90. Mastering YouTube for Podcasting: How to Boost Visibility and Engagement with JP Hightek

00:00:00
If you've been tuning into this podcast lately, you would know from episode 88, literally two episodes ago, that YouTube as a channel has been on my should do list for a while. The problem is, and has always been that while I conceptually know the things that are important on YouTube, things like having a catchy title and a thumbnail that stands out and to have attention reset elements throughout the video have just never really figured out how to do this effectively. For content like this podcast that is primarily audio first and you know, we've tried multiple things a few times. You can listen to those approaches in episodes 14 and 72 and we still stand behind those approaches. They are incredibly effective for businesses that have larger teams and more resources.

00:00:48
However, the more that we've been getting really, really disciplined about what we focus on given our very small team, the more we've realized that how we've approached YouTube in the past is not serving us, it's not serving us, our team and even you very well or effectively. In last week's episode, bono and I talked about the implementation step you may be missing, which is finding yourself implementation advisors for each of the tactics that you've prioritized. And so for this particular tactic for YouTube, instead of trying to figure it out myself, as I've tried to do in the past, I decided to reach out to someone I consider as my implementation advisor for YouTube and someone I invite you to consider as your implementation advisor as well. His name is JP from Content Creators University and in this episode he's going to help us think about a couple of things. One, how we need to view and approach YouTube as a traffic source and two, specific tactics we can implement to have YouTube work for us as entrepreneurs who podcast.

00:01:54
So if you've been hearing about this whole video podcasting thing that YouTube has made popular and you want to know how to make it work for you, then this is the episode you need. My name is Deirdre Shen, CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to repurpose and market your expert content. And this is the Grow my podcast show.

00:02:23
My name is JP Hatek. I'm a global breeding expert. I'm the founder of a media agency called Perfects and production space here in the state of Tennessee in the United States. And what we do is help businesses expand their brands network through podcasting, right? Which is something that I'm very passionate about as myself a content creator and I'm also the founder of the platform called Content Creators Universities.

00:02:45
I'm one of the first ones to start when YouTube actually launched several, several years ago. And so my goal when I started was simply to have fun. So for the folks that still follow me today, few of them have known me. When I started a long time ago and didn't know that I used to play video games. So my thing was just to stream my gameplay and just enjoy my time on YouTube, right?

00:03:09
And then while I was doing that, I was still in college, right, and I still was working on my company, but then I was a cinematographer. And so my thing is, okay, I just want to tell the story. And it dawned on me one year and I'm like, you know what? This YouTube thing, instead of me just playing video games and doing that, I can actually leverage YouTube to push my company, to grow my company, so more people can know about what I do as a creator, as cinematographer at that time. And so I decided, you know what, let me take this YouTube thing seriously.

00:03:42
So my very first channel, I was able to grow that to 10,000 subscribers, right? And I was like, oh, this is amazing. And then started a new YouTube channel, business focused YouTube channel. And my goal there was to really grow that one further than what I did the initial one. And so I worked very hard and I started posting video.

00:04:04
And here's the thing, I posted Bash record, right? So I was releasing a video every single day for almost one year straight. And at the end of that, I wanted to see if this YouTube thing could work. And at the end of that, I ended up with almost 100,000 subscribers. Actually, it was around 80,000.

00:04:23
And so after that, after the one year posting that I started releasing videos two or three a week. And so I was able to grow that to 126,000 subscribers. Sadly, YouTube algorithm, google accidentally deleted my YouTube channel. But I have screenshots and I have emails and all that. I actually have a video on my current YouTube channel sharing my journey and explaining that.

00:04:44
And so I've been always creating content, but the goal was to empower people with the use of technology. I've always been in technology. And my thing is, since I've grown my company from a cinematographer to a photographer, to a graphic designer and software developer, and then I hired my first employee in 2015 and drew my organization, my company, Perfect Zone Productions. And I'm like, you know what, I want to help other people do the same thing. So even though I lost that, YouTube, which was my biggest achievement, took me a lot of work, I decided to come back with a different philosophy because I've learned a lot of lessons along the journey and what not to do.

00:05:24
And I understand clearly what you need to do to grow your YouTube channel, because now I'm helping other professionals do the same thing through my company. And so that knowledge is what I'm using today to help creators establish their brand, right? Leveraging content creation. And now I have my new YouTube channel, which we're almost at 10,000 again right now. Holy moly.

