Ross Brand from Livestream Universe and How to Optimize Your Content on YouTube – HGG414

Ross Brand from Livestream Universe and LivestreamUniverse.com joined us to talk about the state of live streaming. We talk about where the industry has been and where it might be going. We spend the majority of the show talking about YouTube and what it has become, how to take advantage of titles, thumbnail images, tagging and promotion as well as the community it brings.   I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg414

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #414 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, YouTube, Ross Brand, Audio, Livestream, Streaming, Video, Twitch, Mixer, Periscope, Blab, LinkedIn Live, WebRTC, StreamYard, Facebook Live, Amazon Flash Briefing, Zoom, Restream.io, Otter.ai

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About Ross

StreamYard Connect: 2pm ET, Wednesdays on LinkedIn Live. Follow Ross on LinkedIn for notifications: LinkedIn.com/in/RossBrand

StreamYard.com/Ross

Facebook: Facebook.com/LivestreamUniverse

YouTube: YouTube.com/LivestreamUniverse

Twitter: Twitter.com/iRossBrand

Instagram: Instagram.com/RossBrand1

Website/Business: LivestreamUniverse.com

Website/Podcast: LivestreamDeals.com

Website/Podcast: BrandOnBroadcasting.com

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found on gadget geeks show number 414, recorded on August 29 2019.

Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home, news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV studios here in a pretty warm today but Mike, we’ve got a string of weather coming. We do have to say listen, for the folks that are in the south, the especially Florida, but hunker down, it’s going to get it’s going to get crazy for you guys there we are thinking about you. Positive thoughts, prayers, all those things going forward to you guys down there in Florida. We know their hurricane is coming your way but Mike here in Nebraska, no hurricanes, it’s going to be beautiful. So you gotta love Nebraska this time of the year.

Mike Wieger  [1:00] 
Yeah, I’ve had my garage door open doing some outdoor products in the garage and able to paint the projects out in the driveway afterwards. It’s been absolutely perfect with that garage door but not too hot. Not too cold. Yeah, you gotta love this time of year. Exactly. Right. Especially for the first Husker game coming up on Saturday. I think a lot of us are going to be enjoying the nice weather with with a nice Husker game going on

Jim Collison  [1:22] 
Ross Brand is with us tonight. Ross is out in the New Jersey area. Ross you gotta you guys got to be ready. I lived in New Jersey for a while you guys got to be ready for fall as well. Right?

Ross Brand  [1:30] 
Getting there. It’s been a pretty hot summer all around and we had one day. I think it was Monday this week where it was uncharacteristically cool it was maybe like high 60s low 70s and it was like so refreshing.

Jim Collison  [1:45] 
is nice, isn’t it? Yeah, get it to the end of a long summer and in follows on the way we always start the show Ross where it starts with a little weather talk. I think that’s like the Monday morning things people do when they come into work right they write for those have to go in everybody’s talking about what you do this weekend. And how’s the weather Of course, we post a show with World Class show notes and a lot of Ross’s information, a lot of things we’re going to talk about today will be in the show notes. So head out to theAverageGuy.tv and then if you want this episode, it’ll be slash HGG 414. And those will be available for his role. Don’t forget you can listen to us live on the mobile app. If you are a home regular Home gadget. Maybe if you’re not, you can download the app for free Android iPhone just search Home Gadget Geeks in the store or go to HomeGadgetGeeks.com I have the link out there available for you as well. It’s free and the best way to stream the program when you are on the road. We want to thank our Patreon subscribers who helped pay for that every single year, corsets a built a Speaker app and it actually works out pretty well. So get it downloaded if you don’t have it yet. Join us in our discord group theAverageGuy.tv/discord in our Facebook group theAverageGuy.tv/facebook you can kind of see the pattern there. We want to thank you for doing that as well. I mentioned it earlier Ross Brand is with it with us from Livestream Universe and Ross, I get to hang out with you at podcast movement. Super fun to have you on the show. Welcome to Home Gadget Geeks.

Ross Brand  [3:01] 
Thanks for having me back. I believe it was Episode 286 when I was on the first time it’s great to be back. And yeah, podcast movement was so much fun and really getting to hang out with you and spend time in person. Finally was one of the highlights of that event, which really is all about the people in the community. So I had a great time at podcast movement. I’m sure you did as well.

Jim Collison  [3:26] 
Yes, no, super fun and good to spend a bunch of time with you, Mike, we got to figure out a way to have you show up at one of these podcast events.

Mike Wieger  [3:34] 
Apprearently have to start podcasting for work. Right That seems to be the trend is podcast at your workplace. Go we’ll see

Jim Collison  [3:41] 
Does Carson have a they have a podcast?

Mike Wieger  [3:44] 
They are on the local radio here in Omaha, which then puts out as a podcast. So yes, they do they record a radio show every Saturday. They’ve been a little reluctant to do their own just special branded podcast because they have the radio show.

Jim Collison  [3:58] 
Okay, go I think, yeah, they should still do what

Mike Wieger  [4:01] 
they should I totally agree. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [4:03] 
no, so good. Tonight, we are going to focus on live streaming. And the idea of this kind of business, I think, Ross since the last time you stood at two at what did you say

Ross Brand  [4:13] 
286, I believe.

Jim Collison  [4:15] 
Okay, so that’s the two years ago, maybe you think I think in time, maybe late 2016? Yeah. And actually a lot has changed in this space. And what I have found interesting and a lot of us, you know, a lot of the people who listen to this show are tech admins or tech support or have some kind of tech they are in charge of responsible for have influence over some kind of the technology that’s that’s happening. In 2016 2017. We were still this idea of podcasting. Mike, like you just mentioned, this idea of having a podcast at work was kind of still early. But I’m hearing more and more and Ross as we came back from podcast movement. I mean, it Gallup, we’ve been podcasting for seven years, I’ve been doing it via live YouTube, we’ve been live streaming for a long time. So we were really early in the space. I don’t know if there were too many enterprises out there, kind of doing it that early. But why I’m I’m hearing I’m seeing Ross this more and more where this idea of live streaming is coming to work in then. And we’ll talk about this a little bit later. And we talked about kind of the platforms, this idea of twitch has really changed. First of all, YouTube is the biggest platform for video and search ever. Like it’s just the king. It’s going to be hard to catch it. It they’re doing everything right on on YouTube. So you know, we want to kind of mention the thousand pound gorilla that’s in the room that is YouTube. But certainly, Mike and you flirted with twitch a little bit Twitch is kind of come on. And it’s really I’m seeing this this idea of livestreaming going mainstream. Ross, do you kind of get that feeling too? You’re in this space? You are in this space? Does it feel more mainstream today than it did maybe two or three years ago?

Ross Brand  [6:05] 
Oh, absolutely. I mean, when we were talking two or three years ago, we were really looking at Facebook Live just having come on the scene. And I think that’s what made, you know, Periscope came along. And then Facebook Live. And with Periscope, it was a lot of you know, mobile phone and people playing around early on and just trying to figure out what is this technology? And how do we do this. And then Blab came along. And people started doing these talk shows that made it very easy. Of course, there were people doing Google Hangouts On Air like you were and but this is where really it started to become more into the wider the wider attention on it. But at that time, like I say, Facebook Live was new. And I think Facebook Live really changed, changed things. Because when you went live on Facebook, all of a sudden, not only are you going live amongst people might be interested in that type of content. But now your family and your friends are seeing you going live, so they’re becoming aware of it. And if you have a business page and you opt, people have opted into your business page, you go live there. Now it just became easy to sort of transfer that over. Okay, I’m going live talking about my personal life or sharing a moment. Well, I could do this on my business page, which is just a different click of the mouse when I go on to Facebook. And I think that’s where it started coming into into business for more people starting with, you know, small lot of small business and solo printers and coaches and consultants realizing that they can answer questions from customers and potential customers and clients right there in real time. And you know, big business is some some have gone for it like Gallup has and others are still afraid of really link wishing that control and doing things unscripted.

Jim Collison  [8:05] 
Mike, you’ve been doing this a long time with me on the podcast side. We’ve never not been on YouTube. In the times we’ve been doing this like I was trying to remember like, When was the first time I was on YouTube with one of these? It really goes back. Oh, I think we’re in the 70s. But by the time I start going broadcasting live on youtube here 70. So 330 shows. Is that right? 300? Yep. 330 shows ago, which is a while. Mike, how what have you seen when we think about the streaming? Just give me an overview. From your perspective? How have you seen a change over the last couple years?

