January 31, 2025 • 32 mins
Podcasters Becoming Creators at Podfest Expo - Ep 8 Rob Greenlee, a veteran podcaster with 20+ years of experience, discusses the evolution of the podcasting industry and the growing need for podcasters to expand into content creation across multiple media formats, including video and short-form content. Greenlee highlights the importance of adapting to the changing landscape, leveraging AI tools for efficiency, and understanding audience preferences across platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. He emphasizes the value of building communities, staying authentic, and finding a balance between long-form and short-form content. Greenlee also addresses the challenges of content moderation and the necessity for content creators to develop strategies that cater to their niche while managing workload efficiently through AI technologies and new platforms. RobGreenlee.com | https://YouTube.com/robgreenlee Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spoken-life-show-with-rob-greenlee/id650684607 Spotify Podcasts - https://open.spotify.com/show/5OUXQ6wLZKxKIibxOQFD8t
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to another episode of Spoken Life Show. Thank you
for being here. I have a solo presentation that I
did at Podfest in Orlando in twenty twenty five here
very recently discussing becoming a creator versus a podcaster. Thank
(00:36):
you for listening to this podcast. I appreciate it. So
here it is.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
My name is Rob Greenley. I've been a podcaster for
twenty years. Actually, I started in the radio back when
I started the radio, it's about twenty four twenty five
years ago. But been podcasting for, like I said, a
long time. I've made a lot of changes and evolutions
over the years as far as being a content creator
(01:01):
and that's what I'm increasingly thinking in myself as But
as you can see up on the screen here, I've
got a company now. I've worked for Podbean, lipsyn, Spreaker,
podcast one. So I've had a long journey and working
with content creators and working with podcasters and have seen
the evolution of the podcasting space happen over many years.
(01:24):
And I think we're at another inflection point. And that's
that's kind of the theme of the topic that I
want to talk to you about tonight or today. And
I also have a like a podcast creator community as
well as everybody else does these days. So if you
wanted to scan the qure code, that'll get you into that.
(01:47):
And it's really a podcast network of sorts. It's an
area where people can collaborate with me, do a one
on one calls and things like that, so I can
actually help you kind of strategize as we move into
this new era of podcasting. And so this concept of
going from being a podcaster to a content creator is
(02:11):
not really a huge shift, but I think it's a
mental shift that we all need to be starting to
think about and actually probably pushing forward, because I know
that's the choice that I made a couple of years
ago to start really focusing on being a content creator
again and focusing on, you know, moving what I've been doing,
(02:33):
which has been primarily audio, over to other forms of media,
which is a video and short form long form content.
And that's that's what I want to talk to you
about today, is is that the podcasting space has been
very traditional in its view of being in an audio
(02:54):
only platform. I'm not saying all this to say that
audio isn't a very important and aspect of podcasting. I
believe it is, But I do also think that the
winds of not so much change but evolution is happening
in the medium where if you want to be successful
now and I think a lot of the really large
(03:14):
content creators now are seeing this pathway. And I think
it's good that we as an industry understand the shifts
that are happening at the upper echelons of this medium
so we can adapt and be stronger as we think
about our strategies and how we want to approach being
a content creator. And I think that's the big thing,
(03:36):
and being a content creator really involves a lot of
aspects around creating content for all these social platforms TikTok, Instagram.
I've been doing live content more than ever over the
last year or so. That was under contract with stream
Yard for a year to create content on their platform
(03:58):
to help podcasts make this shift if they want to
add video to their portfolio. And and I think, you know,
it's not a requirement, and I'm not up here to
say that you know this is this is really the
path forward, But I think if if you want to
add video to your content offering, it can add a
(04:21):
different dimension to your your content and who you're going
to reach with your content, and I think that's very
very powerful. It's all about audience, right, So as you
think about what the audience is looking for, increasingly, they're
looking for a balanced diet of audio video because they're
(04:43):
they're likely consuming this content increasingly and in different kind
of areas of their life. Right, So audio plays well
in a in a very portable medium. On your phone,
you can listen anywhere you know, you're waiting in line
to get your license renewed or something like that, and
you can be listened to a podcas asked, you can
be watching a video, to a short form video, and
I think that's what's happening. But more and more people
(05:06):
are shifting over to consuming content on smart TVs. As
people are moving away from cable television and things like that,
they're looking for online content. And you know, I know
with my own consumption process, I'm I'm consuming a lot
more video off of like a YouTube platform or a
Netflix or Rumble or a bunch of different video platforms.
(05:31):
And so you're seeing this bifurcation of the creator economy
that's happening right now. And I think each one of
us has to decide you know, and I know this
is a track about AI, and I think that there
is a a piece to this that involves AI that
can make it possible for you to be more efficient
(05:52):
in what you're doing around being a creator. And that's
kind of like the the more more detailed level of
the kind of tools that you use, you know, like
with what Larry shared with you is terrific advice as
well and using AI to your advantage. But this is
all about appealing to audiences, right, So podcasting, and I
(06:15):
think a lot of people forget this. Podcasting at its
core was really a medium that was trying to be
efficient in how it was going to reach audience, right,
and an audience through this RSS syndication concept right where
you publish it once it goes to all these listening apps,
(06:36):
and that was very efficient. But we are moving into
an era where more of these big platforms want you
to have our direct relationship with them, right Spotify, Apple,
you know, x TikTok, all those platforms. There's no one
place to publish necessarily unless you're doing live that will
(06:57):
get you into all those platforms. Now, so we're all
being challenged to become overloaded with work because I think
that's the big obstacle as we look to the future
here is is that we're each one of us are
going to have to decide because we just don't have
time unless we have built a big team. And that's
(07:17):
what a lot of these big content creators are doing
is they're they're adding you know, virtual assistance, and they're
adding people that can support them because the demands of
being a content creator now are so great that you
got to get help, you know. But if you want
to be a solo creator, what you have to do
is you have to get niche, and you have to
get focused, and you have to figure out which platforms
(07:39):
cater to your audience and who you're trying to reach
in the best way possible. And that's where it kind
of backs up into becoming less of a podcaster and
more of a creator. Right So you have this, you know,
you just kind of open your mind to the possibility
that maybe taking taking a more inclusive strategy.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I guess to your.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Media, how you're distributing your media, and figuring out the
most efficient ways of actually doing that. So that's what
I challenge everyone today to think about, right is, is
for the kind of show that you're doing, what's the
best platforms that you need to be working with, and
how are you going to reach new people that can
grow your audience, Because at the end of the day,
(08:23):
podcasting has always grown from word of mouth sharing, right,
people suggesting your show to other people, and so that's
been a very powerful method for many years. It's proven
out in the research though. Many will tell you that
more content is being discovered in YouTube now than ever.
