There’s much more talk about putting podcasts on YouTube lately than ever before. Many podcasters ask, “Do I need to put my podcast on YouTube?” You don’t need to. Plenty of podcasts thrive without distributing their podcast to YouTube. But if you are a time-strapped or introverted indy podcaster and want a presence there, there’s one tool that can do this for you easily: Streamyard’s pre-recorded live streaming.
What’s a Pre-recorded Live Stream?
Streamyard is a live-streaming program. Yes, that’s true. But Streamyard’s “live streams” include regular live streams AND pre-recorded live streams. Yes, that’s a thing. With pre-recorded lives, you can upload pre-recorded videos to YouTube as if they’re live. This includes both motion and static image videos for your podcast. This energetically lower-stakes version of live streaming has a lot of advantages.
I’ve been using Streamyard to live stream my podcast interviews and events since I was a guest speaker for International Podcast Day in 2019. And during 2022’s round of National Podcast Post Month, they’ve become a sponsor of my podcasts.
Why Not Upload My Podcast Videos Onto YouTube Manually?
Great question. The answer lies in the thing that is the most difficult to get in podcasting: engagement. Yes, you can get comments on any podcast video uploaded to YouTube. But, if you go pre-recorded live on a regular day and time each week, you may get chat room engagement as well. In fact, some podcasters publish pre-recorded live videos and hang out in the chat room with the viewers. This puts less pressure on the speakers and the technology.
As someone who has an active global community, I like the timezone advantage that comes with these pre-recorded live streams. Think about it. You can go live when you’re asleep and attract the attention of viewers who are halfway across the world. As an English speaker, you have the advantage of using one of the world’s most understood languages, so go get that global audience!
How to Set Up Pre-recorded Lives on Streamyard
It’s just a few steps to get your pre-recorded video scheduled in Streamyard. The first four steps (below) are to select the CREATE button (1), then the LIVE STREAM option (2), followed by PRE-RECORDED VIDEO (3). Now you need to SELECT RECORDING (3). You can upload a video that was recorded elsewhere (4, right) or use a PAST BROADCAST on Streamyard (4). Broadcast is the term used even if you only record on Streamyard.
Note: Be sure to connect your Streamyard account to YouTube at least 24 hours before scheduling your first pre-recorded live.
As your video is loading, your screen will look like the below image. Be sure to enter all of the information so your video is optimized as much as possible during the live event.
YouTube Offers Massive Discoverability for Your Podcast Videos
Fact: YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. This is true, but not for the reasons you’d expect. Similar to podcasting, the days of “build it, and they will come” don’t work on YouTube. Now, if you want really want to maximize the audience potential on this platform, you need to do more.
The Basics of Getting Podcast Listener Attention on YouTube
Once your podcast videos are on YouTube, there are some basic things you can do to make them more likely to get recommended to viewers. Creating clear video titles, similar to the ones you’re writing for your podcast, is a great way to be found in YouTube searches also. Writing short, keyword-strong descriptions leading with value (NOT guest names) is a good idea also. Lastly, when you get comments, reply to them AND pin them to the video. You might do many of these things for your podcast audio version anyway, so it’s not a heavy lift to do them on YouTube, also.
Some Additional Steps for More Podcast Video Attention on YouTube
If you really want to up your podcast video discoverability, then you’ll want to spend some time implementing these items:
timestamps
keywords
thumbnails
end screen
They’re not hard to learn, but different than what you’re already doing for your podcast, so they will require new skills. Lastly, Tube Buddy is an amazing tool that creates a helpful overlay to walk you through YouTube optimization. It’s pure magic!
Ways to Fit Streamyard’s Pre-recorded Lives Into Your Podcasting Budget
I have to admit up front that the pre-recorded lives feature is not available on Streamyard’s free plan. But there are ways to make this tool fit into your budget.
There are a few ways you can make this expense more affordable.
Replace your current recording platform with Streamyard. Every recording platform has its own unique selling point, so if you’re thinking about switching platforms, please, compare plans and make an informed decision.
You can batch your podcast videos and pre-record live stream them once every few months instead of monthly. Streamyard plans are quite flexible that way.
If you can, purchase the annual plan versus paying monthly. The Basic Plan, which I’ve used for years, is $25 per month when you pay monthly but drops down to $20 per month when you prepay for the entire year upfront. Yes, that’s $240 at once, so you may want to start a funding program to get this covered before paying.
Sign up for their affiliate program so you can get cash payments when the podcasters you refer to them sign up for Streamyard.
What Other Platforms Can Streamyard Distribute My Podcast Videos To?
Streamyard makes it easy to distribute these pre-recorded live videos to more than YouTube. On the Basic Plan, you can stream 1 hour-long pre-recorded live videos to 3 different platforms, including multiple YouTube channels and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The Pro Plan extends that to 2-hour-long videos and up to 8 platforms for a single video’s live streaming.
I’m experimenting with pre-recorded lives a lot lately, and discovered that there is a scheduling limit of 5 pre-recorded lives at one time. But once those go live, it’s easy to schedule more. If you’d like to see how the pre-recorded lives look on these social media platforms, you can watch this Watch Me Work event that I did in our Podcraft community. You can join the community for free anytime. We’re a friendly bunch and would love to see you there.
Are Streamyard’s Pre-recorded Lives Worth It?
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been using these pre-recorded lives on a number of platforms during NaPodPoMo, including 3 YouTube channels. Distributing the episodes through pre-recorded lives to YouTube and the above-mentioned social platforms is the only promotion I’m doing for the podcast in November. Even so, you can see in the below chart the growth that is happening. I fully admit that I can’t draw an exact line between the YouTube pre-recorded videos to the podcast downloads. Yet. That’s another experiment for another time. In the current crowded social media landscape, focusing your podcast attention on YouTube feels like an effective alternative way to get more eyes and ears on your podcast.
So if you’re a time-strapped or introverted podcaster who wants to take some advantage of the YouTube wave in podcasting right now, Streamyard can help. It can be a central platform to record and distribution the video version of your podcast to YouTube and other social media locations. Yes, it’s expensive but it’s worth it.
Originally posted on November 24, 2022 @ 1:24 am