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The Art and Science of B2B Video Podcasting: Lessons from 75 Shows
25 Plays1 hour ago
Is your B2B podcast ready for YouTube? In this episode of Marketing Spark, I’m joined by Sergey Ross and Joe Newton from Sway One, who created a report that analyzed 75+ B2B video podcasts to uncover what’s working, what’s not, and what the best shows are doing differently.
We talk about why YouTube has become the top discovery platform for podcasts, the essential strategies to optimize for engagement, and why executive-led shows get 6x more views. Whether you’re just launching your show or looking to grow faster, this episode is your tactical blueprint for B2B video podcast success.
Topics include:
- Why B2B brands can’t ignore YouTube anymore
- How to structure and format your show for better discoverability
- Tips on thumbnails, titles, and short-form content
- How to measure ROI (without obsessing over downloads)
- The rise of executive-hosted podcasts and commentary-style formats
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Transcript
Introduction to Video Podcasting and Trust Building in B2B
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Mark Eastmark. Let's talk about something that's transforming how companies build trust, reach decision makers, and stand out in a sea of sameness.
YouTube's Role in Podcast Discovery
00:00:22
Speaker
Video podcasting.
00:00:23
Speaker
For years, podcasts have been a go-to content format. But the game has changed. YouTube has emerged as the number one discovery platform, thumbnails have become mini billboards, and the smartest B2B brands are turning each episode into a month's worth of high-impact content.
Meet the Experts: Sergei Ross and Joe Newton
00:00:42
Speaker
this episode, I'm joined by Sergey Ross and Joe Newton from Sway One, who recently published a comprehensive report analyzing 75-plus B2B video podcasts, from bootstrap startups to global enterprises.
00:00:56
Speaker
They break down what the top shows are doing differently, why executives should absolutely be hosting your podcast, and the biggest mistakes companies make when they hit record. If you're thinking about launching show, revamping your current one, or want to understand how video podcasting fits into a modern B2B content strategy, this conversation will give you a front row seat to what's working and what's next.
00:01:19
Speaker
Let's dive in.
Why Video Podcasting is Essential for B2B Brands
00:01:20
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Mark. Great to you be on the show. Let's start with the big picture. Why has video podcasting become such a powerful tool for B2B brands right now?
00:01:32
Speaker
And how is it different from traditional podcasting or content marketing? We've seen the trends of platforms going into video. More people could sue video. It started with TikTok. It probably started before TikTok.
00:01:43
Speaker
The video was the format that a lot of consumers preferred to their news content and podcasts couldn't be left behind. We've seen that more shows prioritize video.
00:01:55
Speaker
And that means when we started with podcasts, a lot of them were audio only. People were uploading YouTube sometimes and they had artwork and just an audio and there's nothing happening.
00:02:05
Speaker
But because the new video era coming and LinkedIn pushing videos quite hard, especially recently, having a video when you're recording a podcast made a lot of sense.
00:02:16
Speaker
Now we're seeing more podcasts, not just recording podcasts. an interview in the video format, but they're also using short videos. They are creating in trailers. They are creating mashup this sequences so from an interview.
00:02:29
Speaker
The viewers want that. gets much more engagement and because it gets stronger distribution. Those are the primary factors ah based on the trends. From a discoverability point of view, YouTube is so much stronger than the dormant Spotify podcasting platforms. It gives the host, the podcaster a lot more reach, but also it's much easier from a consumer's point of view to find and discover new podcasts and new shows, new episodes.
00:02:54
Speaker
When it's on YouTube, that whole discovery phase of Discovering a new show, discovering a new episode, finding a cool episode with a cool guest is just so much easier on YouTube. Whereas on Spotify, you already have to know a show exists to search for it.
00:03:08
Speaker
That t piece is just so different on these older podcast platforms. It is interesting. a lot of the podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis are now heavily promoting their YouTube channels.