(08:44):
Right people are thinking they're watching a podcast, They're going
to YouTube, and they're searching for their favorite podcast in
YouTube more and more because YouTube has changed their messaging, right,
they've added a podcast playlist, which always makes them a
podcast consumption platform, which in some ways is true and
in some ways is kind of not true. A lot
(09:07):
of the content that lives in YouTube is different than
the content that lives in podcasting, and the success on
YouTube doesn't always translate into success as podcasts and going
the other way as well. So this is a complicated
area that we all have to figure out and navigate
for each one of us in our individual content and
(09:27):
doing research in the market to understand who the other
shows are that are working in your genre or creating
content that reaches the same type of listener if you
can kind of see what they're doing and people can
share information. That's been one of the strengths of podcasting
since day one is the ability to share and learn
(09:51):
from others too. So if you can friend somebody else
that's in your genre or something like that, you guys
can swap stories, right, because often in times you're not
really competing with even the people in your own genre
because each show is so unique. Right, So you're you're
able to kind of coalesce audiences from a bigger pool
(10:12):
if you kind of learn from others and you make
the slight adjustments to your strategy. So let me talk
a little bit about long form and short form. So
you have these these two areas that we all have
to wrestle with, right. It's one of those big areas
of conflict in the podcasting space is that you know,
(10:33):
should you do short forms, should you do long form?
And what's the right length? What's the right duration? And
I think as you think about your content that you're doing,
you can do long form, create short form. From that,
you can also focus on just creating short form content
and then maybe occasionally do long form. So there's kind
of two ways of approaching this, and fortunately AI is
(10:59):
really helping with this. AI is able to help you
streamline your clip creation process if you're looking to do
some some vertical videos, but also if you want to
create short versions of you of your audio show, you
can do that now with AI, which hasn't always been
easy to do in the past. But you also have
(11:19):
to look at AI with a little bit of a
skeptical view too, because AI is not human. Now, like
Larry said, you can you can train it to be
more like you. And I think that's what the future
looks like, is that these AI tools are gonna learn
so much about you that they're going to be able to,
in a lot of ways replicate what you're capable of doing.
(11:42):
That's good or bad depending on one's view on that.
It's not an entirely rosy picture. But you know, at
the end of the day, what is the audience going
to trust? That's actually the big bigger question, right are
are we going to have to label AI generated content
as AI generated content? And we may see a shift
(12:05):
towards people like saying, well, I don't trust AI content,
it's not authentic. I'm going to want to listen to
real humans. As we may see tags in content now
that would identify it as AI created, human created, So
we may see this kind of bifurcation on this. But
the short form and long form content really plays into
(12:26):
your strategy of what you're trying to do with your
audience and what you're trying to do with your content.
At the end of the day, your podcast is you
and what you want to do. But increasingly there's pressure
on all of us to say, let's go out and
look at the market. Let's go out and look at
what people want, what other people want, not necessarily what
(12:47):
I want. And I think that's the biggest challenge. I mean,
I spent twenty years in this medium trying to do
content that helped me in hopes that it would help others.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So I would create content based on my passions, my interests,
what I wanted to learn about because I was getting
a multiple benefit from it. I was building a network,
I was building knowledge myself, and hopefully through that process,
I was helping others, right, And so I was doing
long form, mainly hour long content, And if you look
(13:19):
at the stats, the top two hundred podcasts are averaging
about sixty minutes. So you know, I'm not saying that
that's the ideal length. The ideal length is what is
right for you and what you're trying to accomplish with
your content. How many days a week are you publishing?
Are you publishing once a week, once a month? There
(13:40):
is no ideal format for this, but I have seen
a lot of evidence from talking to a lot of
content creators that publishing more frequents, more frequently actually results
in faster growth. Now, how you can sustain that? I
talk to some people that want to do content five
days a week, Right, That's hard to sustain over the
(14:01):
long run, and you run a risk of burning out
on that. And it depends on what's involved in the content.
If you're doing like maybe five minute shorts every day
of the week, that's that's can be a good way
to grow as well. But typically podcasting if you look
at the audio side as a deep engagement medium, right,
(14:22):
so you want to get people to listen longer. If
you look at YouTube, YouTube, it's very difficult to get
people to listen longer. People are used to bouncing around.
It's almost a little bit like broadcast radio when people
would be on their their their car radios and they'd
be like skipping stations, you know, back and forth between
(14:47):
the radio breaks. People are bouncing around in content and
a lot of these platforms, especially in TikTok and these
these social platforms, because they're like scrolling through it's like
a dopamine hit and they're they're always looking for that
next any video and things like that or strange video
or something. I mean, I find myself doing it too.