Mike Wieger  [8:39] 
For me the big change was, you know, in the beginning, right, we saw Ustream and some of those where it was just the ability to live stream was a big deal, right? If you could stream live, if you could get your feed out there. In the very beginning, it was who cares about the quality, the fact that I can do a stream, live with videos, right? audio is a different beast. It was done a lot earlier, but with video, I can get my video out there and people can view it. You know, the quality wasn’t as much of a challenge. It was just getting it out there. You know, that was the big deal. And then it turned into Okay, how do I get this on more platforms that have more viewership, right? Because not everyone’s on Ustream, people were on YouTube and things like that. So then YouTube got a hold of it, well, then it’s more of those, it’s where are the eyeballs out there on Facebook, right. And then twitch became kind of the the powerhouse for gaming, that’s really where they got their edge was, if you are looking for gaming content, you’re going to twitch, and that’s where the best gaming streamers are. And that’s what they’re doing. And I think so. So then it became more of a, you know, in these terms, a commodity, whereas you could stream wherever you want, it was relatively easy to do. So. back, I remember even Jim, it wasn’t too long ago that when you and I were both doing our individual shows, and then I was a co host on yours. I was doing Wieger tech, we were using wire cast, right, you had this really expensive software to do exactly what you’re doing right now you have each of you and your two co hosts, you have us in Split views, you’re able to switch back and forth, you can make Ross big, you can make me the primary. I mean, you can easily with Yes, look at that, look, you just made me bigger screen with a touch of the mouse. But all of that that you’re doing right now is within a browser. And when I had to do was I had to do that in wire cast back in the day. And I had to pre program that into scenes and make sure I was guided to hotkeys going, it was fairly difficult. So what we’ve seen now is, number one, get to where the eyeballs are, right. And Jim, I think the difference between you and maybe a lot of other streamers are when you already had your audience getting into the live streaming, right. So you you would always been live streaming. But when it came to Hey, now Facebook is a is a player in this Twitter with Periscope, when those start to become big, you already had your audience so you aren’t necessarily looking to grow at a massive rate. And I still think if I would ask you today, you’re very happy where you’re at with your numbers, you’re not necessarily looking to grow as fast as possible. So for us, we have stuck to it works. We stuck to YouTube, we stuck to hangouts on air for as long as we could before that went away. And so you’ve got where the eyeballs, that’s number one, and then it’s just features and usability. And you look at stream yard. I mean, if this was around when I had been podcasting live, this is I mean, this is exactly what I needed. When I was using wire cast and wire cast was at that time a $500 piece of software, if you want all the advanced scenes and the cutting and the lower thirds, Jim, you are able to right now and we’ve done this in past shows, you can take a comment from the chat. And you can bring that in as a lower third. I mean, those sort of features on here, look at that, from Joe is that mixer right, you can bring that right into the show right here. That type of feature would have taken me a lot lot of effort back in the day with wire cast. So I think nowadays with streaming, we’ve gotten to a point where the usability is there 100% the eyeballs were there, right? We’re where we are, where the people are, we are in Facebook, we are in Twitter, we are in Instagram, you know, I think Instagrams and other great, great platform for live. So now really, it’s we’ve gotten to the point and this was, again, the beginning stages of YouTube, if you think about it, we’re years had to put out video content, it really didn’t matter how good you were, it was put out content, put out content, if you look at the guys who got in early, they got a ton of subscribers really early, because they were the ones there, they were on YouTube, they were the one giving tech content at that time when people got in. And now if you want to get in and you want to be a big player in YouTube, your quality better be there, you better have massive quality you better have, you know, you better pay the money, you better use the soft, you better know how to edit, because you can’t just get on and put your voice out there and it expect to get a bunch of viewers. So now I think things have changed where now live streaming is bring the content and bring the quality with it. Because now everyone’s on the same level playing field in terms of ease ability and where the eyeballs are at

Jim Collison  [13:14] 
Ross, Mike mentioned stream yard and we’re using that you can see up in the corner on that over this side. And I let you know I like to leave that on. Because it’s I like for folks to know what we’re using. you’re you’re you’re doing a podcast, a live stream. What’s really interesting is we always came at this from a podcast perspective. We call it all these podcasts when you came along and you were calling everything a live stream. And I was like why is he doing that? Right? But you’re you’re you’ve started a program working with stream yard. For this why I’m certainly Mike highlighted a little bit of the features that we have here. But why do you like streaming arts so much? And what kind of features Do you gravitate towards?

Ross Brand  [13:54] 
Yeah, what I love is that stream yard is finally a browser based platform or app that goes to multiple, you have a choice of multiple so social destinations, you can go to Facebook, you can go to Periscope, Twitter, you can go to YouTube, you can have integration with re stream to go everywhere 30 plus destinations for free. You can you can go to LinkedIn live now. And you can also use rtmp to go almost anywhere that accepts rtmp or anywhere that accepts which is almost every major platform where the API is open. I mean other than than Instagram, the doors are wide open for where you can you can use this technology that you’re using to produce the show is as Mike was saying about wire cast, not only did you have to deal with loading up all the graphics and creating them and at all, trying to get everything into place. But you had to have your guests come on half an hour early and you had to scrape the video and then put that into a shot and then crop in from the sides. Guest moves and you have to redo it. And then you know, you gotta restart your computer because you see. So wire cast now has NDI from Skype, and which which enables your video to come in like a webcam video if somebody if it’s on the same network. So we could do an MDI call. And I could bring each of you in as your own feed as its own shot, just like I was bringing you in from a webcam, which has just changed the game for bringing in guests on wire cast if you want to do that. But even when I use wire cast, the ease of bringing in guests with a link means that I use the virtual cam to go from wire cast, I can do a few things in wire cast if I need to. But streaming art is so feature rich and so easy to use that, you know you hit upon it, it’s it’s the ease of bringing on the guests that there’s just no comparison in terms of sending somebody a link, they show up and you bring them into the show, you take them out of the show when they’re done. And that’s that’s really all the work you have to do. And then you can just decide what layout you want. And then it’s showing the comments on the screen. Both, you know, it could be banners as well, where you have a question or you have a topic you have a call to action, you can pretty much do almost anything. Uh, because you can create overlays, and you can create backgrounds. So you could create either a static image background, which could just be a color, you could use the Home Gadget Geeks color right now, I think you’re going with the average guy.tv black, but you could go with the Home Gadget Geeks green as a background color, everywhere where there’s not a video feed showing on the screen. But you could also use a video, you could make a short video that loops and use emotion background by uploading that. And you can do overlays, which could be anything from a 32nd video, 30 seconds or less video clip, to you could do lower custom lower thirds, and just make it transparent with just the lower third having a graphic and text. And that could be present while your video is on. So you can do many of these different things. And I continue to learn, you know, new tricks and techniques with this. And they keep coming out with new features, day after week after week. And they all just work right out of the box. So I can’t say enough good things about StreamYard

Jim Collison  [17:52] 
Well, that’s been the magic I think or the advantage. Oftentimes in business. The advantage goes to who’s first in with web RTC seeing all these services. you’d mentioned Blab earlier they’ve kind of come and gone. There was a few other ones in there as well. Trying to think besides stream yard and besides blab Ross,

Ross Brand  [18:10] 
it was like fire talk has yet something smile time.

Jim Collison  [18:16] 
There were a bunch, right. And I think this is one of those cases where they were all trying out this technology in it wasn’t to their advantage to be first because the guys are streaming or have really nailed web RTC. Like, you’re right. It’s something I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s a link, you sent it to them people connect I since we’ve started using this, I’ve had no trouble getting anybody to connect in here. So much. So now that I think about streaming at first for everything. I’m like, oh, even if I just want to record an audio conversation, I think I’m gonna use stream yard, I’m going to push it to YouTube as a as a private link, so no one will see it when it goes live. And then I’ll pull that video down, strip the audio out use it that way. Really, because the connectivity is so easy in the in the business world when we’re using Skype for Business, or we’re using teams or we’re trying to use Slack, or we’re trying to use Discord. And to get connected and get those things recorded is sometimes super messy. I mean, it’s just as those are still old, old technologies that have these wonky. You know, okay, well, you gotta dance and then tap on your head and tap your belly. And then maybe the recording will work. Kind of streaming artists kind of fix that. I think we’re going to see some copycats come along here. But but this is I think finally we’re to the point, Ross, where the connectivity bit. It’s so easy. Right now we got the barrier, Mike. I mean, we’ve we’ve removed the barrier. Mike, you mentioned, screens, you know that the screen pieces are easy to do. It’s easy to move people around, it’s easy to get show show full screen. So I think, I think to that point, right, Ross, you also mentioned restraint.io, right? And so now, right? These companies have all these open connectivity or connections to them, where it’s super easy to make a connection within a really kind of couple clicks and you know, input some information and boom, you are in broadcasting live to any of those platforms. Ross, why do you think though? I mean, in your opinion for an organization or for a person, with with streaming live? Why do you think the live streaming aspect is so important? Why, why not just audio only in a podcast, what’s different with the video, in your opinion,