00:03:18
Speaker
Some of them, for example, Pod Save America, is putting content exclusively, or at least they're doing special content on YouTube that you can't get in the audio format. But it is interesting to see the pendulum swing from audio to video.
00:03:36
Speaker
It leads me to my next question. Your report shows that YouTube outperforms Spotify and Apple Podcasts for podcast discovery. The $64,000 question is, why do you think many BDB companies are still ignoring YouTube as a primary channel?
00:03:52
Speaker
ah Just as a quick response to so you'll have a great answer here as well. I think it's a black box. YouTube, for a lot of B2B marketers, is this scary channel still where it's just seen as bible a black box. Cultural and mindset things, those are the hardest to overcome because YouTube has been treated in a certain way for many years.
00:04:09
Speaker
Why would it be tur treated any differently? YouTube is treated by B2B companies as almost like a hosting platform. You put it out and then you can embed it on the website and that's how it was. Why would it be any different?
00:04:20
Speaker
Typically, B2B companies are notorious for moving a lot slower and making changes. Another factor, what Joe said, and one of the really key ones is expertise. YouTube requires a lot of expertise. It requires a lot of understanding how it works.
00:04:35
Speaker
If you're not investing a lot of time into it, then it's just a very surface level understanding. We're going to upload the video. We're going to put a thumbnail, probably repurposed from a webinar. Then we're going to put a title. similar to what we put on the website.
00:04:47
Speaker
Not enough time have passed and not enough expertise for companies to view YouTube differently. But that is starting, thankfully, to change because of this massive discoverability algorithm and the fact that YouTube accounts for 60% of searches on Google.
00:05:03
Speaker
And the most important thing, and we will talk about it more right now, majority of B2B search terms are open. Nobody occupies them. If you put videos with your industry terms and somebody searches for them, you will be number one, number two, number three.
00:05:18
Speaker
That is free. That's 60% of Google search. That means people search for you. They will find that video. They will find that this is the content. How much companies right now are spending on paid? A lot.
00:05:29
Speaker
but Right now, this is free. If done correctly, this is free if for now. It could be up for grabs. A lot more folks need to look at that and we could post general numbers that this is available.
00:05:41
Speaker
Start making this change. Joe, let me circle back on your comment about YouTube being a black box. Many people from the outside looking in see YouTube as a very user-friendly platform.
00:05:54
Speaker
Video is accessible. Why is YouTube a black box? What don't people or B2B marketers understand about YouTube?
00:06:05
Speaker
One of the biggest mistakes they make when they approach YouTube, to and as Sergei said, they simply see it as a hosting platform. I think a lot of it stems and initially from no one really knows what success looks like on YouTube. There's no kind of, at least I've not seen any stats, there's no like industry benchmarks of what does a good view count look like? What does success look like? What does the downstream funnel metrics look like from YouTube? is When you think of YouTube and B2B, and we reference that these guys all the time, Ahrefs and I think probably Slidebean are another good example, but there's like virtually zero examples of B2B companies that have made YouTube work.
00:06:42
Speaker
I think a lot of it just stems from no one knows what good looks like. that's a problem. But also there's a perception barrier in people's minds, but particularly marketers, right? When they look at YouTube, they look at Mr. Beast and all of these massive, big consumer creators. I think it in a way scares them off and it makes them think, oh do we have to go to that level to make YouTube work?
00:07:02
Speaker
If that's the case, we have no idea where to even start with that. I think it's benchmark and then also this perception barrier that exists. You make an interesting point because you could argue that podcast analytics have been a black box for years. If you looked at the way that many B2B companies assess the value of their podcasts, you could say subscribers or downloads or maybe conversions, but I don't think that was a metric that was...
00:07:31
Speaker
valid. A lot of marketers leaned into brand awareness or the fact that they could take a podcast, particularly with video, and they could repurpose it into blog posts and LinkedIn and Twitter.
00:07:44
Speaker
The way to quantify the success of a podcast was part science and part art, part numbers and part guessing.