It's very appealing. So finding this balance is the difficult
(15:13):
task here. So let me jump ahead. So going deeper
with your content, I think is the best approach as
you look to building a relationship with an audience, and
authenticity is having an increasingly important layer, especially if you
look at at a YouTube. YouTube is really becoming rapidly
(15:37):
and I'm sure many of them maybe notice this if
you use YouTube a lot. But trending topics are are
basically the driver of YouTube. And what the contrast is
with podcasting is podcasting tends to be a little bit
more longer term or the evergreen content kind of concept, right,
(16:00):
or it's usually pre recorded, it's not real time, it's
not published as frequently. You're going in deep into topics,
and what we're seeing on YouTube increasingly is creators creating
shorter content more frequently, and that is a challenge, right.
And then there's other creators on YouTube that are doing
(16:22):
deep research, deep video production and really trying to come
up with a compelling story or an interesting thread of
discussion that enlightens us into various aspects of our reality
in our world and people, health sciences, AI, all those
(16:45):
kinds of things, and people are building huge channels over
there on that, and I think that there is some
overlap with podcasting. I think that a lot of the
longer form video creators on YouTube oftentimes are creating successful
podcasts as well. So I think that's kind of where
we that's where things are going right now. And you
(17:07):
have to decide which side do you want to play on.
What's your content is it? Is it trending topics or
is it you know, more content that maybe will last
a longer period of time. I mean, I've I've created
videos on YouTube, like seventeen years ago that have gotten
hundreds of thousands of plays, But there were videos that
(17:28):
had no really production quality, had no real you know,
I had my phone and I was recording it and
I was just doing voice over into my phone talking
about evs and electric cars and hybrids and things like
that back when they were something new. So I think
that there's a little bit of a takeaway there that
content that you publish into like a YouTube lasts a
(17:52):
long time possibly, and trends come and go in there
around topics. Right, So a lot of people create a
lot of politics content over the last six months two
a year on YouTube, and and that kind of comes
and goes, and there's a lot of talk right now
around you know, the political topic not being as hot
(18:13):
of a topic anymore because the election's not coming up.
So you know, trends come and go, the things that
people are thinking about come and go, and that tends
to be the type of content that I'm seeing more
on YouTube. So if that overlaps with what you're doing
with your podcast, then there's a great connection between those
(18:33):
two areas. So and then you know, one of the
other differences between podcasting and like a YouTube type of
a platform if you're a creator, is the level of
data that you're getting out of it. YouTube has got
like layers of data to help you analyze what you're
doing with your show. At a level that you're just
not going to get from podcasting. So so it can
(18:56):
also be a way to do a little bit of
audience research when you're over on YouTube at a greater
degree than you can in a podcast, because you typically
in a podcast, maybe you can see a little bit
of a path of when people are listening and when
they're dropping out. On YouTube, you get like granular data
around how fast people you know, hour by hour, how
(19:21):
many people are watching, and when are they dropping off,
and when are they you know, watching it when I mean,
it's just incredible the amount of data in there, and
then all of the demographics and everything that really gives
you a good glimpse on who your audience is and
where they're listening and all those types of things is
just unbelievable over there. But at the end of the day,
(19:43):
your audience is looking for something out of what you're doing,
and building a community is part of that, right, So
as you think about being a creator and building a
community around your content, and building community, I'm not saying
is easy. It's something that the medium has been moving
(20:03):
towards for a few years now, where people are looking
to build their own direct relationships with their audience, and
at the end of the day, that's what the trend is,
is that we're seeing content creators wanting to build their
own private communities, maybe take a certain amount of their content,
publish it into their own groups that they have, and
(20:26):
monetize that, or actually take more control of that. Because
a lot of content creators have been through this era
where of what I call kind of moderation and censorship
that's been going on on YouTube and some of these
larger social media platforms, and if they're talking about topics
that you know, are pushing the envelope on controversies, they
(20:50):
may want to put them behind more of a private experience.
And I'm seeing more and more content creators trying to
do that as well. It just depends on what they're doing.
I mean, a lot of folks have been burned by
YouTube for takedowns for all sorts of reasons, and so
that's that's another area that can get in the way
(21:11):
of your approach to the market, depending on the content.
Because let's say, at the end of the day, controversy
and trending topics drives audience, and the problem is is
that if you go too far down that rabbit hole,
and sometimes it's hard to know how far down that
rabbit hole you can go without getting in trouble. I've
(21:31):
I know lots of lots of large content creators that
just went a little too far over the last couple
of years and they got much of their content taken down.
So you know, this content moderation stuff is challenging all
of us to know where that line is right how
far can we push controversies or conspiracy theories that turn
(21:54):
out to be true six months later. But that's a
whole another topic I don't want to get into. But
it's it's always about focusing on value, right So in
a second here I want to get into your your
questions as well, so if you have any thoughts that
you want to ask, But let's let's move into the
(22:16):
next thing. So staying ahead of the rapid changing kind
of industry of being a content creator, right is is
really embrace the AI tools, really try and understand where
where the value is. So let's say you're trying to
get shorts, then try out some AI tools that can
(22:37):
do shorts for you efficiently. And because if you're a
solo creator, you're going to have to be efficient with
this stuff you can't. You know, you can't spend lots
of time in Adobe Premiere doing a bunch of you know,
deep deep processing and editing of videos. It's just going
to eat up all your time. And I also use
(22:59):
a tool called just and I'm sure many of you
have heard of that, and it can also help with editing.
I kind of do two different things. I kind of
do it different edits in the script for my video
because it does have the ability to edit audio and
video at the same time, right, so you can accomplish
both of them at the same process. You can take
(23:20):
out you know, like words that maybe you don't want
in there, like ums and ah's and things like that
very easily. But it can also overdo it too, so
you have to kind of like just take out just
a few of those out of your audio. And then
also you can synch up the gaps if you want to.
It just depends on what your content is and how
(23:41):
you are as a presenter. If you have large gaps
in your your spoken process, you can actually tell it
you can remove a half a second for every you know,
take every half second gap in your audio and it
will actually pull that out. Now, if you do a
separate with the video and do less of that because
(24:03):
video can be very jerky in editing, so you have
to be a little more cautious on the video side.
