Does your podcast need video?

Whether or not podcasts should include video is a fairly hot topic right now. I’ll give my answer upfront: it depends. Not all podcasts are easy to add a video component to.

Fiction podcasts and narrative podcasts are just two examples of ones that would require a ton of extra effort to add video to. The only way I see this happening is if rights to those podcasts get acquired by a studio and turned into a TV show or documentary. (Gimlet’s Homecoming is a great example of that.)

That said, if your podcast is two co-hosts or yourself and a guest and you actually want to do it, then go for it! I personally do not do video with my podcasts even though I have all of the gear to do so. I have, however, edited video podcasts.

I’ve also frequently seen the take that video is “so easy” because you can just record with your phone. Yes, you absolutely can record on your phone, but you do not want to be uploading your phone audio. So you either need to use a microphone that connects directly to you phone, like a lavalier microphone OR you need to sync the audio in post.

So the short of it is, there still needs to be some technical know-how in order to record video. And if you’re like me and you’re particularly picky about production quality (a thing I don’t recommend, by the way, it’s extremely annoying to be picky about it), then it’ll be hard for you to just go “it’s fine, let’s post it!”

Another thing that makes my stress level increase 100 fold is when someone says they don’t need to edit at all. 😅 💀 

Look, if you’re that confident in your content and just want to toss up unedited video, by all means go for it. I won’t stop anyone.

I’m just someone who personally struggles with that a lot. It still bothers me knowing that I have videos up from before I knew anything about lighting that look like absolute garbage. I leave them up, though, in an attempt to get it over.

I could probably ramble much longer about my feelings about making video content, but I’ll spare you all from that rant.

One other thing to consider: do you want to focus on reaching the most people or having a smaller, more engaged audience? Again, there’s no wrong answer. It’s just something to think about.

In conclusion, do video if you want to! Don’t feel like you have to, though. And don’t let anyone tell you that you NEED to. There are plenty of podcasts out there that are audio-only and they do just fine.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any feedback, comments, or questions. I’m also available for consultations if you need help launching your podcast, figuring out next steps, etc.