00:07:55
Speaker
How do we establish as marketers, how do we establish benchmarks for the success of podcasts, both audio and video?
00:08:04
Speaker
I think it's so unique. It may not be an industry standard or an industry benchmark that a lot of marketers are looking for. It may not exist. It doesn't often exist with top of the funnel content that is purely brand that is difficult to attribute.
00:08:18
Speaker
Some of it is about the views of subscribers. Some of it is around relationships. Some of it is around... things that are happening behind the scenes that you cannot see, what kind of benchmark we could put behind it. it It's very difficult.
00:08:32
Speaker
There are probably some numbers that could be put together, meaning if you're getting 100 views on LinkedIn and if you're in this B2B industry, that's pretty good. But that is also very relative and could also be proven wrong because if you're getting 100 people from LinkedIn,
00:08:47
Speaker
outside of your target audience, that benchmark is completely irrelevant. Let me be devil's advocate because in my world, ah ROI matters. Everything is measured. We all live in front of our dashboards.
00:08:58
Speaker
If you're a B2B marketer and you say to your CEO, I want to do a podcast, And they respond, that's great. How do we measure success? And you say, there's no benchmarks. It's really hard to quantify, but believe me, it's gonna be a good thing because we're gonna do the podcast and then we're gonna take all this video and we're gonna cut it up into clips and we're gonna rate blog posts and link posts and gonna be great.
00:09:19
Speaker
It all sounds good. at Podcasts can be a valuable asset. But the end of the day, if I'm looking at making an investment in a podcast and I'm the CEO or the CFO and you as a marketing leader can't tell me the ah ROI, I'm going be very reluctant to...
00:09:37
Speaker
give you the green light. But obviously, a lot more companies are leaning into podcasts. The question is, are they ah leap of faith? The management team saying, yeah, okay, you can do it. I'm not sure whether you can measure but it sounds like a good thing.
00:09:51
Speaker
Mark, you're right. That's a good point. But I was actually answering a only very specific question. I was only talking about industry benchmarks, not the justification for the podcast. so there's a big difference between what am I going to get as a CEO versus answering the benchmark parts because what you're going to get is not that difficult to quantify. You're going to get certain relationships built with your key accounts that you're looking to sell to.
00:10:15
Speaker
That's one. Two, you are going to get very strong distribution with your ICPs over LinkedIn, over website, over YouTube, over email. We're going to get sales enablement assets in the hands of our team.
00:10:26
Speaker
We're going to get a lot of really high quality value content pieces that right now the content team is working on. That's not super difficult to justify. And those will be seen. How are we going to track that? We're going to look at the views.
00:10:37
Speaker
We're going to get the reaction. We're going to ask our audience that's following us. And in a sales conversation, how did you hear about us? What do you think about the podcast? It's not going to be necessarily that difficult to track.
00:10:49
Speaker
Now, it's not going to be ah based on Google Analytics. There's not going to be this mega chart, but but it will be trackable and it will be justifiable. and That is one of the reasons a lot of B2B companies are running a podcast and they will be running a podcast and they're looking to invest more.
00:11:03
Speaker
But specifically about industry benchmarks, That's slightly different. I'm going to be the bad cop here and suggest that a lot of the things that you suggest around quantifying the success of a podcast are what I would call soft metrics as opposed to hard metrics.
00:11:20
Speaker
If I'm a marketer and I'm very data focused, I'm looking at conversions. I'm looking at all kinds of KPIs. What you're suggesting is you can create some content. You can ask customers whether what they think. And it all sounds really good. I love podcasts. Don't get me wrong.
00:11:35
Speaker
I'm a big advocate for the power of podcasts and their ability to spawn lots of great content, but the measurement tools are not super focused. I'm not going to look at a podcast dashboard and go, oh my God, look at these arrows going up. Look at these arrows going down. How do you justify that? and What's important and just a double tap on it.