But do a separate process for the video, and then
do a separate process that's maybe a little deeper at
it because you're not going to be able. I mean,
it's just audio. So if you SyncE out any like
significant gaps between the words that you say, you can
(24:26):
kind of speed up the process to some degree and
make the audio sound a little smoother. But you have
to be careful too that you don't do that too much.
I mean, you don't want to sound like your your
machine gun talking, so you want to still have some inflection.
You still want to have some pauses and things like that.
But you know, if you tend to with your audio,
(24:49):
have you know gaps, right, if you have gaps that
are like over a second or something like that between
sentences or anything like that, the AI tools can do
that very quickly. And I think that's that's going to
save a lot of time for a lot of careers,
especially in the beginning. I mean, because they may not
be able to I mean, you use a creator may
(25:10):
not be able to afford to pay for an editor,
right that can actually do that human wise, right, So
it's very helpful. And I found it very helpful too
because I don't have a team around what I'm doing.
I'm trying to do it all myself because I want to.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Learn it all.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So I just want to to get stuff out and
have it be as as good as I can as
quickly as I can. And that's the that's the other power.
And then a lot of these tools have the ability
to improve.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Your sound too.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So if you which is increasingly making it okay to
have less high quality equipment, right, so you can actually
make a terrific podcast on your on your phone now
and it's not going to be sounding bad if you
run through like an Adobe podcast, or if you run
it through like like a no Modo platform, or there's
(26:02):
all these normalization and audio optimization platforms that are out
there now that you can take any audio, run it
through and it'll sound like you're in a professional studio.
So those are all great, great tools to work with
depending on what you're trying to do with your show.
So so anyway, I'm going to transition now take questions
(26:24):
if anybody has any I would love to hear your
your questions and your thoughts too, So I don't know.
If we have a microphone that can go round, that'd
be great.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Do you have a for hang out a tool for
a long form video?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, it's I think it's descript at this point. Yeah. Yeah,
I think it's the most flexible, but it does take
a little bit of learning about how to tweak it
so it doesn't do too much because I think you
can overdo it with the script too. I think you
can edit too much.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Kind of the model.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Have any company where in a video, I mean and.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Buy a car the most team it out.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, I mean I think you can probably cut it
in half and still come out come out with a
good product. The danger that I've seen is editing video
for your audio is the danger because most people have
more editing they used to be done to their audio
than to their video usually, So if you want to
make a version of your show for a video that
(27:26):
you want to maybe put up to YouTube, maybe do
a little bit of an edit, different edit on that. So,
So how I usually do it is I do do
the video first through through the script, and I set
all those settings and then I export it, get it
out of there, and then I go in and I
do a deeper edit on the audio, and then I
export that separately. That's how I usually do that.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, yes, I Jeff the late double short of your video.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I don't have one that I can share with you
right now. But I think if you just go to
any of the of the short short content platforms and
just spend some time watching them, see what resonates with you,
see what works with you. But are you looking for
the tools that can create them or the platforms to
watch them?
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Put them up?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Well?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Really short?
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I think that's the lighting, But I wondered about lead
In because he put up ten minutes. Ohly did no
lights to have watched ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Or on shorts? Yeah? Right, and it's the same YouTube.
I believe changed theirs to three minutes, so I think
they were they were just a minute for a while,
but then they shifted to three minutes. So, as with
a lot of these platforms, over time, they they tend
to shift to longer form content. It's the same thing
(28:51):
that happened to Twitter x two. When they first started,
it was only one hundred and forty characters, and now
they're like you can publish like five thousand characters now,
so you know, there's a progression that happens with all
these platforms. So anybody else have a question or comment
or anything. I would love to create a dialogue here.
Riverside Yeah, yeah, I've used them many times. Yeah, they're
(29:14):
a good, good quality recording platform. Yeah. I did a
one year contract with stream Yard so I'm i'm I'm
very familiar with that platform too. They are quite different
between the two of them. One is the stream Yard
side is more of a kind of like a studio
production capability with overlays and logos and transitions and and
(29:36):
different cameras and that kind of stuff, where the Riverside
is really at this point anyway, it is very focused
on quality and trying to get like like your guests
in an equal screen. It doesn't have as much, I
guess kind of creative elements to it, right. It just
gets you the the audio and video that you want,
(29:56):
and and the audio and video quality is really great.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So go ahead.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Yeah, I was going was fun that I should use
it to replace our ideots witchy board that we were
my pardoner I Julie, Oh really okay, Eagle and Mawler
and basically join the riverside fashion from a different laptop
or iPad ones. We both have your own let to
join right a fad and studio. Ah yeah, we've gotten
an eight hundred dollars roll with board that we don't
(30:22):
eat a work.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I thought, Well, yeah, I mean a lot of these
live streaming tools now are so capable now, I mean,
I mean I love doing live on them because I
can actually bring in comments from all the social platforms too.
So if people want to contribute to the show and
want to get into a dialogue with me, they can
do it real time right through Twitter and or x
(30:44):
and LinkedIn and YouTube and zev and it comes right
into my dashboard and I can actually throw it up
on the screen so and then talk about it. So
just like what I'm doing right now, it would be
the same process. Yeah. Oh uh. Well, if you're talking
about Transistor, they're a podcast hosting platform, so I think
they mainly just handle audio, I believe, But I'm not
(31:05):
as knowledgeable about Transistor. Yeah, so if you want it,
you know, there's plenty of really really good podcasts audio
podcast hosts that are out there, and quite a few
of them are in the exhibition room, Buzz Brout Lipsen,
who are actually I used to work for Lipson and
Podbeans out there as well Blueberry, which I do a
(31:28):
weekly live streaming podcast with the CEO of Blueberry, Todd Cocker.