Ross Brand  [20:28] 
I think there’s a couple things working one is with live, people have just particularly the younger generations, they’ve just gotten tired of the canned messaging and the PR, the press release and the the video that that’s clearly been shot with actors over and over again, and the the stock photos in the in the career section with everybody jumping up and not one of whom were actually works for the company. So you know, from the recruiting side of it, if you can actually share a little bit of the culture of the company you work for. And as you do with the coaching community at Gallup, when you can share a little bit of inside what’s going on a little bit of a connection with a person where they can ask you a question in real time and you can respond, or they can call into your show or they can come on live, or they can just see you giving some type of access, that they feel special that somebody else wouldn’t get if they were going through the PR department or they were going through the the what was in the media about the company, they’re getting a chance to see the people in what really is the most real fashion. I mean, it really is like nothing else other than being with somebody in person. Now you can you can prepare and you should prepare. If you’re doing a live stream on on behalf of a broad cast, you can choose who your guests are which employees, you’ll spotlight, which customers or clients journeys, you’ll make front and center and a big part of the narrative that you’re telling. But ultimately, if I have somebody on and I interview them about what it was like to work with me, that’s much more powerful than if I say can you write a testimonial or record a video and send it to me? Because even as I’m walking them through the questions, people can tell with the body language with the tone with the inflection with all those nonverbal and and and auditory but not necessarily the exact words that they’re saying they can people can read and sense on so many different levels. Yeah, this is real, this person really was excited to work with me are really did enjoy being a part of this collaboration, whatever it is that you’re you’re you’re doing, you have a way through life to get people to share that in real time. And in a way that just doesn’t seem like it went through eight layers of BS. And I think as society is becoming more and more cautious about how they communicate within a business environment, within building a personal brand, and all these things, there’s something about seeing somebody just go on live, where anything can happen. And you see how Jim relates to two different people and is able to interact and have a conversation, you get to see Mike in his actual studio background there, where he’s where he does his work. And all of a sudden, you really become much more memorable to people than somebody who’s giving out a resume with black and black text on a white background or, you know, some type of portfolio that it’s obvious that they went out and they had professional photographer and you know, they just called the best. In other words, you get to see the person in action and decide, you know, can the player play the game because you actually watched them in the game, rather than read the stats and saw, you know, the measurements in the 40 time, right? Like, if you’re looking at football, you’re going to judge it by how the guy plays football, are you just going to look at the numbers and and draft the guy based on size and speed. And a lot of times teams do that. And they find out that the guy really isn’t very good at the part where it comes to playing football. Right.

Jim Collison  [24:37] 
Mike, you want to add anything to that?

Mike Wieger  [24:39] 
No, I think you’re totally right. And I think there are some podcasts that I have watched where I have gone and watch the live or even just the video not necessarily live but watch the video. And in just a very short period of time with one episode two episodes of watching the video, just like you said, Ross, I have connected with the people in a way that I hadn’t before. When I listened to just the audio, and I don’t know what it is it’s you know, it’s it’s we humans are wired to have that face to face contact. And I don’t think obviously in person makes a big difference. But even just seeing them via video connects me more with them. And so Jim, I think if I watched you if I watched our podcast live, or the video form once or twice, I think the way that I would listen to us in the future would be a lot different. And there’s pros and cons to that too. Right? There are somewhere I’ve gone and watch the live video and the guy is way younger than I thought he was. And maybe sometimes I’m like, No, he doesn’t know, I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about as much, right? Because I see the age I see the youth and I suffer from that as well. And everything I do where I’m a young guy trying to talk in my professional life as a lawyer, right, like, good luck to me when I do not like video chat as a lawyer, when I am conversing with opposing counsel, I try to avoid video conferencing much as possible because they they see me and they see a very young attorney and they think I can walk all over this guy, right? It’s just It’s natural. It’s not their fault. I don’t blame them for it, I would have the same reaction I do. And I’m watching podcasts. So but I do think you make a more intimate connection. And I think most of the time for podcast is for the better. And I think you Ross, you nailed it. It’s that connection. It’s that behind the scenes, you feel like you have a deeper connection with them. And I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to too many podcasts from businesses. But I think when I do, and especially on YouTube, I watch more YouTube content from businesses, I feel like I’ve got a behind the scenes access that no one else has before. And I have it right like that’s, it’s out in the public. But for some reason, I feel like I have better access than I do before. I think it just makes a much deeper connection. Whenever there’s a video podcast that I listened to, I try and at least watch it or listen to it at least once or twice, just so I get the vibe, I can get the feeling. And then going forward, I feel like I have a deeper connection when I’m listening to them.

Jim Collison  [26:55] 
If the numbers I think would say today, audio is still King. In a lot always right now YouTube’s Giving that a run for sure. When we think about some of the content. This is where the lines blur. YouTube is not just podcast content, right? It’s all kinds of things. It’s the blogging, it’s instructional, it’s, it’s, it’s anything like it’s amazing what you can find out there, right? And so that that really crosses all of those kind of all of those genres. But so far as we think about the content, right? At least for most people, their audio is still doing very well. But Ross, I get this feeling that man videos coming on quick. And I think here before long, the video will be king and the audio will be kind of just a secondary bit. That being said, I have listeners who tell me I’ll only listen to audio, or no, I catch you live. And that’s really the way I want to listen to you. So I also think there’s value in doing this multiple different ways, right? When we do this, we’re not only live to YouTube, but we could be I’m not but you are live to LinkedIn live or Facebook Live or twitch or mixer or right, these these platforms that have gotten pretty strong, I think video is on its way.

Ross Brand  [28:10] 
I mean, I think that a little bit of this, Jim is is semantics, because you and I are essentially doing the same thing. It’s just that your audience is primarily a podcast audience with some audience, a loyal audience that likes to watch, excuse me likes to watch you live on Thursday night. My audience is primarily a live audience, secondarily, a video video replay audience, not just the replay, like in the next 24 hours, but we’ll watch a YouTube video or or something in that nature. And then its third, the audio downloads are kind of the third option for for my. But essentially, we’re both doing our shows live, we’re both recording them. We’re both stripping the audio, we’re both making the podcast, we’re both putting them on YouTube. And what I advise people to do is even if they’re doing if they’re doing any type of short form audio, like a flash briefing or a quick podcast, turn your camera on while you’re recording it. And then you do you do the audio for the podcast for the flash briefing. But for social media, I don’t think audio alone is really a scroll stopper. net, people do some interesting things with those audio grams and images. But I think video in a Facebook feed or an Instagram feed is an eye catcher. And if you just record just record video of yourself doing your podcast or your flash briefing, and now you’ve got to take a 32nd one minute clip of that, make a square video, put some text on the top of the bottom and upload it to uploaded to YouTube. Now you’ve got content for all the different social platforms, those video videos like that I often don’t put on YouTube, you could put them on YouTube, but they’re so great for social that it’s like why not maximize the ability to promote what you’re you’re doing and to bring attention to it. And in some cases, depending on the platform, you may upload the whole thing if it’s a short form, piece of content, and just figure, okay, I’ve got it in its RSS feed, and it’s being delivered as a podcast to all those channels. But why not let everybody on social media experience it. And on social media, particularly on a platform like Instagram. I mean, it’s just very visual and having the visual there, even if it’s people watching you record, a podcast, people like that they like to see what’s going on in somebody’s studio or what they look like or what the expression is. And I think it’s even double. So people who are mainly audio content creators because people don’t get to see them. And they have a picture in their head of what it what might be going on when they’re doing their podcast what they might look like. But there’s a fascination of Okay, now I can actually see them doing doing this thing I just loving put the face and the voice together. It’s a really neat thing. And I think anybody who does a podcast where their audio only or does a flash briefing should at least try to just turn on their webcam and record while they’re, you know, while they’re doing their podcast, even if they’re not live streaming it. But of course live streaming it then opens up a whole nother distribution avenue for getting your content out there.

Mike Wieger  [31:43] 
Ross i I 100% agree because I think of when I think of a podcast, how do you hear about another podcast you want to listen to? It’s usually word of mouth. I’m not sitting there on the Discover page of iTunes podcast looking through scrolling through, it’s not a feed right? And but how many so how many new podcasts have I subscribed to in the last year? Seven, maybe eight, right? And I found a really good ones I subscribed I’ve listened to more than that. But I’ve really subscribed seven right? How many new YouTube channels have I subscribed to in the last year? Probably goes over 100 because you know I’ll scroll through Facebook and I’ll see something video they’ll post I’m like, Man, that’s that’s really good content click over it links me to YouTube. I subscribe because great content. It’s the video. It’s the visual and really to be honest it more than that. It’s being where the eyeballs are at. Again, we’re back to this. Where are the eyeballs? They are not going to a podcast. Like we can submit ourselves to all the podcast communities in the world. No one is over there scrolling those looking for new podcasts listen to and even when they do what are they seeing? They’re seeing your cover art. And maybe that’ll catch their eye. Maybe their title will catch your eye but what is really catching their eye. It’s on their social media feeds. It’s a picture it’s a video exactly what you just said, I totally agree. Turn on your video because even if you don’t do a video podcast, record the video so that you can go back for those 10 seconds for man you were just on and you were nailing it. And you have a 10 second clip, you can post to Instagram or Facebook, you can cut that use the video and go if you don’t use any other video totally fine. And what is it to you, you can delete it from your hard drive later, right? But record it because even just this you’d be surprised how many people Ross I see a video of you up there with you and your microphone in front your face. I think you look pretty professional. And I’m and you have something good to say for 10 seconds, you got my attention on Facebook, he had a microphone in front of his face, he looked pretty good. He sounded great. I might click over there and subscribe. Whereas I might not find you in any other way if you’re just putting yourself out on audio via podcast. So I think what you just said is the winner for anyone trying to expand themselves in the podcasting space.

