How to Distribute a Video Podcast on YouTube & Spotify (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: So you recorded and edited your video podcast. Now what? Where do you share that video for the largest reach, finding new audience members, and how to grow your podcast with that video element? Well, I'm going to share what to do with that video file because I have a video podcast that I publish every week, and I'll tell you the exact settings and how to upload it to a YouTube channel, how to add that video to Spotify no matter where you host your podcast, and the easiest way to distribute your video when you host it with Riverside. So priority number one, you need to get your video podcast on YouTube. You can create an entire channel specifically for your show, and that's what I've done. Primary Technologies is my video podcast. We upload a new episode every week, and this channel is entirely for the podcast. Now a question I get a lot is, should you upload your podcast to your main channel, which I also have a main tech-related YouTube channel. That's this one here, and it has a lot more subscribers, but I chose to keep the podcast separate. A rule of thumb is, if everyone who watches your long-form YouTube videos, maybe that's already on your channel, would also enjoy the podcast, maybe yours might be a good fit to put that podcast on the same channel. But if you think there's going to be any separation, that those who listen to your podcast might not be interested in all your YouTube videos, or vice versa, then maybe I would keep it separate. My personal YouTube channel is very Apple-centric, and while we talk about Apple on the podcast, the podcast also contains a wide range of topics. Lots of AI, social media news, Android, Google, Amazon, and more. So that's why I chose to keep it separate. Now creating a YouTube channel is completely for free. Just log into YouTube with your Google account, click your profile here in the top right, and if you've never created a channel, you have that option here. Go to view all channels here at the bottom, and here you'll see all the channels connected, but also you can create a brand new channel right here. You'll need to create a YouTube banner and a profile image. This can be your podcast artwork, as long as it looks good cropped as a circle, and the banner can be relatively simple, maybe with just a tagline. Now after you create the channel, you can share both long-form clips of your podcast, which Riverside actually has a new magic segments feature, which does that for you automatically. To learn more about magic segments, I'll link a video above and down in the description. But because it's a podcast, you want to make sure you're creating a playlist and labeling that as a podcast. When you do that, your channel will actually get a dedicated podcast tab here on YouTube. And when someone goes to playlists, they'll see that one is specifically marked as a podcast. They can click view full podcast that also shows in the YouTube music app on mobile devices as a podcast. And you'll see every episode in reverse chronological order when they go to that playlist. You can also upload these square podcast artwork you might use in Apple Podcasts and Spotify for this playlist. So to set that up, go to your YouTube studio, that's studio.youtube.com or click YouTube studio in that top right corner. From here, when you're ready to upload that first episode, click create here at the top right corner, and then upload your episode video file. Now when you're packaging your video episode for YouTube, you want to make sure the title and thumbnail are catchy. They're going to drive interest and hopefully make someone click. That's how you're going to reach that wider audience. Make sure the title actually reflects what the episode is about. And the really key element here is in the playlist section. Make sure you select your podcast playlist and add your full episodes to that playlist. You want to do that with every new episode. You can also create other playlists like we have hidden or unlisted playlists just for members where we put our bonus episode video. And we also have a playlist of just long form clips. Now to create that playlist here in YouTube studio under the content tab, you can go over to playlists. And if you already have a playlist with all your episodes, but you haven't marked it as a podcast yet, you can click the three dots and actually choose set as podcast. Or if you want to create your playlist from scratch, go up to the create button here in the top right and choose new podcast. This is going to give you that option to set a current playlist as a podcast, you can submit an audio only RSS feed. But if you're recording and editing video, you don't want to do this last option, because that's just going to take the audio and put a static image for the entire video, then you're going to have dual episodes on your channel if you're also uploading the full video. So what you want to do is create a new podcast here. This is where you can title the podcast. And again, this will be seen as that playlist, but also in YouTube music, add the description, the square thumbnail, you want to make sure it's public. And then you can even add videos already on the channel to the podcast if you'd like click Create. And now you'll have that playlist set as a podcast. And that's where you're going to add every new full length video episode. Also a little trick, which has been helping some of our recent episodes, when I make a thumbnail for the episode, I actually put a red new tag on that latest episode, and then change the thumbnail for the previous episode as just the episode number helps visually distinguish Oh, this is the latest and newest episode. And our views have been going up. It's also a tech timber where there's a lot of tech releases. But I would do that anyways, I think it's a good practice. So YouTube is going to be that main driving force for your video podcast. But you can also upload that full length video to Spotify. To do that you want to go to creators.spotify.com. This is also free, you can log in with your current Spotify account or create a new one. And then you'll want to claim your podcast. No matter where you host your podcast, you can still manage it here in Spotify. Just click your profile here in the top right, click Add a new show, and then click Find an existing show. And then no matter where you host it, just click somewhere else. And you can paste the RSS feed link right here and then manage it and upload the video in Spotify for creators. I'm going to show you where you can host your podcast that also distributes video to YouTube in just a minute. Once you've claimed your show, you can access it here in your Spotify for creators dashboard. And then I can go over to episodes. And as new episodes are published to my RSS feed through my podcast host, I'll see those episodes appear here in Spotify for creators. Then I can go to any one of these episodes, not only view details about this episode specifically in Spotify. But if I go over to the details tab here, I can upload that full length video, the same video file I uploaded to YouTube, I uploaded here to Spotify. And then that's going to be available in the Spotify app. So someone can watch or listen to the show however they'd like. If you scroll all the way down on the details page, you can also add a custom thumbnail. So guess what I use that same YouTube thumbnail with the episode number here in Spotify. And after you upload that full length video also go over to the clips tab because you can upload vertical video that will be attached to this episode. And those vertical videos can show up in the browse and discover tab in the Spotify app, which Spotify pushes to users. And that's going to raise your chances even higher of being discovered in the Spotify app. So you're going to publish that video to YouTube and Spotify for creators and then share both those links every time you post a new episode. Now what's the easiest way to host your podcast and distribute that video? Well that's with Riverside. And if you have a Riverside Pro or higher plan, you can host your podcast right here. So this is my Riverside dashboard with every episode of my video podcast. And if I go over to that hosting tab, I can publish my audio and video versions of my podcast all from one place. I can connect Spotify and Apple Podcasts to automatically distribute the audio. And I don't even have to go over to manage those feeds. Everything will be done here in Riverside. And you can even connect your YouTube channel and choose your Riverside exports and Riverside will automatically upload it to your YouTube channel. You can title it, add that thumbnail, and now you don't even have to download files to your computer to upload them to your YouTube channel. And when you host with Riverside, you still get that RSS URL so you can claim your show in Spotify for creators. Just click the three dots and then copy RSS URL here. And now you have your podcast hosting built into where you record with Riverside. And when you create a new episode here in Riverside, I can filter by projects and I name each project to our episode number so they're easy to find. I can also use the search box and then I can select our full length episode edit right here and Riverside will publish that audio and video and I never have to deal with those files. So make sure you're publishing your video podcast to Spotify and YouTube and use Riverside to record, edit, and publish your show now with Riverside hosting. If you have any questions, leave comments below this video and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit that like button. Tons of new features coming out and if you haven't seen yet, Co-Creator is now in the Riverside editor so you can just ask Riverside, make this video ready to share, create a thumbnail, and more. If you want to learn more about Co-Creator, watch this video right here. And if you're ready to upgrade your setup, maybe your camera, microphone, and get that professional look, I have a video right here where I walk through setups for all budget levels. Thank you for watching. We can't wait to see the podcast you create.