00:05:46
Could you imagine that happening to you? I've heard horror stories of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok shutting accounts down. But this is the first I've heard of a YouTube channel being shut down. It would have been devastating, right? I'm going to be honest, I cried in my room.

00:06:03
I'm like, I can't believe know when you work so hard on something because it was years of work and hard work and then you turn on your YouTube channel to see the red thing that has been removed, anxiety and a lot of things start going through your head. Like what happened? Was I hacked? What did I do wrong? Where is my YouTube channel?

00:06:27
Is the browser messing up? Right? So I started jumping on different computers to see if it was the browser. No was not the browser. I tried different browsers know the same thing.

00:06:36
And so I tried to see if I was hacked, if I still had access to my Gmail account. Yes I did. And I'm like, let me see if I got any email. At that time, that specific moment I didn't receive an email and I was really stressed. I was freaking out in my head and I'm like, what happened?

00:06:53
Started watching other YouTube channels instantly YouTube videos on how to recover your lost YouTube channel. And I've watched pretty much that entire morning every video that you could find on YouTube about how to recover it. And pretty much some of them were telling were saying that, hey, the AI YouTube makes accidents and it might have been a problem or they may have updated this is important they may have updated their community guidelines. And whenever they do that their AI goes through and find channels that according to them, according to their AI do not fall within and they'll instantly remove it. Then when you message them and you appeal, they'll slowly manual review.

00:07:38
A human will go in and reinstate your channel. So I was like, okay, that gave me a little hope there. And so I took the time to go through YouTube's tos I read the whole thing and realized that I did not violate anything and I'm all right, I read their updated guidelines, community guidelines, and realized I had no strike, no issues on my channel. I did not impersonate anybody scamful or anything. I didn't encourage hate.

00:08:04
Those are the things that YouTube have in their guidelines, right? I did not incite hate or anything. So I'm like, okay, I'm compliant here, let me send them an email. And so I sent them an email. They responded back to me apologizing.

00:08:16
They said, okay, this seems to have been a mistake. Give us some time to review it and try to reinstate but here's the problem. They've never been able to reinstate my channel. I have four emails and I'm still waiting on that to happen. And I took a year off to be honest.

00:08:33
I was so turned off by the whole thing that I gave myself a whole year. And I said, I'm not sure if I was going to come back, but let me take a step back, let me take a breather, because I've been doing this for a while. Let me focus on my business and do other stuff and maybe I'll come back. And then after a year, I was like, you know what? Let me start back from scratch again, knowing what could happen.

00:08:54
I've learned my lesson the hard way, and now I'm going to put some things in place so that I do not go through the same thing anymore. Because let's be honest, I was making $3,000 a month from that YouTube channel, right? So it became a business for me. I was making real money, right? But here's the problem.

00:09:16
I did not establish a true business surrounding my YouTube presence. I just relied on YouTube, and I just relied on the traditional way of monetizing your channel. And that was it, right? But that was a mistake. That was a rookie mistake.

00:09:31
And that I've changed currently. And so I've came back and I'm all right, now I'm coming back. I know what could happen. I know what not to do. I know how to grow my channel fast, and I know what I can do to really help other people.

00:09:44
And my heart is just to help others. And so I created a content creators university on my YouTube channel, JP high tech. And now I've been going live every week, and I have a podcast to help others not fall into the same problem and make sure they're doing the right thing to protect their investment and their digital assets, which is crucial today. And because you have your own podcast, you're already ahead of the curve. Because a podcast is something you own, no one can take that away from you.

00:10:13
Yes, you might be removed from a distribution platform like itunes, but at the end of the day, you still have the content, and it's your prerogative to find other ways to distribute your podcast content. Was that something that JP considered as well when he made his? You know, I sat down, me and my team, I was analyzing what think, and I realized that a lot of creators, sadly, right, amazing creators out there, but they don't often think of the ownership of their content. And so whenever we think of ownership, we understand, for example, if you own something, then you're building equity. If you own a house, you're building equity, right?