Ross Brand  [33:53] 
And I think what’s great about it is that using platforms like stream yard, give you an opportunity to eat connect your guest to record the podcast, whether you record it on a private channel, whether you record it, you do it as a live stream and then record it and and an interesting bit of news in the stream yard group is the the CEO gage Vanden top of stream yard mentioned that recordings are coming to stream yard. So eventually, you’ll be able to download recording before it streams to Facebook, which we know that the quality when you download from Facebook is generally degraded and that the audio quality in particular for those making a podcast out of their their live stream show getting that audio before it streams, which is why a lot of people record and a recorder in their computer. It’s just much better The sooner you get it right in the in the chain delivery Jim right. I mean, the sooner you get it, the better quality it’s likely be. And so that’s amazing that again, another feature that a platform like this is bringing to the table that I mean just the possibilities. Now you don’t have to run a screen recorder or recording software on your computer, which further boosts your CPU. And you know, now you’ve got that recording saved for you that you can download. So it’s just another another awesome feature. And another reason that these platforms are becoming really good enough to do any kind of content on in the professional setting. I you know, we love blab for the ease of it. And in some ways, video was actually easier to get started than audio. Because when you create a podcast for the first time you have to navigate the whole what is an RSS feed? And how do I sign up? And how do I distribute it? And why do I need a media host when I’m paying for web hosting and all these things like RR first time, so so blab was like you press a button and you’re live on video and audio. But realistically the quality of the recording that you got from blab or from any of those platforms other than Google Hangouts on air, just we’re not up to the quality of platform. That was a very much in the business side of things. Blue Jeans came along and actually had very high quality recordings. Zoom is always to my imagination been a little bit of a little hit or miss with its with its recordings. But now that we have the ability to get recordings from stream yard, I imagine they’re going to be very high quality. And they’re doing different things with the audio settings so that you can record podcasts at a higher quality of audio as well.

Mike Wieger  [36:48] 
I noticed that there’s that checkmark box and you hop in that says disable audio something right? processing maybe. And I’ve always wondered if I click that, Jim, like what really will we get better?

Jim Collison  [37:00] 
You can get a little better quality from you. Yeah, because they’re not. They’re trying to it from my understanding of the so trying to compensate for any echoes. So not all, you know, we all have earbuds and headphones and great.

My older brother.

Yeah. So it’s a lot easier. Not everybody has that. So in their audio processing, they’re doing some things to kind of do noise cancellation, right? Yeah. When you shut that off. It’s just the raw audio. So yeah, actually for you guys. I should be telling my audience right. Am I right on that Ross?

Ross Brand  [37:28] 
Absolutely. So what happens is, if I have I have a very quiet mic and preamp, right, so I may be talking. And a guest is wearing earbuds with a little Mike thing in there jingling it in their jewelry. And it will actually think that for a moment the guests took over as the primary speaker and my audio ducks under the guests audio. So this way, it just whatever is is in the audio chain there along the way gets broadcast as it is because it’s assuming as as Jim said, everybody’s using a higher level of professional equipment and understands how these things work. So for many people, using the processing that’s built in is probably the best way to go. But when you’re ready. This is a way that you know, you ensure that the audio is is a little cleaner, I think

Mike Wieger  [38:21] 
and that’s been the one the the only item for me that has the whole time right when I’ve podcasts with Jim I podcast with my co host Collison when I did my show way back when we would do back and forth between a Google Hangouts and then I would go wire cast and wire cast. Ross, like you alluded to earlier we were doing via Skype, or I had him in studio. Most the time knows via Skype, though, and I was screen capturing him. But man, the audio was so crisp, because that audio was coming through Skype and going into my mixer. And then I was capturing all that locally. But even the quality that was going up to YouTube was him coming across Skype first, which was high quality, you’re taking my high quality XLR, and you’re just shooting that audio straight up where it so in that sense for wire cast going up, it wasn’t having to do any audio processing. And once I did that I got that was the was the first episode man, I got the most comments and emails back to me saying, Man, your audio quality got so much better. And I was like, Well, I mean, it comes with a cost, though, because it’s so complex. But man, yeah, I hear you like when I go back and listen to it. When I listened to wire cast versus Google Hangouts, it was night and day, it was so crisp, and even, you know, so you can tell the difference a little bit. But the convenience side was another side, I end up going back because I’m like, guys, like I get it. But it’s just too darn convenient to hop on Google Hangouts is to hop on stream yard. So anything that these services start doing now, to give that sort of quality back to us on the audio side, it because the audio on these podcasts, I think that’s where that’s where there’s still a lot of room for improvement. I don’t think many listeners care if I go a little bit blurry or if the screen switches around a lot. But in their car, when they hear that mean, they’re having to listen to that. And if it’s painful a bit to their ears, or if they notice a difference and audio quality. I think that’s really where your listeners are going to notice I think you should always focus on audio first, video second. And I think that’ll always, you know, turn out better for your listeners, because there are some podcasts I listened to, and they are the best content in the world. But man, I can’t listen to them. Because it is just painful in the car, either it’s too high pitched, or I can’t hear them. And I have to crank up the radio, or whatever it is. And the audio ruins the experience, even though they have some of the best content. I’ve listened to

Ross Brand  [40:39] 
your audio, I like to say that audio is the most important part of your live video, in particular, when you’re doing talk show type of content like we are. So obviously audio is going to be an important part of your audio when you’re doing audio broadcasts. And like you were saying, I used to record everything in one wire cast, like when I was just doing an audio, if I was doing something that wasn’t live, I would always record it. If it was a podcast or a video, I always record it in wire cast. Because the audio recording just from my mic into wire cast or my mixer into wire cast was fantastic. And now I use strict Screen Flow which is made by the same company love screen? Well, yeah, I use that for I record everything in the Screen Flow. And it just works so well with with Mac for getting a good clean recording. But, you know, I think I think the technology is is improving. And I think really what streaming or what makes streaming are different, again, is that we are having these conversations and not once is one of us had to refresh their browser or go out and come back in or turn their video off or, you know, hang on with us for a minute, we’re checking the feed, you know. And there’s other platforms that have brought some elements that we have here with stream yard. But none of them have gotten this level of stability before, you know, Google Hangouts On Air was extremely stable. But they had Google behind it. They weren’t a startup, they were Google.

Mike Wieger  [42:17] 
And they didn’t have all the features that you have not have

Ross Brand  [42:20] 
the features. And I think the you know, just the speaker being being prominent, and everybody else in the little box along along the bottom was getting a little bit of a dated view after a while I think people were ready for something a little more contemporary and a little more, a little a little more flexible in terms of how they can brand it and how they can they can produce their broadcast.

Mike Wieger  [42:48] 
I do miss being able to drink my beer while Jim was talking about everyone be able to see it. That’s the one thing I will say miss about, Hey, I’m now and I’m like I’m really self conscious. I’m down here and everyone’s seeing every time I go for my beer, I

Jim Collison  [42:58] 
do wish there was an audio mode in streaming or that work like hangouts where Ross when you were talking, you’d go full screen, and then I would be full screen. I mean, I could do that now. Right? I could switch over to this right now and be talking and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when you start talking, I can switch to you and Mike, I can switch over to you and we do that as well. Those those will be my YouTube I’ll pick one of those to be the YouTube thumbnail now for that but it is i do i in the great thing about it is I think Ross, I’ve heard you say some of those, we’re continuing to work on this platform. And some of those things are still coming. Okay, I want to change the subject a little bit on this. The frustrating part I have I just mentioned this. So Steve sleeper, who’s a listener of the show and listens to ask the podcast coach on Saturday mornings as well with Dave, we, he he made a video for me and he was like, Hey, Jim, love your videos. But here’s a few tips. If you want to actually get anybody to watch them on YouTube, you need to change your thumbnails to a picture, not your album art. I don’t use my album mark. So people would see it on YouTube and go, Oh, that’s Home Gadget Geeks, I was more interested in people having that brand recognition than I was the thumbnail recognition. But apparently you don’t get recommended if you have boring album art in there. Okay, second, we talked about this early in the show, okay, if I’m going to do this thing out to LinkedIn or to Instagram, you doing bed, the closed caption or the you know, you gotta have it in there because a lot of people watch this thing when they’re in the bathroom. Right? Whatever, or, you know, late work in a meeting? Yeah, they don’t know exactly. They want to read the words, right? Okay, something else to do. Oh, so that’s on those platforms. If I’m going to go to mixer, or Twitch, I need to engage in every single conversation that comes in Mike, I watched you when you were doing your twitch channel. And it’s really important there that you don’t ignore your your audience. They come and they want to be recognized, right. And I just get overwhelmed. In fact, I even told Steve, he, he was so nice to send me this night I said, I’m probably not going to do anything you’re telling me to do I just want to be I want to be real clear, I’m probably not going to do any of it. Because there’s so many things to do Ross I with the the proliferation of all these new services, comes all these different ways to optimize them as it as an influencer as a YouTuber as a podcaster. I could literally spend my whole weekend and I think you do To be honest, Ross, I could spend my whole weekend just optimizing my content on all these platforms. How do we make sense of all this?