I've been doing that show for about twelve years thirteen
years now, and if you want to check it out,
it's just at show dot com and we do that
show live every Wednesday afternoon at three pm Eastern. And
that show is really talking about the big trends in
podcasting where it's going, kind of just breaking news about
(31:52):
the podcasting space. All right, well, thank you so much
for joining me.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Mm HM, The Inspiration, Spoken Word, Tech and Connection, Spoken
Spoken Light, Spoken Light, Spoken Lights with Rob Greenley with
Rob Greenley with Rob
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Green m HM
Welcome to another episode of Spoken Life Show. Thank you
for being here. I have a solo presentation that I
did at Podfest in Orlando in twenty twenty five here
very recently discussing becoming a creator versus a podcaster. Thank
(00:36):
you for listening to this podcast. I appreciate it. So
here it is.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
My name is Rob Greenley. I've been a podcaster for
twenty years. Actually, I started in the radio back when
I started the radio, it's about twenty four twenty five
years ago. But been podcasting for, like I said, a
long time. I've made a lot of changes and evolutions
over the years as far as being a content creator
(01:01):
and that's what I'm increasingly thinking in myself as But
as you can see up on the screen here, I've
got a company now. I've worked for Podbean, lipsyn, Spreaker,
podcast one. So I've had a long journey and working
with content creators and working with podcasters and have seen
the evolution of the podcasting space happen over many years.
(01:24):
And I think we're at another inflection point. And that's
that's kind of the theme of the topic that I
want to talk to you about tonight or today. And
I also have a like a podcast creator community as
well as everybody else does these days. So if you
wanted to scan the qure code, that'll get you into that.
(01:47):
And it's really a podcast network of sorts. It's an
area where people can collaborate with me, do a one
on one calls and things like that, so I can
actually help you kind of strategize as we move into
this new era of podcasting. And so this concept of
going from being a podcaster to a content creator is
(02:11):
not really a huge shift, but I think it's a
mental shift that we all need to be starting to
think about and actually probably pushing forward, because I know
that's the choice that I made a couple of years
ago to start really focusing on being a content creator
again and focusing on, you know, moving what I've been doing,
(02:33):
which has been primarily audio, over to other forms of media,
which is a video and short form long form content.
And that's that's what I want to talk to you
about today, is is that the podcasting space has been
very traditional in its view of being in an audio
(02:54):
only platform. I'm not saying all this to say that
audio isn't a very important and aspect of podcasting. I
believe it is, But I do also think that the
winds of not so much change but evolution is happening
in the medium where if you want to be successful
now and I think a lot of the really large
(03:14):
content creators now are seeing this pathway. And I think
it's good that we as an industry understand the shifts
that are happening at the upper echelons of this medium
so we can adapt and be stronger as we think
about our strategies and how we want to approach being
a content creator. And I think that's the big thing,
(03:36):
and being a content creator really involves a lot of
aspects around creating content for all these social platforms TikTok, Instagram.
I've been doing live content more than ever over the
last year or so. That was under contract with stream
Yard for a year to create content on their platform
(03:58):
to help podcasts make this shift if they want to
add video to their portfolio. And and I think, you know,
it's not a requirement, and I'm not up here to
say that you know this is this is really the
path forward, But I think if if you want to
add video to your content offering, it can add a
(04:21):
different dimension to your your content and who you're going
to reach with your content, and I think that's very
very powerful. It's all about audience, right, So as you
think about what the audience is looking for, increasingly, they're
looking for a balanced diet of audio video because they're
(04:43):
they're likely consuming this content increasingly and in different kind
of areas of their life. Right, So audio plays well
in a in a very portable medium. On your phone,
you can listen anywhere you know, you're waiting in line
to get your license renewed or something like that, and
you can be listened to a podcas asked, you can
be watching a video, to a short form video, and
I think that's what's happening. But more and more people
(05:06):
are shifting over to consuming content on smart TVs. As
people are moving away from cable television and things like that,
they're looking for online content. And you know, I know
with my own consumption process, I'm I'm consuming a lot
more video off of like a YouTube platform or a
Netflix or Rumble or a bunch of different video platforms.
(05:31):
And so you're seeing this bifurcation of the creator economy
that's happening right now. And I think each one of
us has to decide you know, and I know this
is a track about AI, and I think that there
is a a piece to this that involves AI that
can make it possible for you to be more efficient
(05:52):
in what you're doing around being a creator. And that's
kind of like the the more more detailed level of
the kind of tools that you use, you know, like
with what Larry shared with you is terrific advice as
well and using AI to your advantage. But this is
all about appealing to audiences, right, So podcasting, and I
(06:15):
think a lot of people forget this. Podcasting at its
core was really a medium that was trying to be
efficient in how it was going to reach audience, right,
and an audience through this RSS syndication concept right where
you publish it once it goes to all these listening apps,
(06:36):
and that was very efficient. But we are moving into
an era where more of these big platforms want you
to have our direct relationship with them, right Spotify, Apple,
you know, x TikTok, all those platforms. There's no one
place to publish necessarily unless you're doing live that will
(06:57):
get you into all those platforms. Now, so we're all
being challenged to become overloaded with work because I think
that's the big obstacle as we look to the future
here is is that we're each one of us are
going to have to decide because we just don't have
time unless we have built a big team. And that's
(07:17):
what a lot of these big content creators are doing
is they're they're adding you know, virtual assistance, and they're
adding people that can support them because the demands of
being a content creator now are so great that you
got to get help, you know. But if you want
to be a solo creator, what you have to do
is you have to get niche, and you have to
get focused, and you have to figure out which platforms
(07:39):
cater to your audience and who you're trying to reach
in the best way possible. And that's where it kind
of backs up into becoming less of a podcaster and
more of a creator. Right So you have this, you know,
you just kind of open your mind to the possibility
that maybe taking taking a more inclusive strategy.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I guess to your.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Media, how you're distributing your media, and figuring out the
most efficient ways of actually doing that. So that's what
I challenge everyone today to think about, right is, is
for the kind of show that you're doing, what's the
best platforms that you need to be working with, and
how are you going to reach new people that can
grow your audience, Because at the end of the day,
(08:23):
podcasting has always grown from word of mouth sharing, right,
people suggesting your show to other people, and so that's
been a very powerful method for many years. It's proven
out in the research though. Many will tell you that
more content is being discovered in YouTube now than ever.
