It is said that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, and being able to leverage the platform certainly promises great things for any business, brand, or online personality. But what about podcasts? The thing with podcasts is that they are just one step away from being marketable on YouTube. You just have to add in the video element and a bunch of other stuff, and you’re pretty much good to go! Today’s guest, Jeremy Slate, assures us of good things to come if you do it right. Join in and learn how you can implement the strategies he has used to become a successful podcaster on YouTube.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Fueling Your Podcast Growth On YouTube: Tested Tools And Strategies With Jeremy Slate

Welcome to the show. We’re always looking for different angles, views, and ways for you to work smarter and, if you’re an entrepreneur, for you to grow your business and increase your positioning in the marketplace. If you are an executive, how do you build your decision-making and thought leadership? Taking back your time is about working smarter and not harder.

I’m excited to talk to Jeremy Slate. We are going to talk about fueling your podcast on YouTube and the strategies that you can use. Also, for those of you who are executives and tuning in, we’ll be talking about how you can use YouTube and these tools to expand your thought leadership and engagement within your organization.

Let me tell you a little bit about Jeremy before I bring him on here. He is the host of Create Your Own Life Podcast, which studies the high performers of the world. He studied literature at Oxford University as well as holding a Master’s in Early Roman Empire Propaganda from Seton Hall University. His podcast was named the number one podcast to listen to by Inc. Magazine as well as Top 40 under 40 by Podcast Magazine. This guy knows what he’s talking about, and here he is.

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Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

What Makes A Podcast Great

It’s my pleasure. You’ve got a high-ranking podcast. That’s fantastic. I need to be on your podcast too, but we’ll talk about that later. For people who are tuning in, for people who have a podcast and don’t have one, what are some of the things that make a podcast great, like these high performers that you’re talking about? I would imagine, so that you can come back to this question too, that there are things that make a great podcast that can be filtered into everything we do.

If you’re looking from a production perspective, like something that sounds good and the video is good enough, it doesn’t have to be crazy good. That’s really important. If you’re looking at it content-wise, it makes a really good podcast. If it’s an interview show, being a great interviewer matters. It’s important because it creates a good flow for the conversation. It makes you feel like the conversation’s under control. That’s important.

For me, I’ve always looked at people who are good interviewers, and I try to see what they do well, like Larry King and Oprah, and people who have done a lot of interviews. I try to see what verbiage they use and how they handle other people. It’s really important to understand that. Also, as a guest, one of the most important things, and this is me wearing my host hat saying this, is people that aren’t ambiguous, if that makes sense.

If you’re going to really discuss the topic, if a guest is beating around the bush and you don’t get into the meat and potatoes of things, it can make it difficult. That’s important. Also, understanding from a host perspective, and maybe this person does a lot of media, what’s something they haven’t talked about or a way they haven’t talked about? Those are, to me, a few things that make a great conversation.

I agree. I want to come back to what you said when a guest is vague. I’m known to say, “Can you explain that? Can you give an example?” It comes back to what you were saying about the host and how the host can make a great show. You can take mediocre guests and make them great guests because of the way that you ask the questions and how deep you go, which is what I’m hearing.

Sometimes, it is asking a question multiple times. You’ll ask somebody the question and they’ll answer a question you didn’t answer or they’ll go in a different direction. You have to be okay with asking it again or asking it a different way, or be like, “Let me reiterate that,” or something like that. You’re right. That’s really important.

Also, from a guest perspective, sometimes, people try to send people to other places like, “Check out my YouTube channel or this page of my book,” or whatever it might be. You have to understand that when people are coming to a podcast, they’re coming for information, so make sure they get that. There’ll be time to talk about those other things. Sometimes, people can come to it with a me-first perspective, so you have to have those couple of things in place.

I love that. Let’s go back to what you said about the interviewer. The reason I keep coming back to that a little bit is because there are so many parallels with what you said about leadership. I want to make that clear because some people here don’t have a podcast, and maybe they’re not thinking about being a guest on a podcast. I want them to see how this is applicable in their life anyway.

What you said was the verbiage that people use. That matters in our lives and building relationships. Do you have anything that you’d like to add to that? You said verbiage. You said how they handle people and the kind of questions that they ask. Is there anything about leadership that you might add to that and the parallels if you put that lens on?

Leadership is also a big part of it. It’s courage. Even with the simplicity of asking a question multiple times, sometimes, people don’t have the courage to do that because it might get a little uncomfortable. Maybe someone doesn’t want to answer that question, so you have to be able to handle that situation. To me, courage is 1 of the number 1 things even to being a great interviewer. You’re maybe going to a place somebody doesn’t want to go, handling a topic they don’t want to handle, or maybe talking about a delicate subject. You have to have courage, and that underbeds everything you’re going to do.