Ross Brand  [45:39] 
There’s so much that you can do that you could be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and not hit everything? I mean, you can, there’s so much you can do to optimize to promote to make a better experience for somebody somewhere, you ultimately have to look look at what what works for the majority of your audience and what’s going to get you good enough results. Obviously, if you have a team with some people, lot of people have teams who are who are social media influencers and big podcasters and live streamers. And so they can easily say, here’s a list of 50 things you have to do after a broadcast, well, 35 of them are being done by other people. So it’s easy. It’s easy, it’s like Easy for you to say exactly, do all these things. Yeah, um, but clearly, I’ve I’ve taken it slow with YouTube. But I treated YouTube as an archive in the beginning, I’m going to take my my shows, and I’m going to upload them to YouTube. And I had no idea how YouTube works. So sometimes I would upload 20 of them in a day and publish them, not realizing that if any of them had a chance to breathe and get some some momentum, I’m just totally cannibal rising all of them. I didn’t put the script, like the headline was, you know the name of the person I interviewed, which unless that person’s famous, nobody’s going to be searching for that person. I didn’t do the whole thing, like I did everything wrong, you could do. So I’ve started focusing now on most of my might might my nature, my shows have changed. So instead of doing an hour interview with one person, I often have multiple guests, I have three guests. So each get within each guest there’s a segment that I can pull and make a YouTube video out of. So I’m I’m being thinking about what can I do as far as the title goes? What can I do as far as the description goes? And what can I do with the thumbnail? Are there a few other little tweaks? Maybe, but those things alone? When you get a template for the thumbnail, and then it’s just playing around with pieces? And even that even that takes time? Hi. Taking me like 40 minutes? Do I put the logo here? Or do I put their logo here? Or do I, you know, oh, this this this person’s letters or their name is long, maybe it’s but like, even that takes a long time. But that has made a huge, that made a huge difference. For me, it would probably make even a bigger difference for me if I only focused on that content, which has a history of doing well. But I’m still treating my youtube channel in part, like a portfolio, where I’m showing people what I’ve done and what I can do. So I may interview somebody on a topic that I know isn’t going to gain a lot of views based on history. But it’s still nice to put it up there. And it’s part of making a good relationship with your guests. And so, so I’m kind of caught in between of like, okay, ideally, this is what you do to optimize your channel. But then I okay, I’m not trying to become famous on YouTube, I’m just trying to a nice channel that serves me when people want to find out more information about what I do. So I walk a middle ground, but optimizing your titles, your tags, your your descriptions, and your thumbnail covers can make a big difference. And if you were just using a plain thumbnail cover and using the Episode Episode, The episode number and the name of the guests or whatever, just picking a title that somebody might search for, like, you know, how to live stream with stream yard or how to how to go to, you know, live streaming updates for 2019 or

Jim Collison  [49:37] 
so resist Ross,

Ross Brand  [49:38] 
something like that. Let me make a

Jim Collison  [49:40] 
huge difference. Let me just be honest with you, I so resist this YouTube, click bait. Like it. I know people tell me like no, no, Jim, you’re gonna have to play the game. If you want the YouTube juice, you’re gonna have to play the game. And I get I, Mike, you got to talk me off the ledge here on this one. Because it’s like, I don’t want these titles. I don’t want them to be. And you’ll, you’ll never believe what happened next. And I don’t want my listeners or those folks who find me on YouTube to do that. But apparently, if I don’t do that, there’s no discovery. I don’t know, Mike, what do you think?

Mike Wieger  [50:15] 
two things. Number one, you’re not looking for discovery. You have your audience and you’re putting out video for the audience that you already have to find video if they want it. And number two, we’re not we’re not the clickbait. If I if you click the instant they click on that video, and they see an hour and 10 minute long video there, they’re already gone. It’s not going to work unless you put in the extra work of making clips, right? How do you you know, what’s the best streaming service and you clip the eight yard where Ross just talked about, you know, streaming arts by that and you clip that and you make and you do all that extra work. And that’s goes back to number one if you want to build an audience, and I think it depends on what you want to do you YouTube for you is more of a extra outlet to get your media out there. If you’re if you’re 100% YouTuber, or if you are 100%. And this is not your livelihood, Jim, you’re going to your family’s going to eat just fine if your podcast doesn’t doesn’t grow very well, right. But if you are, there’s plenty of people and they are 100% right if you are trying to grow your YouTube because that is your bread and butter. You better follow those techniques because you need the views. You need the eyeballs, you need the ad revenue you need the subscribers, but I think it’s just different. And I think a lot of podcasters Jim are honestly in your shoes, where YouTube is the video outlet. It’s just it just happens to be the most convenient place for you to upload your video to for people to go and watch it without costing you an arm and a leg. This would cost you a lot if you had to host your own video and have it be accessible for people to go and view in a manner that’s great in a manner that works well. So I think it really just depends on what you’re trying to do. So I think it depends on the podcaster if this is going to be your bread and butter and if YouTube you need to make it and you’re trying to grow your audience and a massive rate, follow those clip up your podcast and put them out use the clickbait titles because as much as you I hate them, they frickin work. I am on YouTube every night and I even within my category space right I’m really into ham radio right now. I’m really into woodworking right now. And in those two spaces how to make the best in the is capitalized the best finished cornhole boards. That gets me to click instantly over build build tutorial for cornhole boards, one on one that doesn’t get me it’s how do I build the best? I don’t know why. It just gets me like those sort of titles, they work. And they were really only talking about YouTube here. Ross, I’ll turn it to you in just a second. I mean, now multiply that times, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, 100% you start you start working your way and I guess I’m saying these is the average guy to say, Hey, you know, maybe you’re listening to this right now. And you’re thinking, you know, I’ve I’ve kind of been thinking about doing my own fill in the blank podcast, YouTube channel, livestream, whatever. And you think I’d like I’d like to get into that Ross. We just we could actually spend the next three hours just talking about YouTube optimization. And and there’s all these other channels as well. I mean, it’s just it’s kind of madness, don’t you think?

Ross Brand  [53:18] 
Can I get back in on the YouTube thing for one?

I think there we have to look at there being a middle ground between doing being not doing anything with your title to draw attention and clickbait. Okay, like clickbait would be, you know, why you’ll become one of the world’s most sexy people if you live stream. But, you know, if you have a title that you know about the state of live stream, you know, something that at least let somebody searching for what’s going on with live streaming, how to do live streaming, what’s, you know, the best platforms for live streaming? I think that’s fair within I think you have to figure out what’s within the video, that you’re being honest about, that you can put a headline in a way that somebody would be searching for that. Now I know that I think it was Stuart, look, the news, the most credible mainstream newspaper you want to pick if there are any left. They write headlines to get you to read the article. And they’re dealing with very serious subjects subjects of life and death, war and peace. And, and, and they’re still thinking about how do I write this headline to get people to read and and more than ever, actually, because of, of so much media going online? They’re now measuring clicks, all the newspapers are measuring clicks now. They’re all writing headlines based on what’s going to get clicks. But it’s not really clickbait. If you you’re not delivering what’s because I’ve clicked on a lot of videos expecting to see one thing, and I got something totally different or it never happened, or it was one second of a 15 minute video. But certainly titling this around something with live streaming and podcasting, and I don’t think is out of line.

Mike Wieger  [55:22] 
Well, I think there’s a fine difference between You’re right, you’re totally right click bait, I think the definition of that would be baiting you into something that’s not what it actually is. Whereas a catchy title. This guy maybe didn’t have the best way to finish a cornhole board surface, right. But that’s what he titled it. And when all I searched in the search bar was building cornhole boards and this said the best way and so I mean, is that clickbait somewhat debate? Maybe, maybe it is, maybe it’s not, maybe he didn’t have the best way. But it was a catchy enough title that it got me to click on it. So I think the search ability to people aren’t searching the the catchy titles, but when they search for how to build a cornhole set, and you have your set of titles there, it’s probably important to have something exaggerated, right? Or I don’t know the truth of it is is hard to debate but I think you’ve got to be a little bit exaggerated or click Beatty in order to get the views I think that’s just the nature of YouTube nowadays.