00:10:52
And so you're expanding the value of what you have. And so as a creator, a lot of times we want to partner with brands, we want to partner with other companies, but we don't own anything. I didn't own anything when YouTube had removed my channel, right? All I own was a YouTube channel and I was making videos. That's it.

00:11:09
And so I'm like, okay, as a business owner, from that standpoint, what do I own, right? And so what are my assets that I can guarantee belongs to me and are part of my brand? And so one thing is, okay, my podcast, right? And that's one aspect of it, all right? I need to have a podcast.

00:11:27
I need to have a conversation away from this YouTube thing that I'm doing. But not only that, I own a business. And so the question came, how do I continue the conversation after a YouTube video, right? And so I always tell my clients that the conversation doesn't start and end whenever you show your face on YouTube. Actually, YouTube starts the conversation.

00:11:50
YouTube allows people, if you structure your podcast or your YouTube video properly, they will continue the conversation to see, okay, what offer do you have? Oh, you have a podcast. Let me go listen to the podcast. Let me now follow the podcast. Okay?

00:12:04
That led me to creating my TV application, right? My Roku TV application. My Amazon Fire TV application. Because I own those, right? So even if today anybody were to go and delete my YouTube channel, I'm not going to be freaking out at all because my followers are not just on YouTube.

00:12:21
They know where to find me. They're my email subscriber base. They have my TV application downloaded. They have my mobile application that I have on Apple App stores, JP high tech TV downloaded. And also they're following my podcast.

00:12:35
And so I'm now fine because I have an entire world of things that are supporting what I'm doing now. And so it's just a question of, okay, what are you doing? How are you doing it? And how are people actually engaging with your brand? Right?

00:12:49
Because people want a solution. And so I'm giving them that solution so they know naturally, all they have to do is go to these places. Google JP. High tech bam. Now they found me here to go.

00:12:59
And then to do that before, it was just on YouTube, which was very, very dangerous because I had all the eggs in one basket. And whenever that basket drops, you lose. Okay? Okay. I'm sure you picked up on it, too, on the fact that JP mentioned he also has his own TV and mobile applications.

00:13:17
What? So I had to do us a favor and ask him, what does that look like and how do we create those for ourselves? And JP was gracious enough to provide those insights, which I have made available to you as a bonus clip. So you know what to do. Head over to the show notes and grab that bonus clip after you've finished listening to this episode, because what JP is going to share now, you do not want to miss.

00:13:39
Many of us entrepreneurs love an opportunity, right? And let's be honest, being on YouTube is a big opportunity, which is why it has been on my should list for a long, long time. And perhaps for you you're ready to move it off your should list onto your focus list or it's already on your focus list and you want to know what specifically you need to be focusing on to make it work for you. If you're in either of those camps, you're in exactly the right place. So let's talk about how we entrepreneurs get onto YouTube and importantly, the approach we need to be taking when we're getting on or leveling up our presence on YouTube.

00:14:16
The first thing you want to do, and I tell my clients is why, believe it or not, even though we own our businesses at all times, a lot of people have a hard time defining why. A lot of times they'll tell me, well, everybody says it's the best place to be, right? Because Google owns YouTube and it's great for your SEO. That is something you can Google. Yeah, that's true.

00:14:37
But why do you want to get onto it? Because the reason I'm asking this question is YouTube is a primary platform for creating content, but it's not the only one available out there. There's several other ones, right? Like I mentioned, TikTok and all that Instagram, there's so many why specifically YouTube? Why?

00:14:53
Why is this important? Well, understanding your target audience, right. YouTube may not be the best place for you, or it may be everything you need, right. If the people, depending on the type of business that you have, those people like your target, your ideal clientele, they're not spending no time on YouTube. You starting a YouTube channel may not give you the return on investment that you think it would.

00:15:13
Now, it is a good thing to be there from a business SEO standpoint, but to make the money for the high conversion that we're looking for, it may not be the best place. So which is why it's important to understand step one, why right after you've determined that. Now number two, you want to determine what type of content I want to be creating, right? Is it going to be a podcast, a weekly podcast? Is it going to be live events?

00:15:37
Right? I just wrote a book, the Live Stream Blueprint, where I teach people how to leverage livestream to grow their business. That's just one strategy. Are you going to be doing mostly live streams or are you going to be mostly on shorts, reels? What type of content are you going to be creating that matters?

