Can Short Form Video Help Your Podcast?

There’s a reason that movies have teaser trailers. That TV shows do short “hits.” “Tonight, on a very special Blossom,” came from somewhere.

They are designed to create buzz and entice viewers to go and watch the entire movie or episode when it comes out. And while they are a tried and true method for TV and movies, do they…or something analogous…work for podcasts?

I think it depends. At play here, in the headline of this very article, is a conflict:

1. I’m saying “can” instead of “do.” Anything can work, and some podcasters surely believe it does.
2. Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with, “No.”

So maybe the better question is, “How can short-form video work for your podcast?”

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Experiments with Short-Form Video

I’ve tried a couple of experiments with short-form video over the past few years. My most recent attempt had me working with a video editor running similar experiments.

He’d take the full video of each episode and extract clips he thought were good, add some music and branding, and then post them on:

1. TikTok
2. YouTube Shorts
3. Instagram Reels
4. X/Twitter (herein, X)

Importantly, for TikTok and X, they were posted to my personal accounts. For Instagram and YouTube, they were posted to the podcast’s accounts.

So what were the results? Aggressively average.

We don’t need to talk about X. I may as well have not posted on there.

On TikTok, I got within 10% of the views for each video — mid-200s:

This proved to be the most consistent platform, but I don’t think it was successful (I’ll get to why in a minute). Relatively speaking, the pinned videos remain my top performers. Plus, I don’t use TikTok much for a combination of reasons. This likely hurt me, as I’m not posting more “organic” content, nor am I engaging.

The most interesting results came from YouTube and Instagram. On average, the videos underperformed compared to TikTok. But there were two videos on each platform that did 3–5x than TikTok’s 250ish average.

I think that’s more the goal I have with short-form videos — take a bunch of shots, and see which one scores.

But that’s not the real goal for me, nor should it be for you.

How do Short Form Videos Convert?

Hopefully, I’m stating the obvious here: I want short-form videos to lead people to my podcast.

The easiest place for this to happen is YouTube. The shorts are posted to the same channel as the podcast audio — so discovery should be best there.

TikTok also lets you connect podcast episodes to videos — but it’s impossible to see how well that converts, as I couldn’t find the stats anywhere in TikTok, and the TikTok app doesn’t appear as a player in my analytics apps.

It’s also hard to know the impact, as iOS 17 just made an update that deeply affects daily downloads for podcasts overall — though initial data still shows my downloads per new episode are about the same.

All of that is to say, if there was any conversion, it was not noticeable.

I will continue to experiment — perhaps there’s a better type of content to help promote the show than just straight clips from the episode — but I think there’s a better workflow.

“Listen to my Podcast” Isn’t the Right CTA.

I think about CTAs on social media that take users off the platform like this:

Imagine you’re swimming in the ocean, and someone comes up to you on a boat, with a bike, and says, “Hey I have this bike for you. You should ride it right now.”

Even if you want that bike, you’re not ready to ride it at that moment.

Telling someone to stop scrolling their timeline to listen to your podcast is kind of the same thing. They are in one specific context, and they’re not ready to change contexts.

Instead, I think the better play is to get them on your mailing list. THEN you can promote your podcast to the mailing list. This was super effective for my friend Yong-Soo Chung.

This isn’t a 20–60 minute commitment. They can do it quickly, and get back to what they were doing.

You’re gently reminding people who’ve already opted-in to what you have to say that you have a podcast. And you’re giving them the option to subscribe and listen when it’s convenient for them.

It’s like giving them the option to ride a bike or swim before they start — not interrupting what they’re doing to do something totally different.

What You Should Do From Here

That really depends on your audience. You should:

1. Determine where your audience hangs out
2. Determine what kind of content they like to consume
3. Post on the appropriate social network regularly, and with purpose

Make sure to have your CTA clearly stated — you want people to come off that platform and join you where you live!

You can also use tools like Riverside or Descript to help you create clips. I think the AI route is best here while you’re still learning and experimenting. This is about number of shots you take — you don’t know what’s quality until you have quantity.

As for me, I’m going to try two things (aside from making my CTA join the mailing list):

For Podcast Workflows, release the full episodes on TikTok. They have a 10-minute limit, and the short episodes are less than 7.

For How I Built It and longer Podcast Workflows episodes, I’m going to borrow a strategy from our friends in the movie industry: create content during the episodes just for the teaser.

Maybe you’ve noticed not all trailer footage appears in movies or TV shows. Studios will use interesting scenes from the cutting room floor, or in some cases, create scenes just for the trailer.

Those sound like fun, low-effort things for me to try. What do you think?

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