00:11:53
Speaker
And maybe this isn't the hard data metric that everyone's looking for, but but this is why that when we talk with clients, the first things we speak about are guest relationships that turning to clients.
00:12:04
Speaker
That's a really critical thing for a lot of clients that we work with is that the podcast has becomes a very good tool to invite key prospects, invite key partners. That's a really clear metric that we lead with.
00:12:15
Speaker
What a lot of execs and founders care a lot about now is building a personal brand because they realize the value. And what we've seen is that a podcast is the best way. to enable you to build a personal brand. It's a really frictionless way to create a lot of content to position your exec as the key man, key woman in the industry.
00:12:32
Speaker
It's starting with the things and the outcomes that really matter to them. If we can show of a podcast that we've been able to convert 20 guests that have been in the show, five have converted into into key accounts. That's a key metric for a company. So it's leading with things like that.
00:12:45
Speaker
Let me switch gears and put on my good cob habit and say that there are lots of marketing channels that cannot be quantified in a very specific way. I'm working with somebody and we're leading it hard into radio ads and billboards.
00:13:01
Speaker
You can't directly measure the success of a radio campaign or a billboard campaign. You can measure how many cars drive past a billboard, but you can't measure the impact. ah You can't correlate billboard viewage to actual activity unless you use some specific yeah URL. There's lots of ways that marketing can be measured and there's lots of ways that it can't.
00:13:19
Speaker
but they're all part of the marketing mix. Let me shift gears. You mentioned the role that executives and the C-suite can play in not only justifying the existence of a podcast, but as your report suggests, the role that executives can play when they host a podcast, when they host a podcast, once that jumped out was that podcasts with executive hosts get six times more views Why do you think that executive or expert-led hosting is so effective?
00:13:51
Speaker
Why are many companies still hesitant to put their leaders on camera? Because they have the best thoughts. It comes down to that a lot of the time. Not always, but in most B2B companies, the founder, the exec, the C-suite, they have the leading force in the industry. They have definitely the leading force for their company. They own the narrative. They understand the narrative.
00:14:11
Speaker
Likely better than anyone else in the company. By nature as well, not always the case, but founders, even if they're quite introverted, do tend to be good storytellers and communicators. I think it's a combination of those two things, but most importantly, they have the substance and the thoughts we've seen over the years, a lot of podcasts inside companies that have been started by the marketing lead, the marketing manager, the content manager, which they tend to not perform too well because fundamentally that person doesn't really have the insights and the expertise to, to, to be able to drive a conversation for 30, 45 minutes.
00:14:43
Speaker
I'd also suggest that one of the weaknesses of executive led podcasts is they're not good interviewers. They're good leaders. could be They're good talkers, but they just don't know how to shape our conversation.
00:14:57
Speaker
I've spent 30 years asking questions as a reporter, podcaster, marketer. I know what questions to ask. I know how to drive a conversation. Of course, I'm blowing my own horn, but conversations, interviews are hard. You have to listen. you have to be prepared.
00:15:12
Speaker
Sometimes it's a skill that you don't have, or you have to learn it. You could have executives in an interviewee role or in a host role, which is a demanding and difficult one. But if you have them on the show with somebody else, that that works well too.
00:15:26
Speaker
You're totally right. The role of the host is extremely difficult, it picks it very hard, and not a lot of executives could do that. But if they are acting as as a thought leader who knows a lot and it is great to listen to, but they're not necessarily moderating in the conversation, that's a good format.
00:15:40
Speaker
One format we've seen work really well, particularly execs is more of a co-hosted commentary style, which we've mentioned in the report. It's not necessarily where there's someone interviewing anyone in particular. It's just two co-hosts talking about something that's happening in the industry.
00:15:55
Speaker
And it's more of, it comes across more of just a conversation between two people versus just like the typical podcast interview style. It's also. Understanding the format that you're using and not always going to the interview format if you're using an exec style host podcast.