00:15:53
Because that will help you define a strategy for growth, right? Because you want to be discovered on YouTube. So the type of subject matter that you discuss, right, and the type of content you create for that subject matter matters for people to discover. You fast, right? But if you just go and do what everybody else is doing now, you're going to realize I'm just getting two views, three views, and it's been a year.

00:16:16
Well, the question is, do you have a strategy for the type of conversation you're having, right? Three. Right. What is your offer? A lot of times it is important to separate the goal here.

00:16:29
Are you starting you doing you to be an influencer or grow your business? That matters because if you're going to just be an influencer, which means something completely different, then the way you'll be doing your YouTube videos are different from if you own the business. Now, I'm not just talking about doing a YouTube video and talk about your product. No, right. There's a way of approach.

00:16:51
But do you understand why you're doing this and does that clearly reflect in the way you're creating your content? Because if I own a business, for example, I'll give you a tip. If I own a business, then the name of my podcast matters. Right. I always tell people you need to have a personal brand and a corporate brand and the name of your podcast must be a no brainer whenever somebody reads it.

00:17:13
That should empower your company that you have. I have a company called Content Creators University. I have a podcast called Content Creators University. Right. With JP.

00:17:23
High tech. And JP high Tech is my personal brand. Content Creators University is my corporate brand. So now I don't have to tell you what my company name is because my YouTube channel tells you instantly, right? My podcast tells you naturally.

00:17:36
And now what am I talking about? Content creation. See, it's a no brainer. But a lot of times we want to think too much and too hard and making the things too complicated. What happens is from a branding standpoint, it makes it hard for people to understand and follow you, right?

00:17:52
Because your company has a different name, your podcast has a different name, you have a different name. All that is not coming together. And from a business standpoint, they're a little confused on the type of offering you're giving them when they Google you. Because it's not if, it's when people will Google you, people will try to find you. And if they're having a hard time finding you, they will just give up.

00:18:13
And we don't want that, right? We want to make it easy for them to really connect with you and find your products and services and spend money with your organization. Okay. Did that give you a few things to think about? It definitely gave me plenty to think about.

00:18:25
But let's dig a little deeper because we're not just entrepreneurs, you and I. We're entrepreneurs who podcast, which means that some of us may be audio only or audio first, and some others of us might only have a Zoom or Squadcast or Riverside recording of the conversation we had with our guest. So how do we actually leverage YouTube and what they've termed video podcasting to its fullest potential? So video podcasting, I'm going to be honest, has become the holy grail for a lot of business owners to try to leverage organic traffic, right? And that's amazing because that's why we want organic leads and they want to validate those leads and then convert them, right?

00:19:08
But here's the thing. Now you want to look at it from a consumer standpoint. Consumers are overwhelmed because almost everyone is doing it, right? And so the question we should ask ourselves is, okay, if I'm a consumer, let's take an example. And I'm looking for a business podcast, right?

00:19:24
How do I make the choice between you and another person? AHA, that's a very good question, right? Well, I'll give you a pro tip. The way you do that is from separating yourself first from YouTube. Stay with me here on YouTube, you have both video and audio podcast today, okay?

00:19:43
Separate yourself from YouTube. You're going to say, okay, I have my podcast distributed right everywhere else. Fantastic. Now, on your website, and this is a pro tip I'm giving you on your website because the SEO base share with people maybe on a blog, right? The why, the story behind why you produce this podcast.

00:20:02
Then embed that podcast that you have into your blog post. This is doing something I always tell people that consumers, right, they're looking for a reason to spend money with you. Let's look at, for example, the gods of Amazon and all of that. Whenever there's a season in the United States, for example, like Black Friday or Thanksgiving or Know, they are promoting giving you a reason to spend money. The question here is, am I giving people a reason to listen to my podcast?

00:20:29
Because doing the podcast itself is not giving people a reason, right? You produce a podcast, it's a great conversation, but why should I listen to it? So that strategy now needs to be added and having an extra layer of, oh, let me give people a reason why this podcast might be a good read for them, right. A good listenership for them, right. So now create leveraging a solution like Captcho, right, writing a mini blog because it will transcribe that for you.

