More important than the host, the tech, or the guests, there is one thing every good podcast has: an audience. Finding an audience is one of the most difficult and important tasks for any content creator, podcaster, or otherwise. However, there are two words that can make finding your audience easier than ever: Social Media. Due to the wide breadth of social media platforms, I will not be covering all of them today. Here, I will explain how easy it is to turn podcasting into YouTubing, and to turn them both into a success!

Podcasts in their most base form are one or more people talking into a microphone for a long time. This means the core of the podcast will always be its audio, so adapting it for YouTube uploads is a no-brainer. You’ll want to start by creating a YouTube channel. This is a simple process that can be done in mere minutes. You should name the channel the name of your podcast or use the name of your brand if you have an umbrella name that the podcast and other content you make falls under. Logically, the next thing you should do is set an appropriate profile picture. I recommend a picture of you, a branding logo, an avatar representing yourself (such as commissioned art), or something uniquely notable from your podcast, such as characters or artwork of the setting if you’re a narrative podcast. In the “About” section, write a brief paragraph explaining your podcast. Below that, you should provide links to where your podcast is normally available, such as Spotify or Apple TV.

Now that you’ve created a YouTube channel that is easily recognizable as connected to your podcast, you have to start uploading videos! This part is easier than it sounds. You already have the core of the content ready – your podcasts! There are a few things you can do with the audio to make it a compelling YouTube upload, depending on what you want to get out of YouTube.

The simplest thing to do is to put a branded image or a photo of the podcast set on-screen and just play the full podcast audio with the still image in front of it. This is the easiest, but also the most boring. Another way to turn a podcast into a video must happen before recording the audio – turn a camera on. Many successful podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Cold Ones use this format. Filming a podcast offers all the benefits and ease of a podcast, with the bonus of something (or someone) to look at on YouTube. This will add to the editing time, unfortunately, because you will be watching, editing, and potentially uploading hours of footage, which can be a lengthy and tedious process. However, you may not want to put your entire podcast reuploaded onto YouTube, especially if you want people to go to your podcast’s main upload space if, for example, it is part of a paid subscription.

If you want to direct the attention of your YouTube audience to your podcast’s main location, teasers are the way to go. Just like an upcoming movie or game release, posting snippets and clips and highlights from the podcast can really pull people in, making them want to watch the full thing. A great way to enhance teasers of podcasts is to hire an animator to animate short segments of the podcast based on the dialogue said. Animations catch the viewer’s attention giving them moving, captivating subjects on screen and can enhance the impact of a funny story or intense argument. Animation is expensive, so it works especially well with a teaser, but I recommend doing it more frequently for narrative podcasts if you can afford it. Animated teasers are frequently used to promote YouTuber Markiplier’s podcast, “Distractibles”, to great effect. Animations and artwork have also been instrumental in the popularity of Dungeons & Dragon podcasts like “Critical Role”.

YouTube is a fantastic, popular, and powerful platform, used by millions of people a day to post their creativity or to outright replace cable TV. Not using YouTube as a podcaster is a colossal waste of resources, so creating a presence on YouTube for your podcast to SOME capacity is essential. If you’ve already started working on your podcast, how will you integrate YouTube into it? Will you be reuploading entire sessions unedited, posting teasers, or making special content like animations or highlight compilations? Let me know in the comments below! If you learned anything today or enjoyed what you read, please share this with your friends so we can all be a little bit smarter and nerdier together! As always, I’d also appreciate comments and suggestions from you! If there’s anything you’d like to see in a future post here, let me know!