Speaker:podcast intros using the plot idea.
Speaker:I'm rewriting my old cold opens now, but how do I know if the
Speaker:new intros are actually working?
Speaker:Two checks you can do.
Speaker:Look at your retention curve.
Speaker:So look at your hosting analytics within the platforms IE Apple Podcasts,
Speaker:Spotify for creators, Amazon Music Dashboard, and anywhere else that you
Speaker:are going into that granular data to find out what's happening in platform.
Speaker:Find out what your most popular platforms are, first of all, and then go into them.
Speaker:Then look at the first 60 to 120 seconds of the episode and
Speaker:see what the graph is doing.
Speaker:If drop off decreases compared to your prior episodes, then
Speaker:your new intro is doing its job.
Speaker:Here's a qualitative signal you can look for if you are building an email
Speaker:list on your podcast, and you know that there are three listeners that
Speaker:listen to most of your episodes, send them an email asking them what the
Speaker:promise that you made in your first 10 seconds of a specific episode was.
Speaker:If they paraphrase that promise relatively quickly, you've nailed your clarity.
Speaker:By the way, if you haven't heard that episode, it's back in
Speaker:the archive on pod mastery.co.
Speaker:Go for the Power of Plot for great podcast intros, and there's a helpful companion
Speaker:download as well at pod mastery.co/intros.
Speaker:Worth a listen if your openings feel a little bit on the flabby side.
Speaker:Okay, so let's wrap up then what we've talked about in this episode.
Speaker:And here's your one week plan.
Speaker:We wanna make sure that we are leveraging the extra time that
Speaker:we've got from deciding not to put a heavily focused YouTube version
Speaker:of our podcast out into the world.
Speaker:So here's what you can do instead, rename the next two episodes that you
Speaker:publish with problem benefit titles.
Speaker:Rerecord or tighten your cold opens to deliver a strong promise in 10 to
Speaker:15 seconds, refresh your show notes.
Speaker:Primary keyword up top.
Speaker:Give one clear call to action.
Speaker:In your episode description optional, make an audiogram for YouTube so you
Speaker:can get access to those other audiences.
Speaker:That's if you want the box ticked without the time sink.
Speaker:And first and foremost, book a podcast improvement audit.
Speaker:If all this sounds really complicated and you want a precise, sorted
Speaker:roadmap just those fixes that are gonna move the needle for you,
Speaker:because this is a deal, podcasting doesn't have a discovery problem.
Speaker:Your ideal audience is just around the corner for you.
Speaker:Most shows just have a creator not able to leverage existing
Speaker:platforms properly in order to get found problem and a focus problem.
Speaker:If the idea of video has been distracting you, you're officially off the hook now.
Speaker:Thanks so much for getting involved with this.
Speaker:I'm Neil Lio, the pod master.
Speaker:Go make something worth looking for.
Speaker:If this episode helped you share it with another indie podcaster that you
Speaker:know who's been probably freaking out because they've been told that they
Speaker:should do video Until the next episode.
Speaker:Good luck in your journey towards attaining pod mastery.
Speaker:I.