(08:44):
Right people are thinking they're watching a podcast, They're going
to YouTube, and they're searching for their favorite podcast in
YouTube more and more because YouTube has changed their messaging, right,
they've added a podcast playlist, which always makes them a
podcast consumption platform, which in some ways is true and
in some ways is kind of not true. A lot
(09:07):
of the content that lives in YouTube is different than
the content that lives in podcasting, and the success on
YouTube doesn't always translate into success as podcasts and going
the other way as well. So this is a complicated
area that we all have to figure out and navigate
for each one of us in our individual content and
(09:27):
doing research in the market to understand who the other
shows are that are working in your genre or creating
content that reaches the same type of listener if you
can kind of see what they're doing and people can
share information. That's been one of the strengths of podcasting
since day one is the ability to share and learn
(09:51):
from others too. So if you can friend somebody else
that's in your genre or something like that, you guys
can swap stories, right, because often in times you're not
really competing with even the people in your own genre
because each show is so unique. Right, So you're you're
able to kind of coalesce audiences from a bigger pool
(10:12):
if you kind of learn from others and you make
the slight adjustments to your strategy. So let me talk
a little bit about long form and short form. So
you have these these two areas that we all have
to wrestle with, right. It's one of those big areas
of conflict in the podcasting space is that you know,
(10:33):
should you do short forms, should you do long form?
And what's the right length? What's the right duration? And
I think as you think about your content that you're doing,
you can do long form, create short form. From that,
you can also focus on just creating short form content
and then maybe occasionally do long form. So there's kind
of two ways of approaching this, and fortunately AI is
(10:59):
really helping with this. AI is able to help you
streamline your clip creation process if you're looking to do
some some vertical videos, but also if you want to
create short versions of you of your audio show, you
can do that now with AI, which hasn't always been
easy to do in the past. But you also have
(11:19):
to look at AI with a little bit of a
skeptical view too, because AI is not human. Now, like
Larry said, you can you can train it to be
more like you. And I think that's what the future
looks like, is that these AI tools are gonna learn
so much about you that they're going to be able to,
in a lot of ways replicate what you're capable of doing.
(11:42):
That's good or bad depending on one's view on that.
It's not an entirely rosy picture. But you know, at
the end of the day, what is the audience going
to trust? That's actually the big bigger question, right are
are we going to have to label AI generated content
as AI generated content? And we may see a shift
(12:05):
towards people like saying, well, I don't trust AI content,
it's not authentic. I'm going to want to listen to
real humans. As we may see tags in content now
that would identify it as AI created, human created, So
we may see this kind of bifurcation on this. But
the short form and long form content really plays into
(12:26):
your strategy of what you're trying to do with your
audience and what you're trying to do with your content.
At the end of the day, your podcast is you
and what you want to do. But increasingly there's pressure
on all of us to say, let's go out and
look at the market. Let's go out and look at
what people want, what other people want, not necessarily what
(12:47):
I want. And I think that's the biggest challenge. I mean,
I spent twenty years in this medium trying to do
content that helped me in hopes that it would help others.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So I would create content based on my passions, my interests,
what I wanted to learn about because I was getting
a multiple benefit from it. I was building a network,
I was building knowledge myself, and hopefully through that process,
I was helping others, right, And so I was doing
long form, mainly hour long content, And if you look
(13:19):
at the stats, the top two hundred podcasts are averaging
about sixty minutes. So you know, I'm not saying that
that's the ideal length. The ideal length is what is
right for you and what you're trying to accomplish with
your content. How many days a week are you publishing?
Are you publishing once a week, once a month? There
(13:40):
is no ideal format for this, but I have seen
a lot of evidence from talking to a lot of
content creators that publishing more frequents, more frequently actually results
in faster growth. Now, how you can sustain that? I
talk to some people that want to do content five
days a week, Right, That's hard to sustain over the
(14:01):
long run, and you run a risk of burning out
on that. And it depends on what's involved in the content.
If you're doing like maybe five minute shorts every day
of the week, that's that's can be a good way
to grow as well. But typically podcasting if you look
at the audio side as a deep engagement medium, right,
(14:22):
so you want to get people to listen longer. If
you look at YouTube, YouTube, it's very difficult to get
people to listen longer. People are used to bouncing around.
It's almost a little bit like broadcast radio when people
would be on their their their car radios and they'd
be like skipping stations, you know, back and forth between
(14:47):
the radio breaks. People are bouncing around in content and
a lot of these platforms, especially in TikTok and these
these social platforms, because they're like scrolling through it's like
a dopamine hit and they're they're always looking for that
next any video and things like that or strange video
or something. I mean, I find myself doing it too.
It's very appealing. So finding this balance is the difficult
(15:13):
task here. So let me jump ahead. So going deeper
with your content, I think is the best approach as
you look to building a relationship with an audience, and
authenticity is having an increasingly important layer, especially if you
look at at a YouTube. YouTube is really becoming rapidly
(15:37):
and I'm sure many of them maybe notice this if
you use YouTube a lot. But trending topics are are
basically the driver of YouTube. And what the contrast is
with podcasting is podcasting tends to be a little bit
more longer term or the evergreen content kind of concept, right,
(16:00):
or it's usually pre recorded, it's not real time, it's
not published as frequently. You're going in deep into topics,
and what we're seeing on YouTube increasingly is creators creating
shorter content more frequently, and that is a challenge, right.