00:20:54
And now you have a reason to share, maybe your guests shared a reason in there. You can pick that and write a paragraph, put it on your website, which drives the traffic to your website. 1 second, encourage people to read and see why. And that now gives me a reason to click and want to listen to it. And whenever you do that, what happens is because I'm already on YouTube, I'm just going to look for you and follow you there naturally, right?

00:21:17
And that's very important. That's one aspect of strategies that we develop with our clients that changes the traffic that we're getting. Because the thing is not just to produce it, the thing is to position yourself to be discovered by people. And a lot of times that's the aspect that we don't know how to do. Another thing that I will share with you is this YouTube is, even though a search engine is primarily a video search engine.

00:21:43
So the question I'll ask you is, is your same podcast available both on video and audio? Guess what? My podcast has those two. I have video and audio, right? It's easy.

00:21:53
You can transcribe know, remove the audio portion, produce that for audio, right? I talk about that in my book. But here's what that does for you both. Living on YouTube now just expanded your reach. And because people love watching video on the audio platform, what I do is put the link.

00:22:12
Want to watch the video version of this? Click here. It takes them to the video, right? And now you're exposing your video channel with the audio podcast, which is phenomenal. And also uploading the video to places like Spotify.

00:22:25
Last year, we were number five out of all of the video podcasts on Spotify, right? Our traffic spotify gave us the award podcast number five, which is not easy to get, right? Fit position on the most listened business video business podcast on Spotify because they said that most podcasts are now leveraging the video aspect. That is a good place to go to draw more traffic because most people are not doing that. And if you can, that will really bring a lot of visibility to what you're doing.

00:22:56
And if we happen to be audio. Only, all right, so listen, family, if you're primarily an audio podcast, right, and you don't have everything, JP or Deirdre has this amazing microphone and camera and all that, don't worry, right? With today's world that we live in, there's still a great strategy for you to leverage traffic and bring people in. One thing I'll tell you is for every podcast, of course, every audio podcast, I would say, to make it worth a while for people, should be a minimum of 30 minutes, right? Between 30 and an hour, 60 minutes to make it worth a conversation.

00:23:32
And if you're doing that, a lot of folks do that, which is fantastic. Now, create reels. If we're talking about YouTube, create shorts about some nuggets that you talked about in the audio podcast. Here's the thing. Everybody has something called a cell phone, right?

00:23:48
Now, guess what it is? Not when we're talking about quality of content. It's not only about how great your camera looks. It's about the quality of the information you're sharing with people. So here's my advice for every single audio podcast, create up to five shorts, right?

00:24:06
And you can do that in 1 hour. Sharing with people a little snippet of what you talked about in the podcast, then share where they can listen for more. Even better, you can share that same reel, not just on YouTube, everywhere, and actually advise everyone, even if you're not a TikToker. I understand. I have business owners that tell me I don't have time for TikTok.

00:24:27
I don't like it. I don't do dance videos. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying have a presence because guess what? It's not about you.

00:24:36
It's about your target audience. You have millions of people, potential clients right there that might love the subject you're discussing. And all you have to give them is a reason to want to go listen to your podcast. Dario gives them that reason. Not one, not two, but five high points.

00:24:55
And again going to captcho. Captcho gives you the highlights of your podcast so you don't have to go back and listen to the whole thing. Put it in Capsho, run it through, get the highlights. And now, you know, okay, from here, here I talked about this. Let me do a 62nd 62nd reel about this as of to why it's so important and where people can go listen to it at.

00:25:14
And that now becomes part of your strategy of marketing your podcast. Because that's the thing, we got to be able to promote our podcast and make it easy for people to want to go listen to it. And all you have to do is give them a good reason, a pain point. That's the thing. Whenever you're recording it, grab a pain point, a problem that you know you went through that a lot of people are going through.

00:25:36
Share that and share one solution and say, hey, for more, go click right here. I guarantee you that works every time. And that also gives you a presence on all the other social media that you think you didn't have to be on. And that's amazing for your brand. Okay, so here's my breakdown of what I heard JP say.

00:25:53
If you are a video first podcast, you put your video up onto YouTube as normal. Of course, using the YouTube title and description that Capsho helps you create. And if you're audio only, just put your audio podcast onto YouTube, you know, don't worry about the video and instead just leverage its shorts functionality to drive people to your audio podcast. And you may or may not know that Capsho actually helps to script a short form video script for you based on your podcast. So we actually help you do that too.