Jim Collison  [56:25] 
So So I’m looking at my YouTube feed right now like okay, you know, these are recommendations for me which is

Mike Wieger  [56:30] 
right right here history that would be even more accurate what you actually click kind of eclectic but it’s

Jim Collison  [56:35] 
I as I look at my the things that I watch, right? Yeah, I watch a lot of history videos, and there’s just one eastern front of world war two animated 1943 to 1944. Okay, no clickbait No, like, there. It’s just a straight title. The only video on that topic

Mike Wieger  [56:53] 
though, it is

Jim Collison  [56:54] 
1.3 million views.

Mike Wieger  [56:58] 
That’s a good that’s a good point. You’re

Jim Collison  [57:00] 
in front of world war two animated and so I fight a little bit against this. This is it’s these kinds of things that make me fight now. There’s a whole bunch of other factors out there as well. But Ross, this makes me fight that title thing. Like when I was when I was chatting with Steve, this weekend. He didn’t like you know, we had Aaron on I thought it was cute, because I use the hashtag van life in the title to do it. And it also gets me thinking like, I need one title for the podcast, and I need one title for YouTube. And then he went, I don’t want to put it on Twitter. And he went, I want to move it to Instagram, right? It’s like, Oh, my God, how much do I have to think But anyways, I see a title like this on YouTube. And I kind of bucked the trend a little bit Ross, I’m kinda like, but you know, 1.3 million views on an on an animated eastern front of World War Two, seriously.

Ross Brand  [57:47] 
But Jim, Jim, think about this, though. The title wasn’t history Episode 302? No, you’re right. I had a way to search for it. There was still keywords in there that you would search for if you were interested in that topic. And you also if I if I had the video, but I’m not going to do in the middle of the show, but I could look at and see you. Did they tag the video? What did they put in the description? The true? Not your your actors, but still, at least if you were searching for that subject, you would be you would come up with it? And probably it got recommended. Maybe they even boosted it with some advertising in the beginning. We there’s so many factors that know right? And certainly, I’m no expert on on YouTube, on the YouTube algorithm. I mean, you could you could spend your life studying that. And then it changes the next day. And you’ve got to, like catch up to get up there and, and stay on top of the latest. And, you know, there’s, I’ve always believed there’s still no better SEO than creating great content. It’s it, I don’t know that that exit a little simplistic, because there are people who, you know, create great content, and they’re getting no eyeballs. And they’re people who creating mediocre content, but they know how to work the system, and they’re doing pretty well. But in general, you can put all the clickbait you want to but if you bring people to mediocre content or content that they’re not looking for, that’s really going to be the only click they’re ever going to give you.

Mike Wieger  [59:25] 
Right. Well, and I I don’t know, I agree with you in certain ways in that don’t right? Because I think in my mind in this space, it’s quantity over quality. I think in this space, it’s the more you get in front of them, the more they’re conditioned to see your videos. And does this cost money in promoting your videos? Yes, but you know, some of the things I think about is for one, Gary van der Chuck, massive Titan in business entrepreneurial. If you’re an entrepreneur, you know who Gary van der Chuck is, and how his videos I don’t think are very good. But you know what, I kept seeing them over and over and over and over and over in my feet. And they were all different. It wasn’t the same video over and over that over time. I’m like, Okay, he’s got some Okies, he’s got some good stuff. And I kept watching and watching and I actually started to like his mediocre stuff more and more as I started watch more of his videos like it’s this weird conditioning of just seeing something over and over. And his titles are clickbait he so he gets a lot of engagement on YouTube. And he went for the quantity over quality space. And his videos are short to the point he’s got captions, he has a really good job of he even puts his own video timer on the bottom so that when you don’t see your own video timer, it’s got a red thing going across the bottom so that people know I mean, it’s it’s that kind of stuff. And he’s a marketing agency. That’s what Vader media is their marketing. So he knows the human perception of Amanda’s at work. And in when I look at someone like that, I think think I would love to say that it’s quality over quantity, mainly because that’s how I personally put out, put out stuff is I want to be quality. I’m not quantity, I want to be good. And I want someone to find it and say that was worth it, give them a subscribe. But really, I think in today’s age, it might be a little bit of a little bit more quantity. Now do you need to have quality hundred percent? Like you need to have it eventually. But it may be more of writing that the content

Ross Brand  [1:01:29] 
like what he’s saying really is mediocre? Or I’m saying that the quality of the video? You know what? He’s not right. So, but he’s built a cult of personality in a sense. And I don’t know, he’s found some way to dig into people and get them addicted to his content and what they’re saying.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:50] 
That’s right. I mean, that’s what I’m saying is how do you get that initial flood of people? Is it quality? Or is it quantity? And I think he chose quantity over quality, where it’s just flooded with stuff, get it out there Go Go Go eventually will hit a nerve of something that that person likes. And they’ll see it. So I think there’s both ways I think we you and I could probably we could try both of these and probably have the same level of success. That’s the crazy part about YouTube right now. But for me, I would I’ve seen in the people that I have watched the most, they went for the quantity over quality route, yet they still had a base level of quality, right? You can’t just be a total awful producer who gets who puts out hundreds of videos and gets views. You have to have some semblance. But you’re not going to appeal to everyone. I think that’s what people like Gary know, is there and you’re not going to appeal to everyone. So what do I do? I blast out there as much content I can content content content, and eventually someone’s going to catch a nerve and they’re gonna come back and I go, this guy’s got decent stuff to say and hit that subscribe button or, or whatever it is follow. And then instantly he kind of formed this empire over time.

Jim Collison  [1:02:59] 
Oh, we could talk about this

Mike Wieger  [1:03:01] 
conversation had

Jim Collison  [1:03:02] 
this this been about a 30 minute conversation, especially on YouTube. It went if we took it to Instagram, if we took it to Twitter, if we took it to be Demi. Well, now they would all be different. This is this is this goes back to my original conversation. So which gets me thinking like as I think about my workflow for this, I probably in into Steve’s point, I kind of need to start thinking through maybe a little different way of doing it and using technology to my advantage, right. So there are and knowing some Google Analytics around the space that I’m in around the keywords, right? That might be a little bit helpful. Having a podcast title, because it doesn’t matter. The title doesn’t really matter very much on a podcast, most people are subscribed, and they’re just going to listen, I rarely look at the title for the podcast that I listened to. But it totally matters on YouTube. And so one of the things it’s frustrating is I think I’m creating a great title and then somebody like me, and you know, you’re like, Oh, is that? You know, I thought that was a great title. So you know, you that kind of that part is frustrating. So and I think there are some technology Ross in this space. That could help me, I just need to build it into my workflow a little bit different if if now to Mike’s point earlier, we do this Mike and I do this for community like I am not really worried about I in fact, I told Steve this when he sent me the video, I don’t know really know if I would even want 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, because most of them are awful. Like, they’re awful, awful people out there on YouTube. just terrible. And I don’t know if I can handle this stuff in the chat in the comments. And those kinds of things do I want to like? Do I want my audience subjected to that kind of brutality, and have to defend me and the channel, like, I’m really happy most videos for The Average Guy Network, get a comment or two. And it’s really nice to have them I get hundreds of views or maybe 10s of views instead of 10,000 or a million or whatever. But for me, it’s a I don’t know it’s different. I’d like to run this out to the audience. If you’re listening either on YouTube, or maybe you’re downloading the podcast. I’d love to hear why you listened. And we’ve had this discussion and you’re like, how does this relate to gadgets? Well, maybe this is more along the lines of a survey research. We’re doing a little we didn’t intend to do this. But little survey researchers we talked about as you the listener or what are you listening for? And obviously if you stayed around for 400 episodes or what however long you’ve been on the podcast or watching it here on YouTube, you’ve got something send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv I love to dialogue around with you a little bit about that. Ross, I am going to I this has got me kind of thinking like Okay, I’m gonna be doing this for a while more. Maybe I need to think about changing my workflow just a little bit. So I get that I maximize those but again, I don’t I don’t know if I want to epic, right. I mean, so I don’t know Ross any any thoughts on any of that?

Ross Brand  [1:06:03] 
You should be so lucky that you make a little change in your workflow and all the sudden you get 100,000 people if you do that, I want to know what that was. But no, you

Jim Collison  [1:06:14] 
never know you never have YouTube videos with 10s of thousands of viewers on I’m so we’ve we have had that.