00:16:12
Speaker
I want to follow up on that. Joe, you mentioned in terms formats, that podcast using multiple formats, interviews, roundtables, commentary, have nearly two times the virality.
00:16:23
Speaker
What would you give advice to companies that are stuck in that single format rut? Don't go too crazy too early. Warg, before you run, we always say this when we chat, when we talk to clients, there's like a podcast scale of difficulty, right? On this end, you have the standard interviewing is very hard, but if we're just running a very simple question answer interview, that's probably a this side of the scale. And then we have on the other side, and a narrative based podcast.
00:16:47
Speaker
That's really difficult to execute. so I'd say take it in steps. If you've currently, if you're currently running interview standard show, which is what most companies do and have been doing introduce just every couple of episodes at a panel or introduce ah a co-hosted, bring on your exec or bring on your CEO or founder and just do a more of a co-hosted style for an episode.
00:17:05
Speaker
It's slowly introducing it. I'll give you an example just to make it a bit more tangible. Over a year ago now we were working with a company called SeedTag. And they're in the ad tech publisher space. A lot of the episodes we were doing initially were just interview. Dal, the host, he was like the VP of partnership for CTAG.
00:17:20
Speaker
We were just doing a lot of interviews and that was the typical style. Slowly over but every month, we started to introduce a Just basically a a state of the industry episode. So we'd bring on someone else in SeaTag in the company, and it would basically be this co-hosted commentary style where they talk about something that was happening in the industry. I remember one episode, it was the whole Barbie and Oppenheimer thing.
00:17:42
Speaker
We had a whole episode between two people inside SeaTag talking about it. And it wasn't as much of an interview. it was just two kind of people who were friends talking about something that's happening. That's a real life example of what it looks like.
00:17:55
Speaker
Great advice. I wanted to talk to you about frequency. a lot of companies that launch podcasts do a bunch of episodes. They launch the podcast. They publish weekly for a very short period of time. Then it's biweekly and then it's monthly.
00:18:15
Speaker
Then you look at the podcast and it hasn't been updated in months. They've lost their enthusiasm and maybe resources or just trying to find the right guests. They run out of steam and that's just a recipe for disaster.
00:18:28
Speaker
I wanted to talk about the ideal cadence for a podcast. And you're finding that publishing biweekly actually delivers better engagement than weekly episodes.
00:18:39
Speaker
It's a classic less is more approach to marketing. Why do you think that less frequent publishing wins? How should teams balance quality versus consistency?
00:18:53
Speaker
Ideal cadence is the one that companies can maintain. This is the most important thing. if You could maintain the cadence. This is the right cadence. This is a really good way to think about that.
00:19:03
Speaker
In the report, the fact that the biweekly shows do better than the weekly, just quality, preparation, quality, production, quality of conversation, quality of assets that are created after that, slide decks, short clips, things like that.
00:19:18
Speaker
that It's done better because there are more resources that have been spent. The reasons that companies are abandoning their shows is because they have not been clear on, or they didn't quite understand the process.
00:19:32
Speaker
They don't have somebody who is clearly communicating the expectation and they did not define what that looks like. What is this experiment? How long is this? Is it going to last six months? Let's see how many episodes we we can do. Let's see what resources do we need. Let's go and get it done.
00:19:48
Speaker
A lot of times it's just, let's see what happens. It's a very dangerous thought. If we are treating a podcast as an experiment, every good experiment needs to be defined when it starts, when it ends and what does it look like?
00:19:58
Speaker
If a company is doing an episode and it gets zero results, which is very unlikely, if it's done well, then let's stop. But most of the time it's because their expectations have not been defined, the cadence have not been defined, and their production and time requirements from the team have not been properly discussed. This is a very common thing with executives when they say they will do it, but then naturally they don't because they don't have the time.