00:26:23
So, do I have that correctly summarized? That's correct. So if you're audio first, you don't need to put any video because that's a mistake some people make. They'll just slap some things and put the audio. People find that boring, trust me.

00:26:38
The listenership or the viewership, that's not a listener. Video is video. People want to see real people interact. So if you really want to be successful, don't do that. Just put the audio and they know, oh, this audio podcast.

00:26:49
Then create the reels, which is a real video, right? Create real video, real shorts. Talking about high life point, highlighted points of your podcast up to five per podcast, right? And then share that. Then they have a reason to go.

00:27:02
And knowing that it's an audio podcast to. Go listen to it. And that's a perfect strategy. Versus the other way around where you want to figure out how to make a video out of audio, which never works, is a no no, but yeah, exactly. That's how you want to do it.

00:27:15
Whoa. Is anyone else relieved to hear that? I'm going to be honest, I kind of am. You do not need to stress out about having amazingly produced video content if you have an audio only podcast. But if you did have video and you wanted to put that up onto YouTube, are you doing it the right way?

00:27:35
That is where a lot of amazing business owners are making the mistake, right? Where they'll slap a camera and a microphone in front of a white wall. Not talking about you didri. He's totally talking about me. This is what happens, right?

00:27:47
I want everyone to look at it from the cinematography standpoint, right? When you just have the white wall, that's fine, you can have that. Now have some things called overlays, right? Animated lower third, have some things like branding elements, right, that will keep changing at a certain point, creating a dynamic visual for people. What happens is people naturally get bored very fast.

00:28:17
As a matter of fact, in cinematography, if you watch your favorite TV show or movie, you realize that they change angles four times minimum every five minutes. There's a reason for that. The reason why they do that is it refreshes our brain, our subconscious, get the information, refreshing our brain, and it helps us stay longer. And so when we understand a podcast, video podcasting on YouTube or anything on YouTube about video, retention is key for growth. And so retention is about how long are you retaining people for them to keep listening or watching your video?

00:28:51
Well, that's how you do it, right? By having different angles and different overlays for people, it helps them stay and it helps with the visual as well. And what that does for your business as well is it makes it easy for people to know. Because my wife, being a teacher, she will tell you that repetition as a teacher is key, right. Even though you heard information once, you want to hear it over and over and over, but having it on the screen, right, changing but over and over and over repeats that in their head.

00:29:21
And so the question is, what are they going to remember of my brand after the video is over? They will remember that what has been repeated in their head. And so now they're like, oh yeah, they had a deal about this thing because it was displayed over and I stayed during the entire thing. And that's the thing. That's why reels are so short, because people have a short attention span.

00:29:42
But we can help them by having that. So it is important to ask yourself, do I have a nice studio, right, or do I have a simple studio. And then now I can create branding elements with multiple different overlays at different frames, different sections where I can change during my conversation to help people rephrase that information as I'm doing. And if you want an example, just go watch my podcast. I do it all the time.

00:30:06
And that is something that I brought in from a cinematography background. I learned those things, and I just use that for my podcast. And honestly, I have to tell you, it's worked very well for me. Oh, super cool. And the best thing is that what JP just mentioned, he's going to be going deep into exactly how to do that, the process, the systems, the tools to do this really quickly and effectively at Capsovians Live.

00:30:31
Yes. JP is going to be speaking at our first ever two day live event being held in Orlando on January 23 24th in 2024. And this event is where I'll be bringing together all of my implementation advisors to help you with your own content marketing and business growth. So really, it's just a simple and much cheaper way for you to leverage my advisory board as your own. You seriously do not want to miss this event.

00:30:58
Grab your ticket@capshovianslive.com. And if you want to reach out. To JP, go to Forward slash booking. And it's still a free consultation because I believe one thing, I want to make sure I'm the right person for you through a free initial consultation before we talk about anything else. Right?

00:31:17
It's a win win for everyone. And so let's do that. But if you're on social media, please let's connect. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you name it. It's just JP.

00:31:25
High tech. J-P-H-I-G-H-T-E-K please connect with me. Let's grow together. Yes, let's grow together. My name is Deirdre Shen.

00:31:34
Stay awesome.