Ross Brand  [1:06:19] 
I think it’s it’s it’s minor adjustments. And it’s, in other words, having a title is better than having no title or a number as a title. So you don’t have to put four hours into coming up with the perfect keyword title, but have a title that reflects what’s in the episode, probably they’ll be a key word within those words that somebody’s searching for, you’ll pick up a few views, you’ll maybe you’ll get recommended a couple more times, if you want if you even care about that. The other the other thing for promoting the podcast, I would say take one video clip, make one just start with one video clip of under a minute. From from the episode 30 seconds, 45 seconds a minute could even be 20 seconds, and upload it to each of yours your social accounts, upload it to LinkedIn with a link to the podcast, upload it to Facebook, link to the podcast, put it on Twitter link to the podcast, upload it natively on each each of them uploaded on Instagram, linked to a podcast CYC. After doing that for a month, it’s anything come out of it maybe maybe excites people who are already subscribed and following you but haven’t listened in a while and pulls them back in because now they’re seeing you and they feel connected. Who knows? I don’t know what the result is going to be until you try it. Yeah, that’s it look good advice. By the way, I appreciate that one. But that’s doing more video. And just trying to district now. Yes, the social media guru would say, you know, understand the context of each platform and do something different. But then they’ve got a team member for each platform. But just try try that because now you’re giving a visual element and a video element and your highlight for people to look at. Yeah, start with that. Take us take the screenshot that you use for your YouTube thumbnail. If you use a screenshot from the show, the next tweet you send out send out that as the image that goes with it now you’ve got another unique piece of content. If you can make it into a nice square or something there’s another thing you can post on Instagram or Megan put it as an Instagram story with a link you know Lincoln bio kind of thing where you put the link in your your Instagram bio you put in the story say here the episode Lincoln via whatever. So there’s little things that you can do that won’t take a ton of time and and can you can see does that move the needle at all? If it doesn’t then stop doing it if it does, then decide how much it is and is it worth doing more of that or is doing it once a week at least accomplishing something for him? Yeah,

Jim Collison  [1:09:21] 
yeah. No, I think that’s I think that’s good advice. doing one thing you know you say like do one little thing just one little change. The problem is is those little changes over time right add up to a bunch of time like I mean I post in it’s worth it I post my audio to every single free podcasting platform it’s available right you know, so we go to Speaker we go to pod pod automatic SoundCloud mix cloud audio Mac shout engine archive.org podcast com now anchor now the new one Launchpad OC think that literally that’s maybe a minute to upload those, set them get them right get them done. By the way, if you want to listen to them on any of those platforms. I Heart Radio Stitcher, it’s horrible, right. But that being said, it takes that takes maybe an extra 15 2025 minutes on a Saturday to get all those done. And that starts at that time starts adding up. I I don’t I’m not disagreeing with you. It’s just it’s a struggle in technology. We have access to this is the golden age of this in a lot of ways. And there are so many platforms and so many things to do and such great automation, I think about tools like so I need to open Canvas in and get a take my graphic first find that graphic, take my graphic, put it in Canvas. Once that once that initial image is in Canada, then I could easily make one for YouTube one for Facebook, because they all have different size dimensions that they want, right? One for Instagram, but OK, so I’m now 30 minutes into it graphic, it’s probably going to take me over 25 or 30 minutes to find the right clip out of this. Again, I’m not complaining. But I’m just saying like, you know, to the to the clip, okay, now I need to find clip, I’d love to be able to crowdsource all this and say, Hey, what is the crowd think the title should be? or What does the crowd think the clip could be? It doesn’t really work like that, that that is something that doesn’t really work pretty soon. I’m Saturday morning, my routine is you know, I run all the video uploaded to YouTube, upload it process and get it done in Saturday morning is there the actual post, and I spend an hour before ask the podcast coach and maybe an hour or two after as podcast coach, it’s two in the afternoon on Saturday. And I’m still down here, you know posting the podcast. So anyways, again, not complaining. It’s just one of those things, I need to continue to find technologies that make that easier for me to get it posted.

Ross Brand  [1:11:55] 
And the chat will will help you in that if you look at the chat and you think what what from the show people are talking about, then then what what brought a lot of comments that can often give you a clue of where in the show to go to look for your clip. So when I was doing stream yard connect on Wednesday, I noticed in the chat, there was a lot of talk about the Reddit and live streaming because I mentioned the story about Reddit testing live streaming. So that’s the first clip that I went to was a clip of me talking about Reddit figuring if that triggered talking my chat that would trigger interest on the different social platforms. Now when I go pick the second clip, it might have a different reason that I pick it. But you know, we’re just something funny. I don’t think you have to watch the whole thing. Right? You You You are you did a nice job. But your show is just you and you segment it.

Jim Collison  [1:12:47] 
Right, right. We’ve now had a 45 minute discussion on YouTube titles and how to optimize those. And I’m not exactly sure like finding that that five minute clip in this show is pretty difficult sometimes. I mean, it’s not an easy, I don’t control the conversation. We started the show with two real long, real long monologues by both you and Mike like you talked for a while. Then Mike came in. And he taught actually, I think Mike, you started and then we came over to Ross, those are long, those are hard clips to break down into you know, it’s just you have to physically listen to them and then kind of get that figured out. It’s about a six to one ratio, right? If you’re going to edit audio or video, it’s going to take you about six times the actual length of the clip to get it right. When you’re when you’re cutting those kinds of things out. So again, not complaining it is talking about the workflow all we got all the technology to do it right, I can drop it into audacity, or I can put it into I still use Windows Movie Maker, which is just ridiculous. But I do it works for what I do. And I can go through and slice those things out pretty easily. Right? It’s

Ross Brand  [1:13:55] 
still a bit work, I guess I’m used to from my years of working in radio, I’m used to doing it and deadline. So it’s like, okay, here’s the cut for you know, he did, the politician spoke for an hour, the coach spoke for an hour, here’s the news, like, this is the news, or this is what’s going to get people talking or this is what’s been cut. Go in there. So not that I do it that quickly. Believe me, it takes time. And you gotta you gotta you want to edit it right and you want to edit out, you know, the person says, repeats What if they say I am going you want to cut out that first? I there’s no reason to make your guests look silly. It started. So the Yes, there’s a lot of little things that take time, you want to make sure that there’s a coherent thought that it can stand on its own all those things. But yeah, I think it’s I think you could do it quickly. If you if you said, you know, you started watching back you you watch your shows back anyway. Are you live anywhere? I do. I do know somewhere along the line, you just usually not listen to him for a week or two. Okay, yeah, no, I need to get clear. This is this is what people want to hear.

Jim Collison  [1:15:05] 
All right on. Justin, in the chat room here, let’s let’s let’s use the tools that we have available. I think this is really good. So he says, I asked the chat room. Okay, chat room, what should we title this? And he said, streaming branding, the YouTube, the master class? And I do, right? Well, that you know, is there. The master classes are really catching on on YouTube, right? They’ve got that whole series around it, I might change that to livestreaming branding, and how best to use YouTube, the master class I that, again, everybody has their own idea on what title should be. And and I don’t think I am really that good at titles like I it’s just I think there’s a little bit of an art to that. And I think there’s a little bit of nuance to it. And you say Ross, you say Oh, yeah, just kind of the things you talked about. And you know, there’s some of these kinds of things and keywords. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not that easy. Like, you know, fortunately, we use otter.ai. Now to do all our transcripts for the show. And if you actually go to show notes for the shows from I don’t know, the last six weeks, you can actually in the show notes, go down and click on the you’ll see a timestamp in our show notes. Now, if you click on that timestamp, it’ll actually take you in the audio to that exact spot, we’re saying that so I don’t, I haven’t really talked about that very much. But if you’re a regular listener to the program that’s available to you, as well, a little bit of really cool technology getting you know, getting that part done. And it gives me some keywords. I mean, that’s actually saved me some time of like, what did we talk about it goes through and pull some keywords out. And it has sped up that part for me. So maybe it’s just learning the the workflow through like through Canada, what’s the best way to get my album art like so for this show? Ross? What do you think? And Mike, think about this as well, your you’re Mike, your bandwidth went really wonky? Did it? Yeah. Yeah. So while you’re fixing that Ross, if you are going to use for this show you if you are going to use a image for YouTube, and maybe what else what what would you use for it? How what would you my my indication as I have a full scale picture of you, because I, I did this a couple times in the show, and I got you smiling like you’re doing right now. Right? And I could do that and put you have a nice little spot to the right there where I could put, you know, livestreaming ninja Ross brand in there. Right? That’s that’s kind of what I would do. But what would you do?

Ross Brand  [1:17:38] 
Well, I have, I have a certain sort of template that I use for my YouTube thumbnails. And they all have the title, like, you know, trying to hold it to four words or whatever, five words most, the title. And some people say never more than three words, but I have the title. And then I have an image of the guest, I have an image of myself. And I’ll have an image maybe of the product if there was a product of their company logo. So I can mine’s just that it stands out. So like if you’re scanning down the thumbnails, the title stands out big. And that’s I mean, I’m not doing anything special with it, but I’m doing more with it then if I blew, you know, my, my website color blue, right, and the name of the title or whatever and didn’t think about it. So I’m doing I’m adding like maybe one little kind of emoji looking, whatever those things are called and sticker kind of thing. And, you know, if I’m talking about podcasting, it might be a headphones next to whatever the title is, or just a little something that’s eye catching, but I’m not doing anything special with it.