00:20:22
Speaker
We talk a lot in the industry about the one-page marketing plan. and what that should include. But let's look at the one page podcast strategy plan. I'm a company. I want to launch a podcast. I need to make sure the key elements are in place. So we're all aligned in terms of what we're doing, why we're doing this, what success looks like. What would that one page podcast strategic plan look like? What would need to be on it so that the C-suite and the marketing department and the sales department all aligned on how we move forward.
00:20:56
Speaker
It will need to include the most basic things. How long are we going to do a podcast? At least six months. How many episodes can we produce? What is that the simplest way to get started?
00:21:07
Speaker
Like Joe was talking about that we don't go too hard into you experimenting. Who's going to be producing it? How we're going to distribute that? Who has enough time to actually be on the podcast? If this format that we are defining right now, let's say we're doing an interview with guests, if this format doesn't work for some reason, it takes a little bit too long, what is the other format?
00:21:27
Speaker
What is the contingency option, just given the fact that so it may not work exactly the way you expect? The podcast concept may not work exactly as you expect. Is there something else we could do? But it's about the production.
00:21:38
Speaker
It's about the production requirements. It's the frequency, it's the theme of the show, it's the concept of the show. It is who's going to be a part of that, who's going to be producing it, what would be the calendar look like, the key points of making it happen, and the timeline.
00:21:52
Speaker
ah How long are we going to spend before we actually get ready to launch? Then after we have launched, what we're going to do? What will be the set of actions? Who's going to be doing them? Probably not going to fit on a one pager, but with AI, I think we probably should manage. One absolutely critical thing to nail up front is the general overarching theme. If you look at most B2B podcasts, this is where it really is missed.
00:22:13
Speaker
You want to be careful with a theme you don't want to box yourself in too early. To Sergei's point, there's going to be experimentation. we might not just stick to one format. We might have to shift from an interview to something else. You don't want to make it too boxed in from day one. How I've always viewed the power of podcasts a really good way to share your company's point of view and narrative, right?
00:22:31
Speaker
What you don't want a podcast to turn into is something where, particularly if it's an interview where the guests just drive the narrative and the conversation, which is what a lot of podcasts turn into. I think being really clear upfront about what's the over, what's the overarching narrative and theme. If we are going to pick guests to come on, do they align with that like narrative and theme? Right. I always think about that with our podcast video that we run for Sway.
00:22:54
Speaker
I'm not going to invite someone unless they clearly align with how we think about the industry and the types of topics we want talk about. I think just being very clear with that upfront and not letting the podcast divert too far away from that clear theme. In my opinion, that's where it goes wrong with podcasting.
00:23:10
Speaker
We've talked a lot about strategy and goal setting and quantifying success. I want to spend the last part of this conversation looking at the mechanics. Let's get in the weeds. so You mentioned earlier they were in the podcast about the fact that a lot of marketers don't understand YouTube and the way it works when it comes to podcasts.
00:23:31
Speaker
In the report, you talk a lot about optimization, titles, metadata, thumbnails, timestamps. What does a fully optimized B2B podcast episode look like?
00:23:44
Speaker
What are some of the simple steps that brands can take to quickly improve their current setup?
00:23:51
Speaker
We'll assume that we could improve the previous episodes that exist, plus we'll improve the ones that are coming up. What should they improve? Thumbnails and titles. Those are two the most important things on YouTube. but They need to be optimized.
00:24:02
Speaker
When we talk about the title that is YouTube, it needs to have a certain structure. It needs to have a certain point, strong opinion, capture and attention, and he needs to have some industry terms that you could rank, as we've discussed earlier.
00:24:14
Speaker
And the tide of the thumbnail... And the thumbnail he is YouTube optimized. A lot of B2B companies use titles from a webinar or from banners from LinkedIn, and they put them on YouTube. Usually people are very small. and There's a lot of text that nobody reads.
00:24:29
Speaker
That's not good. There's a lot of good examples on YouTube of thumbnails that we could use. there's lots of There are a few podcasts that do well on YouTube. but Taking them as an example, applying that design language to a company is good.