And then there's other creators on YouTube that are doing
(16:22):
deep research, deep video production and really trying to come
up with a compelling story or an interesting thread of
discussion that enlightens us into various aspects of our reality
in our world and people, health sciences, AI, all those
(16:45):
kinds of things, and people are building huge channels over
there on that, and I think that there is some
overlap with podcasting. I think that a lot of the
longer form video creators on YouTube oftentimes are creating successful
podcasts as well. So I think that's kind of where
we that's where things are going right now. And you
(17:07):
have to decide which side do you want to play on.
What's your content is it? Is it trending topics or
is it you know, more content that maybe will last
a longer period of time. I mean, I've I've created
videos on YouTube, like seventeen years ago that have gotten
hundreds of thousands of plays, But there were videos that
(17:28):
had no really production quality, had no real you know,
I had my phone and I was recording it and
I was just doing voice over into my phone talking
about evs and electric cars and hybrids and things like
that back when they were something new. So I think
that there's a little bit of a takeaway there that
content that you publish into like a YouTube lasts a
(17:52):
long time possibly, and trends come and go in there
around topics. Right, So a lot of people create a
lot of politics content over the last six months two
a year on YouTube, and and that kind of comes
and goes, and there's a lot of talk right now
around you know, the political topic not being as hot
(18:13):
of a topic anymore because the election's not coming up.
So you know, trends come and go, the things that
people are thinking about come and go, and that tends
to be the type of content that I'm seeing more
on YouTube. So if that overlaps with what you're doing
with your podcast, then there's a great connection between those
(18:33):
two areas. So and then you know, one of the
other differences between podcasting and like a YouTube type of
a platform if you're a creator, is the level of
data that you're getting out of it. YouTube has got
like layers of data to help you analyze what you're
doing with your show. At a level that you're just
not going to get from podcasting. So so it can
(18:56):
also be a way to do a little bit of
audience research when you're over on YouTube at a greater
degree than you can in a podcast, because you typically
in a podcast, maybe you can see a little bit
of a path of when people are listening and when
they're dropping out. On YouTube, you get like granular data
around how fast people you know, hour by hour, how
(19:21):
many people are watching, and when are they dropping off,
and when are they you know, watching it when I mean,
it's just incredible the amount of data in there, and
then all of the demographics and everything that really gives
you a good glimpse on who your audience is and
where they're listening and all those types of things is
just unbelievable over there. But at the end of the day,
(19:43):
your audience is looking for something out of what you're doing,
and building a community is part of that, right, So
as you think about being a creator and building a
community around your content, and building community, I'm not saying
is easy. It's something that the medium has been moving
(20:03):
towards for a few years now, where people are looking
to build their own direct relationships with their audience, and
at the end of the day, that's what the trend is,
is that we're seeing content creators wanting to build their
own private communities, maybe take a certain amount of their content,
publish it into their own groups that they have, and
(20:26):
monetize that, or actually take more control of that. Because
a lot of content creators have been through this era
where of what I call kind of moderation and censorship
that's been going on on YouTube and some of these
larger social media platforms, and if they're talking about topics
that you know, are pushing the envelope on controversies, they
(20:50):
may want to put them behind more of a private experience.
And I'm seeing more and more content creators trying to
do that as well. It just depends on what they're doing.
I mean, a lot of folks have been burned by
YouTube for takedowns for all sorts of reasons, and so
that's that's another area that can get in the way
(21:11):
of your approach to the market, depending on the content.
Because let's say, at the end of the day, controversy
and trending topics drives audience, and the problem is is
that if you go too far down that rabbit hole,
and sometimes it's hard to know how far down that
rabbit hole you can go without getting in trouble. I've
(21:31):
I know lots of lots of large content creators that
just went a little too far over the last couple
of years and they got much of their content taken down.
So you know, this content moderation stuff is challenging all
of us to know where that line is right how
far can we push controversies or conspiracy theories that turn
(21:54):
out to be true six months later. But that's a
whole another topic I don't want to get into. But
it's it's always about focusing on value, right So in
a second here I want to get into your your
questions as well, so if you have any thoughts that
you want to ask, But let's let's move into the
(22:16):
next thing. So staying ahead of the rapid changing kind
of industry of being a content creator, right is is
really embrace the AI tools, really try and understand where
where the value is. So let's say you're trying to
get shorts, then try out some AI tools that can
(22:37):
do shorts for you efficiently. And because if you're a
solo creator, you're going to have to be efficient with
this stuff you can't. You know, you can't spend lots
of time in Adobe Premiere doing a bunch of you know,
deep deep processing and editing of videos. It's just going
to eat up all your time. And I also use
(22:59):
a tool called just and I'm sure many of you
have heard of that, and it can also help with editing.
I kind of do two different things. I kind of
do it different edits in the script for my video
because it does have the ability to edit audio and
video at the same time, right, so you can accomplish
both of them at the same process. You can take
(23:20):
out you know, like words that maybe you don't want
in there, like ums and ah's and things like that
very easily. But it can also overdo it too, so
you have to kind of like just take out just
a few of those out of your audio. And then
also you can synch up the gaps if you want to.
It just depends on what your content is and how
(23:41):
you are as a presenter. If you have large gaps
in your your spoken process, you can actually tell it
you can remove a half a second for every you know,
take every half second gap in your audio and it
will actually pull that out. Now, if you do a
separate with the video and do less of that because
(24:03):
video can be very jerky in editing, so you have
to be a little more cautious on the video side.
But do a separate process for the video, and then
do a separate process that's maybe a little deeper at
it because you're not going to be able. I mean,
it's just audio. So if you SyncE out any like
significant gaps between the words that you say, you can
(24:26):
kind of speed up the process to some degree and
make the audio sound a little smoother. But you have
to be careful too that you don't do that too much.
I mean, you don't want to sound like your your
machine gun talking, so you want to still have some inflection.
You still want to have some pauses and things like that.