Courage is one of the number one thing to being a great interviewer. Share on X

I love that. We talked about your podcast and some of the things you’ve seen. You talked about good guests and good hosts. We’re going to segue into how to use this and leverage it on YouTube. Is there anything else that you think is really important to talk about in terms of the content? People are there for the content. What keeps people is the style and the interviewer, but also that they’re walking away with something that’s valuable to their life. Is there anything else that you would highlight as it comes down to the content and how to best frame it for people?

It’s a simple thing, but it has to be entertaining. That’s a really important part of it as well. People want to be educated. They want to learn, but they also want to be a little bit entertained. When you’re looking at that, it’s also figuring out how you could bring your audience into the conversation, make them feel like a part of it, and make it a great, engaging thing. People want to be taught. They want to learn, but they want to be entertained. You have to remember that, too.

You need to tell us a joke because we need to be entertained on the spot or an interesting story of someone that you interviewed. How about that? We can take you off the hook.

I had a one-year-old at this point and we had gotten over potty training. I was on a Zoom call. My wife was at her mom’s that day, so I was watching the kid. She runs into the Zoom call and goes, “Dad, I pooped. You have to wipe my butt.” That was one of the single most embarrassing experiences on a podcast, but it was funny.

I’m sure that was very entertaining for people.

It added a little bit to it.

That opens up another question for me. Everybody’s on Zoom. Let’s say it’s not a podcast. Let’s say it’s a meeting. The same kind of thing happens. How do you help people realize, and it seems now more than ever, that it’s part of life? We get embarrassed about something like that, but at the end of the day, do you think anybody’s angry with you or thinks that you did a lesser quality, or whatever? We’re compassionate, I believe. Help people deal with when stuff happens.

The interesting part about it is we don’t realize the effect we create as a person. A lot of times, how we handle it is often how other people will respond to it. Instead of responding to it where we’re stressed and we’re like, “This thing  happened. I’m so sorry, everybody,” it could be like, “My kid’s funny?” It’s life. Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t make it feel weird for other people. It’s life. At the same time, it’s cool that a dad’s involved in a kid’s life and things like that. People will respond very often based on how you respond. Your response is really important.

 

I love that. I’m glad you repeated that because it’s worth repeating. That is true in every area of our life. You’re bringing us life bombs as well as podcast bombs.

It’s the energy you bring. If you bring up that you’re afraid, embarrassed, or whatever it might be, other people might feel like they have to feel that way. If you make it feel like, “We’re all cool here. Everybody’s good,” often, you’ll find other people will handle it the same way.

There’s no doubt that energy is contagious. Before we move on to looking at the YouTube side of things and how we can expand our podcast, what’s the most interesting podcast that you had? It could be a story that somebody brought up or that taught you something you weren’t expecting. Maybe you can share something like that with us.

I’m a huge Yankees fan. Though he wasn’t the most famous Yankees player when he was still playing, my favorite player was Nick Swisher. He was a right fielder for the Yankees when he played. He was a really great baseball player in high school. A lot of times, good baseball players are drafted right out of high school. You’re going to go and you’re going to play in the minors.

He registered for the draft, but there wasn’t a single team interested in him. His dad was a former pro ball player, Steve Swisher, so it was embarrassing. He was like, “My dad was a first-round pick and nobody’s interested in me,” or whatever it might be. He tries out for a bunch of different schools and ends up walking on at Ohio State University. He earns himself a scholarship. By the time he graduates, he’s also a first-round pick. He had to figure out how to earn it. It’s cool because when you look at people that you admire or they feel unreachable, you have to realize they’re people too. There are so many learning events from that.

YouTube Podcasting Strategies

You don’t realize what somebody went through to get where they are. There are so many things there within that little story that are super impactful. Maybe that’s a good segue. You said he had to figure out how to earn it. That’s the same with podcasting. You have to figure out how to earn it. Part of that is also how to market it and how to be found because you can talk to no one, and it can be a great podcast, but nobody’s listening. Let’s segue into that. How do we get found as a podcast? Apparently, you’ve got some amazing strategies around YouTube that I would love to hear about.

Number one, I’ve had an audio podcast forever. We’re closing in on ten years in this. When I first started, there were 240,000 podcasts out there. There’s somewhere around 3 million or 3 and a half million now. It depends on whose numbers you believe. It’s a lot harder to get found in audio, especially because a lot of these apps don’t have algorithms. It’s very hard to discover as a new audio podcast.