00:24:41
Speaker
And he typically it means a very simple style of the of the thumbnail. B2B designers like to overcomplicate things. One thing you need for YouTube is actually remove that complexity because the whole purpose is for people to click on it.
00:24:54
Speaker
They're not going to stare at it like a painting. That's not it's not for that. The other part is fundamentals. Trailer, an intro, something that captures attention, something that has a sequence of highlighted moments at the very beginning.
00:25:07
Speaker
That would be really nice. That's nice to drive, to get people in. And then when the interview starts is preferably... It doesn't start with a predictably boring part of tell me about yourself, tell me about your job.
00:25:19
Speaker
It starts with a little bit something more interesting. So there's a little death structure. If it is one person interviewing another person. And then there's summary, there's an outro that summarizes the conversation or gives CTA to people of, hey, go to this place.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's one end card strategy, meaning that you're directing people to another piece of content after they finish watching this one. That could be another episode. It could be something else, but if one, just one specific, not two, not three, just one.
00:25:46
Speaker
And then description, title a description. And ah you also have the timestamps with square brackets. They really help a lot with navigation. Doing these things actually make a substantial difference on overall optimization of the channel.
00:26:00
Speaker
With YouTube always... working back from existing performing content that's already on the platform. A lot of B2B marketers, not just for podcasts, but with YouTube, with content they generally post on YouTube.
00:26:11
Speaker
They've not worked back from what's actually already working and what's already ranking. I think just spending the time to look at existing performing content in whatever industry or category niche that you're in and deciding to do a few episodes around those, as long as they do fit within what you want to talk about, I think it's smart just to kickstart the algorithm and to make sure that you are actually going after what people want to watch.
00:26:31
Speaker
If a company has a podcast, there's a couple of options. One is you go to an agency or a podcast specialist and they do everything for you. They produce it, do the thumbnails, the meta tags, the whole shebang, and that's great.
00:26:44
Speaker
If you're trying to do a podcast yourself, if a marketing team has the mandate to do everything in-house, Aside from YouTube as your distribution channel, can you recommend tools that B2B marketers should be using for recording, hosting, creating video clips, captions, anything in your toolbox that you could recommend?
00:27:07
Speaker
Obviously, the platform we're using right now, Riverside, use that for recording. The only thing I will know is that, and Sergei will definitely mention this, is that it's always better with podcasts to record locally. For quality purposes, like if, even if it's a virtual recording, generally it's better to put in a bit of extra work and just record locally on on the iPhone.
00:27:24
Speaker
The quality is going to be better and you're not going to face any issues that can happen as we know occasionally with these platforms. In terms of tools that I'd recommend, there's things like Descript, which can be incredibly helpful for pulling transcripts.
00:27:37
Speaker
i I would be careful about when things like clips and things like assets that you're creating from a podcast. I think there's a really cheap way to do it, which feels great. I've got 50 clips now that I can post on LinkedIn and I can post on shorts and great, amazing. and That's great. And that works. but i think For most teams, they would benefit from actually putting a bit more effort into some of the creative for the clips from the podcast. What we'll say on Opus, and this is perfectly normal, this depends on how certain companies think.
00:28:03
Speaker
And when they create ec clips on Opus that get one to two likes, let's see how that goes for a few months. and well We can chat after that. My point is that you have an interview and interviews are already quite a diluted piece of content. They're not super well choreographed because it's such a conversation.
00:28:18
Speaker
When you're cutting out certain pieces, they need to be really good. These are really good. and It's not just about, oh, I put this piece of content in the feed, not success. Not really, because we want to have consumption. So it needs to be a really good one.
00:28:31
Speaker
Just important to consider. yeah We could use AI tools like Opus. Maybe they do a little bit of help on picking the moments, but we haven't seen a lot of success on that. But it's just about whether this piece of content will be consumed or it was just going to be ignored.
