Why your podcast should be on Youtube (even if you don’t have video)

This might surprise you, but a 2023 study found that YouTube scored higher for enjoyability against Spotify (70% vs 30%). And they beat Apple Podcasts at ease of use (76% to 24%). AND YouTube crushed both in relevant podcast recommendations (~65% to 35%).

In classic Google fashion, they’re shutting down Google Podcasts app and shifting podcasts over to YouTube and the YouTube Music app. But there are some fundamental differences in listener or viewer experiences on YouTube vs traditional podcast players, and that’s the real reason I’m writing this post. 

Let’s get into them.

Podcasts are for subscribing — YouTube is for discovering

Imagine for a moment the last time you opened your preferred podcast app and instead of listening to a show you’re already subscribed to, you simply searched based on a topic or randomly listened to an episode that was suggested on the home screen.

I’ve never done it, and I doubt you have either. Very, very occasionally I will search for a specific person to see if they had any guest appearances recently. 

To be honest, I don’t know how the YouTube Music app works. But if it’s anything like the web version of YouTube, search and suggested content plays a much more functional and prominent role in how regular listeners browse.

We can’t ignore the fact that YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine on the web and isowned by the biggest one. 

So chances of listeners stumbling upon your episode include:

• SERP results for keywords in the title and description of the show

• Niche Keyword phrases placed in the chapter breakdown of your show

• Episodes being embedded in other web content like blog posts or directories

• Suggested content viewers see after watching or listening to content on the same topic

That’s simply so much more surface area for discovery than usual podcast platforms.

Don’t forget that at any point YouTube can grab your episode and promote it thousands of new listeners really freakin fast — something that happened to Igor’s recent episode of the Do it in Public show.

YouTube videos are simply easier to share

I only discovered this small-but-annoying problem once I had my show up and running. Because everyone uses different players to listen to their favorite shows, it’s hard to just share an episode — unless you set up a dedicated website for your show.

You can see this play out on social media with even the big-time shows. They’ll drop a new episode and then the links are something like: find us on Apple podcasts at LINK.COM or Spotify at LINK.COM. 

As you can see, now some just add YouTube to the list of links — so this doesn’t completely solve the problem.

But on the whole, a show from YouTube is very easy to embed and play across nearly all social media platforms (notable exception for Instagram here).

And most blog CMS tools and sites will easily embed YouTube videos inline with no headaches. While many of the Podcast hosting platforms offer embeddable widgets or iFrame players, none are as universally welcome as YouTube’s. 

Finally, after you put all that work into recording and editing a 15-90 minute show, you’ll want to make some viral short clips to highlight the best moments with each guest (or solo rant). For that, tools like ClipWing work great — just import straight from a YouTube link and select the best sections to make Reels, Tiktoks, or YouTube shorts.

Evergreen content and engagement

Have you ever casually scrolled through an engaging comment section under a Podcast episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify?

Yeah, me neither. Aside from begging asking your listeners to leave a glowing review of your podcast as a whole — there’s just not a lot of engagement with the audience on traditional podcast platforms. 

YouTube can generate quite a lively comment feed depending on the topic of your show, how many viewers you get, and how spicy your hot takes are. There’s also the rarely-used clip feature that lets viewers share a short clip from your show, it could be refined and grow in use in the future. 

Anyway, there’s at least the opportunity to engage on YouTube — and that’s totally lacking on other podcast apps. A few have tried to make podcast listening more social, but since the listening audience is all split up among their preferred apps it’s slow going to get enough engagement.

Okay, but let’s get back to evergreen content. 

The fantastic thing about YouTube’s suggestion algorithm is that you can keep getting fresh views on shows long after they’re published. If you’re ranking well for search keywords and phrases, an episode can keep bringing in new eyeballs (and subscribers) for years.

Unfortunately, regular podcast platforms rarely provide this long-term discovery. They’re great for distributing your content to current subscribers, but probably won’t show up high in SERPs down the road.

If you’re starting a new show and don’t have a huge audience on some social platform to generate initial interest — you’d probably be better off targeting evergreen content and adopting the common content clustering approach that works well for blog and website content. I write more about that in this post.

Downsides of putting your podcast on YouTube

After all that, are there any downsides to publishing on YouTube? Well, just one. It seems like audio-only shows don’t get a ton of traffic, even if they’re very popular, established shows on traditional podcast platforms.

So to get the most out of your potential audience on YouTube, you’re going to want to do video shows. And that can be a lot more work and upfront cost in terms of equipment, editing software, etc. 

Even if you have an audio-only podcast, you can submit the RSS feed to YouTube and see how it does. 

Later we’ll share our setups and tool stacks that Igor and I use to make remote interview style shows without breaking the bank. It’s easier than you might think and I’m a firm believer that compelling content and brute-force effort can bring your show to a lot of viewers.

So, when are you starting your show?