Jim Collison  [1:19:00] 
All right, Mike, you’re the chief millennial here. What would you do for the show?

Mike Wieger  [1:19:05] 
Jim? I’ve been I’ve been the naysayer. This is why this podcast has been killing me. I’ve been like this negative Nancy the whole time. And because what I want to say here is it doesn’t matter. Because for for people who aren’t subscribed to a podcast, I see a clickbait title. I click in and instantly I see anything longer than I mean, I want to say 30 minutes, but for sure an hour, I’m back out, because I know I’m not gonna find what I was looking for an hour 45 and honestly, I don’t have an hour 45 to devote to any YouTube video I watch right? So for me if you’re a YouTuber, and you want to get content out there, and you’re going to spend the time to think about titles to think about keywords categories, chop it up naked segments because no put put, definitely put your full video out there for your listeners like like, for me, right? I listened to ham nation by twit, the twit network. And for some reason, I really like to watch the video side of that, because they show a lot of really cool setups people have for their ham radios. I download the hand, I download the video or I watch it on YouTube, put it up there because your subscribers will appreciate it. I’m talking about for growing like the end. But for your subscribers your title could mean absolutely zero for your listeners for your subscribers, like you said, Jim, for the shows you subscribe to, for the most part, people are going to listen no matter what. Now there is, you know, there’s some there are some shows that I only listened to the certain catchy titles I listened to. But I think Jim for YouTube, chop it up if you want them to listen for this specific theory, if you’re talking about uploading the entire hour, 20 hour 30 even 45 minutes, 30 minutes and above. I I don’t think it matters. You might get a few right, yeah, we’ll get a few more listens of random people who have them and have time to listen. But I don’t think you’re not enough to make a difference. I don’t think it’s worth your time.

Jim Collison  [1:21:02] 
Okay. It’s good advice. Robin and

Mike Wieger  [1:21:04] 
Sarah this whole time. So I know it’s the opposite side. It’s the millennial no attention span, time frame kind of person who’s who’s given that advice,

Jim Collison  [1:21:16] 
Ross, this is a. So I’m throwing up a little bit of your branding that you’re doing right? It’s just, I view you as a hybrid between what I do and what all the rest of the YouTube community does. Right? You’re you’re in between other words, you have consistent branding. So when I look at your, like, if I’m on YouTube, and I see I can tell when I’m coming across your content, you have a consistent font that you use, you have a consistent color that you use you breathe like I can tell very, very quickly. That’s kind of what I was looking for in my when I was putting my logo on there is I wanted folks who knew me to go that’s Jim’s video and click on it right? Maybe Mike because of your point. But Ross, I do anything you want to. We are we’re going to run a little short on time here, but you’re in any thoughts you want to highlight on this graphic that you put up.

Ross Brand  [1:22:04] 
I mean, I think you pretty much just said it, it’s consistent branding, I make sure that the font is large enough so that, you know words that people are looking for, they can easily see against the white background with black letters against the white background. But the picture of my guests a picture of myself a picture of one of the products that we discussed, and the logo of the company. This was somebody from electro voice for people listening on the podcast is somebody from electro voice that I interviewed at podcast movement, and I titled it great microphones for interviews in studio. And while that certainly is better than an interview with XYZ from electro voice, which doesn’t mean anything to almost anybody, people looking for, you know, what’s a great microphone to use? Or what’s it What’s a microphone for interviews and, or for my livestream studio might come across this and undeniably electro voices RE 20 and 50 are outstanding industry standard broadcast microphones, you there in every radio station, you know, pretty much across the country that doesn’t use a sure SM seven VI mean. So it’s not like I’m I’m making up something and then you know, I’m putting a a, you know, $20 karaoke microphone up there. I’m actually putting a, you know, top of the line microphone that that that we talked about in that that interview?

Jim Collison  [1:23:37] 
Yeah. Joe, Joe says I appreciate that. That’s a good that’s a great example. And like I said, I think a hybrid Joe had said earlier when we’re talking about titles, you won’t believe how this show improve your livestream. bland? Yeah, actually, they won’t believe he’s, he’s joking, I take out the moment believe and this could be the title of this. This, this could be how to improve your livestream branding. That’s probably and I, for me, I’m in the podcast title, I’m going to probably put with Ross brand. Like, I want that I do want that in my title one, I want to visualize it for my own. I like to go back through my own archives. And actually, I usually put my guests first. So I’d say Ross brand talks about improving your livestream branding. That would probably be the way I would do it not caring what the title things are. But the way I like to do it. That’s just for me. So I don’t

Ross Brand  [1:24:32] 
know, more people are searching for live streaming or branding than they are searching for Ross brand. And I would say, Yeah, one day, it’ll be different. Now,

Jim Collison  [1:24:42] 
what I notice here, and

Ross Brand  [1:24:44] 
now the word brand kind of works, because Yeah, because it’s now like this word that’s used everywhere in marketing. So by accident, people might be searching for the word brand. But Ross brand is not going to be searched for something live streaming or podcasting or YouTube or marketing or branding or media.

Jim Collison  [1:25:06] 
Yeah, no. Right on. We’re getting some kudos out in the chat room as well. Fred said really enjoyed tonight’s show, Jim and so or Brad said that. Appreciate that, Brad and getting that in. It’s a little bit of a risk to run a show like this Ross in some ways, because it’s not gadgety, although we do a BBQ show. And we had a whole show on alcohol last week. So I basically do what I want. And that’s kind of the way I’ve approached the branding on Home Gadget Geeks is I kind of just do what I want in and that’s hard. I think it’s hard for some people to understand sometimes it’s like, Guys, I actually do this. I know this seems weird, but actually do this for me. Like I, for me to spend an evening with you, Ross and Mike every week with you. It’s a real treat. And it’s kind of an excuse. Dave says Dave Jackson says sometimes that’s just it’s like, Where else do you get the opportunity to have this kind of conversation and we record it and other people get a chance to do it. I really give to I can’t say that word because it’s family friendly. But I really, I really don’t care. I really don’t care if it goes big on YouTube or for massive on LinkedIn. Now, I have that advantage because this is a hobby podcast at work. It’s a different work. I’ve got a whole marketing team that kind of cares. We had talked about, I mean, they do I shouldn’t say kinda they do. But we have we’re replacing some videos. And they they made some new videos. We did some old videos about eight years ago, and they’re just hokey and they made some new ones out of the stuff I made. And so they did repurpose that stuff right they took theme Thursday content and repurposed it and it’s dynamite. So there’s some great things to do there. Ross I want to thank you again for one for hanging out with me on at podcast movement and to for coming back and coming on here talking about live streaming. Thanks for doing that.

Ross Brand  [1:26:57] 
Well thanks for having me back. Love the show and always enjoy it and it’s great to be back and thank you for hanging out with me that was that was a blast and hope to see you again at another conference soon. And we would do the same thing it was just a lot of fun experiencing podcast movement with you.

Jim Collison  [1:27:16] 
It was super good I appreciate that. If you want to catch more on Ross you can catch him on streaming or connect 2pm Eastern out there on LinkedIn best to follow Ross out here to kiss LinkedIn still doesn’t have the best subscription system to do those. They’re still in beta for live streaming so head out to LinkedIn com slash IN for LinkedIn that’s it and then slash Ross brand just like it sounds you can catch Ross on streaming and streaming our comm slash Ross that’s kind of cool. Really just Ross you have that Ross that’s is that important. Well that’s my landing page. Dream Yeah, that is super cool facebook.com slash livestream universe you can find them there as well and then we will have a question complete list of our you can find Ross in our show notes. Head over to the average guy.tv forward slash HGG for Home Gadget Geeks for one for Mike Great to see you as well. Thanks for coming out tonight as well good to see you.

Unknown Speaker  [1:28:13] 
It’s always a good time always love it

Jim Collison  [1:28:15] 
will remind everyone and thank the Patreon subscribers who each and every month support the network and we appreciate you guys in what you do we have one in $5 plans if you want to head out there the average guy.tv slash Patreon Don’t forget to join our discord group or Facebook just the average guy.tv slash and then discord or Facebook you want to send me an email Jim at the average guy TV we want to thank Maple Grove partners for their sponsorship of of the whole network of the average guy TV network get high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust to reliable as well and superfast course you know that’s Christian and so you can get more information hosting plans as little as $10 a month media and web hosting and it’s pretty great stuff. If you’re going to do us Go Daddy don’t okay. Maple Grove partners. Calm we’ll get that done. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy.tv slash live will be back next Thursday. Mike You and I were actually gonna have to carry the mantra next week to catch some folks up and what we’re doing in our technology world. Maybe talk a few cigars. With that. We’ll say goodbye

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