00:28:46
Speaker
That's the critical part of podcasting for a company. A lot of companies and vendors, people in the space have pushed podcasting as a pure efficiency play. You do a podcast, you get 50 pieces of content off the back of it. Great.
00:28:57
Speaker
But if they're not being consumed, there's no exactly an efficient use of resources. How good are they? Because you could do we talked about it on our episode that we could do a thousand clips. That's awesome for look the next 12 months.
00:29:08
Speaker
But do they deliver? Like the quantity is great. They could be done at like a cheap cost. But do we really care about the cost? We don't really care necessarily about how much it costs. Is there an outcome that you could present to the CEO, to the VP of marketing and say, hey, this actually contributed to this pipeline?
00:29:23
Speaker
I've been doing my podcast for four years and my go-to tools have been Descript, which is amazing for transcripts, captions, ah clips. I clip everything myself. I don't rely on the robots to do it for me.
00:29:37
Speaker
Recently, I switched over to Riverside from Zencastr. Zencastr used to be a very simple, clean tool. And as they added more features, it got increasingly complex and less user-friendly. I couldn't figure out how to use it anymore.
00:29:51
Speaker
and switch over to Riverside. So far, so good. There's some things that I really love. Great tools can save you a lot of time and money. and Final question, looking ahead, where, this is the loaded question, the big picture question, where you think B2B video podcasting is going? What innovations or trends are you most excited about over the next, i don't know, 12 to 24 months?
00:30:14
Speaker
More companies will spend a lot more time really thinking through the actual podcast structure and content. They will bring in exp experts or even higher internally and spend more time on how do we actually make the conversation itself more engaging, the storytelling it, working on training the hosts better.
00:30:30
Speaker
I think the podcast itself is where I think we'll see a lot more. quote unquote innovation. Companies will try and just improve. How do you keep someone hooked from the start? How do we just get better ah moderating the shows? The YouTube fundamentals of creating engaging content that cooks you in, keeps you engaged and gets you to do something will be applied much more to B2B podcasts than ever before.
00:30:54
Speaker
Because so far before and now a lot of B2B podcasts have just been created. The first step it's done is created, it's published with not much regard to fundamentals of the content consumption and how people consume it. Do they click on it?
00:31:08
Speaker
Do they stay engaged? Do they really like the conversation? How's the theme? Is the guest related to this whole, to this whole situation? Maybe it's not even a guest. Maybe it's something else.
00:31:19
Speaker
A lot of these things have not been done and the learning curve is high and it's understandable, but we are going to see more principles of good content that are not that different to Netflix or movies.
00:31:29
Speaker
Virtually every YouTube creator who's successful will use us. It will be applied to B2B podcasts. And we're going to see that probably shorter episodes, more variations on formats, more engaging, more fun to listen to, better produced, certainly better produced. That's going to take a bit of time.
00:31:46
Speaker
And obviously YouTube, it will be on YouTube. It will be better optimized because right now you could occupy your niche with industry terms for free. It's a great time to start. Final, final question.
00:31:57
Speaker
Where can people learn more about you, Sway? and get their hands on the report that
Conclusion and Report Access
00:32:03
Speaker
you just published. Follow both of us on LinkedIn. The report is on our new video first resource hub on the site, which again, we can have the direct link for after this episode when it goes live.
00:32:13
Speaker
So people can go and check it out. Really in-depth report. It's 30 pages. There's 10 unique insights that we gathered within it. I think for anyone starting a podcast, actively has a podcast in B2B as a marketing leader, I think it will be really valuable.
00:32:25
Speaker
Thanks, Sergai and Joe, and thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, subscribe by Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review if you like what you heard.
00:32:38
Speaker
Marketing Spark captures the stories, insights, and strategies of B2B SaaS founders and marketing leaders. I'd love to hear from you if you're a CEO, entrepreneur, or marketing leader with a unique perspective or an interesting interesting journey or story to share. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or visit marketingspark.co to get in touch.