When you look at something like YouTube, YouTube is the number two search engine in the world after another Google property, and that’s Google itself. You’re opening yourself up to a whole bunch of search traffic. Search traffic is one thing, but you also need to know what gets looked for on these platforms. There’s how you get found, but there’s also how you have to look good enough so that when people find you, they stick around to watch it.

People get stressed out about, “What type of camera do I need?” or, “What type of studio setup do I need?” Your video needs to look good enough so that you look somewhat professional. You don’t need to go crazy. Most people who know how to use Zoom are in great shape. Audio quality is really important because you don’t want it to sound like nails on a chalkboard. You want it to be so that people can listen to it. It doesn’t mean you need to have a professional setup, but you need to look good and sound good enough. That’s important.

There are some great tools out there if you’re having trouble with that, sound especially. If you record sound files that don’t sound great, Adobe has a tool called Auto Enhance. You can take a file that sounds like it wasn’t recorded on a mic and it will make it sound very close to being recorded on a mic. It’s useful software. Use Adobe Enhance if you’re having trouble with that because audio is 1 of the number 1 things.

When you’re looking to be found on YouTube, you also have to know the rules of the game. There are three things that matter the most about getting a video found on YouTube. 1) The title, 2) The description, and 3) The tags. The title is the number one thing that matters. That’s what you’re titling an episode. There are a few different tools out there that you’re going to want to use so that you can score titles to know that they’re better. One is called vidIQ. It’s a really great tool. It’s a little bit on the pricier side, but it’s a great tool. Another one called Taja.ai. This will write titles, descriptions, and tags for you. It helps you put those things together.

When you’re looking at a video, there are three major statistics that matter. There are impressions, which are people who see your video in a search feed, Click-Through Rate or CTR, which are people who see it in the search and then click on it, and then Average View Duration or AVD. That’s the amount of time people are watching your video. If your Average View Duration is good and your impressions are good, but let’s say your Click-Through Rate is terrible, the simplicity of that is you need to change your thumbnail.

When you’re looking, impressions usually come from a really good title. This means that people see you in search of something or see more of you because you wrote a good title. If you see that you’re getting high impressions and getting people watching your video, but your view numbers aren’t where they should be, you’re going to look at what’s called your Click-Through Rate or CTR. With your Click-Through Rate, 6 to 10 would be great. If you’re below three, you want to consider making a better thumbnail.

There are a lot of great tools out there that can help you make a thumbnail. The new Canva is amazing. I’ve been a Photoshop user for years. I know a lot of people aren’t crazy technical, but the new Canva is incredible because a lot of the AI tools cut the learning curve like you wouldn’t believe. You can make different thumbnail options and see what works. They have some good templates, too.

I love Canva. When you say new Canva, I haven’t really used all the AI features in there, but I’ve been using Canva for years.

They’re amazing.

That’s good. I’ll have to go and play around with that. Canva is a great platform.

They’ve always had the silhouette feature where you can cut out somebody’s background. It’s gotten really good. They have one called Magic Eraser, which allows you to erase somebody from the image, and it’s great. They have some AI tools where you can type something to put into the photo, and it will bring it into the photo as long as it’s not a real person. You can’t say, “Put the president in my photo.” They’re not going to do that. It has to be very generalized things, like a man with a beard or something like that. The AI tools are incredible.

I have used the erase features and all of that and it’s amazing. What I sometimes do is I have to do it in Canva and bring it into PowerPoint because PowerPoint doesn’t have a good background if you want to do something there.

The upscaling feature is really good, too, because when you’re looking at an image for a thumbnail, the quality of a photo of a human being for a thumbnail is so important. We found the optimum number of people to have on there. It is two. If you have more than two people on a thumbnail, you’re not going to do as well. Sometimes, you could do well with 1 person there. Usually, 2 people is a number you don’t want to go more than. Upscaling means taking the image quality and taking it from grainy to good quality. That matters for what’s going to pop when somebody’s searching.

Let me ask you a question. I don’t do enough on YouTube. There’s so much potential there and I know it. Thank you. You’re kicking me in the butt.

I’m glad to help.

I’m going to need to do that. I used to post each individual video and then the YouTube podcast came around. They’ll take the RSS feed and pull it into YouTube. Is there any benefit? For the people who are using YouTube, should they be doing it twice? That only brings in audio and doesn’t bring the video.