But you know, if you tend to with your audio,
(24:49):
have you know gaps, right, if you have gaps that
are like over a second or something like that between
sentences or anything like that, the AI tools can do
that very quickly. And I think that's that's going to
save a lot of time for a lot of careers,
especially in the beginning. I mean, because they may not
be able to I mean, you use a creator may
(25:10):
not be able to afford to pay for an editor,
right that can actually do that human wise, right, So
it's very helpful. And I found it very helpful too
because I don't have a team around what I'm doing.
I'm trying to do it all myself because I want to.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Learn it all.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So I just want to to get stuff out and
have it be as as good as I can as
quickly as I can. And that's the that's the other power.
And then a lot of these tools have the ability
to improve.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Your sound too.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So if you which is increasingly making it okay to
have less high quality equipment, right, so you can actually
make a terrific podcast on your on your phone now
and it's not going to be sounding bad if you
run through like an Adobe podcast, or if you run
it through like like a no Modo platform, or there's
(26:02):
all these normalization and audio optimization platforms that are out
there now that you can take any audio, run it
through and it'll sound like you're in a professional studio.
So those are all great, great tools to work with
depending on what you're trying to do with your show.
So so anyway, I'm going to transition now take questions
(26:24):
if anybody has any I would love to hear your
your questions and your thoughts too, So I don't know.
If we have a microphone that can go round, that'd
be great.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Do you have a for hang out a tool for
a long form video?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, it's I think it's descript at this point. Yeah. Yeah,
I think it's the most flexible, but it does take
a little bit of learning about how to tweak it
so it doesn't do too much because I think you
can overdo it with the script too. I think you
can edit too much.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Kind of the model.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Have any company where in a video, I mean and.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Buy a car the most team it out.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, I mean I think you can probably cut it
in half and still come out come out with a
good product. The danger that I've seen is editing video
for your audio is the danger because most people have
more editing they used to be done to their audio
than to their video usually, So if you want to
make a version of your show for a video that
(27:26):
you want to maybe put up to YouTube, maybe do
a little bit of an edit, different edit on that. So,
So how I usually do it is I do do
the video first through through the script, and I set
all those settings and then I export it, get it
out of there, and then I go in and I
do a deeper edit on the audio, and then I
export that separately. That's how I usually do that.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, yes, I Jeff the late double short of your video.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I don't have one that I can share with you
right now. But I think if you just go to
any of the of the short short content platforms and
just spend some time watching them, see what resonates with you,
see what works with you. But are you looking for
the tools that can create them or the platforms to
watch them?
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Put them up?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Well?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Really short?
Speaker 4 (28:19):
I think that's the lighting, But I wondered about lead
In because he put up ten minutes. Ohly did no
lights to have watched ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Or on shorts? Yeah? Right, and it's the same YouTube.
I believe changed theirs to three minutes, so I think
they were they were just a minute for a while,
but then they shifted to three minutes. So, as with
a lot of these platforms, over time, they they tend
to shift to longer form content. It's the same thing
(28:51):
that happened to Twitter x two. When they first started,
it was only one hundred and forty characters, and now
they're like you can publish like five thousand characters now,
so you know, there's a progression that happens with all
these platforms. So anybody else have a question or comment
or anything. I would love to create a dialogue here.
Riverside Yeah, yeah, I've used them many times. Yeah, they're
(29:14):
a good, good quality recording platform. Yeah. I did a
one year contract with stream Yard so I'm i'm I'm
very familiar with that platform too. They are quite different
between the two of them. One is the stream Yard
side is more of a kind of like a studio
production capability with overlays and logos and transitions and and
(29:36):
different cameras and that kind of stuff, where the Riverside
is really at this point anyway, it is very focused
on quality and trying to get like like your guests
in an equal screen. It doesn't have as much, I
guess kind of creative elements to it, right. It just
gets you the the audio and video that you want,
(29:56):
and and the audio and video quality is really great.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So go ahead.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Yeah, I was going was fun that I should use
it to replace our ideots witchy board that we were
my pardoner I Julie, Oh really okay, Eagle and Mawler
and basically join the riverside fashion from a different laptop
or iPad ones. We both have your own let to
join right a fad and studio. Ah yeah, we've gotten
an eight hundred dollars roll with board that we don't
(30:22):
eat a work.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
I thought, Well, yeah, I mean a lot of these
live streaming tools now are so capable now, I mean,
I mean I love doing live on them because I
can actually bring in comments from all the social platforms too.
So if people want to contribute to the show and
want to get into a dialogue with me, they can
do it real time right through Twitter and or x
(30:44):
and LinkedIn and YouTube and zev and it comes right
into my dashboard and I can actually throw it up
on the screen so and then talk about it. So
just like what I'm doing right now, it would be
the same process. Yeah. Oh uh. Well, if you're talking
about Transistor, they're a podcast hosting platform, so I think
they mainly just handle audio, I believe, But I'm not
(31:05):
as knowledgeable about Transistor. Yeah, so if you want it,
you know, there's plenty of really really good podcasts audio
podcast hosts that are out there, and quite a few
of them are in the exhibition room, Buzz Brout Lipsen,
who are actually I used to work for Lipson and
Podbeans out there as well Blueberry, which I do a
(31:28):
weekly live streaming podcast with the CEO of Blueberry, Todd Cocker.
I've been doing that show for about twelve years thirteen
years now, and if you want to check it out,
it's just at show dot com and we do that
show live every Wednesday afternoon at three pm Eastern. And
that show is really talking about the big trends in
podcasting where it's going, kind of just breaking news about
(31:52):
the podcasting space. All right, well, thank you so much
for joining me.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Mm HM, The Inspiration, Spoken Word, Tech and Connection, Spoken
Spoken Light, Spoken Light, Spoken Lights with Rob Greenley with
Rob Greenley with Rob
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Green m HM
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