I know there’s Spotify for podcasts if you host with them. You can host video podcasts there, and you would be able to pull a video podcast into the RSS feed. It depends on if you’re a podcast host to host video. A few of them do.  Libsyn has the ability. I don’t know what the pricing tier is or whatever it is that it looks like. It has to be a video podcast to pull it in.

I’ve seen a lot of shows. The James Altucher Show is one that I’m thinking of off the top of my head. What James does is he has the audio feed that gets pulled in as one part of it, but then he also takes the full video and does a video for it. The thing you want to consider is what people come to YouTube for. They come to YouTube to see a video. Audio might be great and you might have some people that want to listen to it, but most people are coming there to see a video, so you want to consider what their experience is.

 

A lot of great things. We’re coming to the end of our time. What’s the one thing that you didn’t say that’s super important for us to know about how to succeed on YouTube and use that as a tool for our shows?

The number one thing that I would say is if your video isn’t doing well, you don’t want to change the verbiage or the text very often. What happens is that often, YouTube will pick that up in their algorithm, and they’ll start looking for an audience. If you’re not doing well, the number one thing you want to do is change a thumbnail. You’re not going to have YouTube look at it again and figure out what to do, but that can change your conversion rate big time. If you can get more conversions, you’re going to get more views. That’s the number one thing that it comes down to.

If you can get more conversions, you're going to get more views. That's the number one thing that comes down to. Share on X

I’ll share a tip that someone gave to me. I was talking to them and interviewing them for their podcast. They said that what they’re doing, and I’m going to do this shortly, is they have the guests take 60 seconds at the end to riff a little bit, and then they use that as a YouTube Short to promote the podcast. They said they’re getting some good traffic with it so far. It’s a new thought.

That’s cool. There’s a tool I use that helps a little bit with that. It’s called Vidyo.ai. You can take a link to any YouTube video or upload your own video, and it will define all the shorts, chapters, and stuff like that, and you can score them from 0 to 100. I know there are other tools out there that do that, but the thing that this one does is it does the horizontal chapter size ones that are 6 to 10 minutes too. I like to use those for segments from a show. It’s such a time saver. It’s such a great tool.

That’s fantastic. I’m glad I mentioned something so that I can do it by getting some of these great tools. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your knowledge. Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you that you’re feeling in your heart and want to share with the audience?

I would say the amount of time you need to be willing to do this. A lot of people think if you’re not famous in three months, it’s not working out. If you’re going to start a podcast or if you’re doing a podcast, you need to be willing to be in this for 6 months to 1 year. You’re going to learn a lot in that period of time. You have to give yourself time to be found and give yourself time to find your own voice. You have to be in it for more than a couple of months to see how this thing’s going to go.

We can’t quit quickly. I talk about having a reset mindset. What that is is being able to dynamically reassess on an ongoing basis. That’s a perfect element. Whenever you start something new as you’re learning, you have to reassess early and often to see, “How do I need to tweak this? How can I be more efficient? How can my platform be better?” That’s a perfect way to build in that they can have their reset mindset in that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find out more about you and connect with your podcast?

The number one thing you need to do is to get your message out and get the word out. I want to help people do that, whether through a podcast or getting yourself out there in the right places. I put together a really great resource for your audience called Command Your Empire because I want to help people command their empires. You’re going to learn everything you need to know about basic online PR and podcasting so you can start getting your message out and winning. If you head over to CommandYourEmpire.com, you can get that for free. I want to help your audience out.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. I don’t care whether you’re a podcaster, a potential guest, or a leader in your organization. There was something here for you, for sure. Who knows? You might be in your organization, and this might have sparked you to have an idea because you’re passionate about something that you may do on the side. Why not create a podcast, get your voice heard, and get out there, or at least maybe be a guest and build your knowledge base and your following? With that said, this is the show. We’ll see you in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Jeremy Slate
• Create Your Own Life Podcast
• CommandYourEmpire.com
• Adobe Enhance
• vidIQ
• Taja.ai
• Vidyo.ai

 

About Jeremy Slate

Jeremy Ryan Slate is the host of the Create Your Own Life Podcast, which studies the highest performers in the world. He studied literature at Oxford University, as well as holding a Master’s in Early Roman Empire Propaganda from Seton Hall University. His podcast was named the #1 Podcast to Listen To by INC Magazine, as well as Top 40 Under 40 by Podcast Magazine.

Jeremy and his wife, Brielle, co-founded Command Your Brand—a new media public relations agency designed to help entrepreneurs share their message by appearing as guests on podcasts. He resides in Stillwater, NJ where he raises chickens and is a former competitive powerlifter.

 

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