Keeping it real while making reels

I’m terrible at marketing and promotion. I know it’s a thing that I need to do as a creator and an entrepreneur, but it’s both an art and a science that, as a wearer of all hats in the various things I’m doing, I just don’t have a lot of time to figure out.

One of the promotional activities I used to do was make four video clips of all my episodes for STEAM Powered to share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok over the two-week period between episodes. Even with the aid of social-media schedulers, on top of creating the clips themselves, it was a time-consuming activity with very little return on investment. The level of interaction with my video posts and accounts was nothing that warranted the time I spent creating them.

So I stopped.

If you build it, they will come

I know this isn’t true.

Over the last couple of years of producing this show, I know that numbers will vary based on content, my social media following, my guest, and my guest’s own social media following.

I also don’t make it a point to seek out celebrity guests. There are a few on my guest wishlist, sure, and having them on the show would certainly help to contribute to clout and other things relating to real or perceived value, but that’s not the point of STEAM Powered. The point is to share the journeys of a cross-section of our broader STEAM community, so I want my guests to be representative of the people in it. They’re going to be in a variety of fields, from a range of backgrounds, and at all stages of career. Because they are us.

That said, I do feel some disappointment when say, a guest who is affiliated with NASA or Star Trek barely registers a more pronounced blip in my stats.

I made this flippant post about ‘realising’ my promotional failings after our conversation with Dr Erin Macdonald didn’t perform significantly better than my usual content. In my nerd mind, an astrophysicist (awesome) who switched from academia to industry (woo altac) and is now science advisor for one of the most culturally significant franchises of our generation (???) should have done better numbers. Realistically though, you can’t win lotto if you don’t buy a lotto ticket, and if you accept my flimsy metaphor of a lotto ticket being podcast promotion, then I did not, in fact, buy a lotto ticket. That’s all on me.

This post was made after I did a workshop at the Perth Podcast Festival with Carmen Braidwood who shared that I perhaps was putting too much polish on my clips and that going rough and ready would create a sense of intimacy or behind-the-scenes-ness that will attract more viewers. She suggested I try cuts straight from the episodes, no polish, and throw them up there. Oh, and put some up of me while I’m at it because I’m the host, and as the unifying factor behind the show, I need to be more in front of the camera. Fair, I guess.

And so, the A/B testing began.

First forays

I recorded a couple talking-head videos and tossed them up on Instagram/Facebook and YouTube.

Without the reels, my posting behaviour is pretty much just the episodes when they’re released approximately fortnightly. On Instagram and Facebook (and everywhere else) this is a static image, and on YouTube, the full episode.

Based on these charts, clearly, posting reels does something, and it’s worth exploring.

The old way

As a bit of background, I use DaVinci Resolve to edit my episodes and place duration markers to mark topics for show notes and good quotable sections for clips. This is while I’m doing the editing, so not much additional work there.

Once I’ve exported the final, I copy those duration markered sections onto separate timelines and trim them down to 60 seconds. Those are then copied onto other timelines and exported as:

• Twitter: square, watermark, subtitles.
• TikTok: vertical, no watermark, subtitles (also used for IG).
• Instagram: square, no watermark, subtitles (this was before the reels changes).
• Facebook: horizontal, watermark, no subtitles, SRT file, and vertical, watermark, no subtitles.
• YouTube: horizontal, no watermark, no subtitles, SRT file (this was before the shorts changes).

And that was just generating the clips.

Twitter and Instagram clips could be posted with social media schedulers, Facebook had to use the UI so that I could add the SRT for subtitles, TikTok and Facebook/Instagram stories were manual.

This is why I abandoned this exercise.

The new way

I still use DaVinci Resolve to edit my episodes, then I upload the final to Descript and initiate the transcription. I export the duration markers I created in Resolve to an edl file (plain text) and use the timestamps to locate the (4-5) clips in Descript and create new compositions cutting them down to 60 seconds by editing the text. Then I apply a template I set up with a single click to get it aesthetically and consistently the way I want my clips to look.

I also now only do verticals and export the SRT, and two video versions, one with a watermark and subtitles, and one with just subtitles.

To publish the clips, I have built a SaaS to bulk manage my copy (still dog-fooding, not ready for public consumption yet), and copy from there into the various manual interfaces when I need to.

• Twitter: I use Hootsuite to schedule because it also supports adding SRT files.
• TikTok: I have to use the mobile app because the web interface doesn’t support the 280-character caption yet, and I save it as draft, manually publishing on the appropriate days.
• Instagram: If the guest has Instagram, I have to use the mobile app so that I can add the guest as a collaborator, save it as draft, manually publish on the appropriate days, and crosspost to Facebook. If they don’t have Instagram, I use my SaaS to send the copy and clip to a Make (affiliate link) scenario which schedules Instagram and Facebook via Buffer.
• YouTube: My SaaS generates a JSON file from my copy that I use to upload to YouTube via the command line using porjo’s YouTube uploader.
• LinkedIn: I have to use the web interface to schedule and apply the SRT. I have API access now though and am now hunting for a script like porjo’s to do the same thing. Otherwise, I have to write one.

It sounds like more, but I’m actually getting more done with less effort than before. Honestly though, if I didn’t care about SRTs and the collaborator setting, the whole lot would be automated via Make and schedulers. We’ll see how long before I tap out and do that.

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How it’s going

Twitter numbers are a tiny bit better with the new format than previously. Nothing much to say here. This platform has shown the least amount of change.

LinkedIn I didn’t do before so I don’t have any ‘before’ metrics, and I’m also sharing the videos to the STEAM Powered LinkedIn page which I started at around the same age and isn’t incredibly active. There’s small but continuous growth, however.

TikTok numbers are more consistent than they were before. Previously it would swing quite wildly, but now I’m currently capping out at about 230-240. That said, there’s more engagement than there was before as well as conversions to followers.

Instagram reach and engagement is up in the hundreds of percent, follower percentage is also respectably up. Guests who accept a collab tend to have reels that perform better, and the view numbers are higher than they were before. Definitely no more flatlining for days at a time.

Facebook is also up in the hundreds of percent, though there are quieter periods as well where there is activity on Instagram. I wondered if crossposting would have an impact, but as there’s a significant net improvement as it is, I’m not going to bother experimenting further here.

YouTube is a wild one. Looking at pure content numbers, it’s all over the map. When I first started uploading shorts, I did it manually through the web or mobile interface and the numbers seemed okay, much like the chart I shared earlier. But then I switched to the API uploader and started using the Descript template for visual theming and it plummeted, near flatlining. Switched back to manual, and it alternated? Some single digits some in the hundreds. Bird’s-eye view though, views, watch time, and subscribers are up. So it’s at this point that I’ve decided to channel Aldous Snow again and live my life with the API uploader.

‘What about your podcast numbers?’ I hear you ask? Well, conversion is an interesting one. Statistically and based on information I’ve received from experts in this space, social media only leads to about a 10% conversion rate to podcast subscriptions. What you’re doing with social media is building community, and you just have to accept that some of these members will only want to consume your content in the smaller chunks you give them. That’s cool though, community is what you want.

That said, I’m pretty sure my numbers are up. I say “pretty sure” because I just switched hosting platforms from Podbean to Captivate and the stats I got from Podbean aren’t properly comparable. But listener (unique and returning) numbers appear to be higher, and people seem to be checking out more of my back catalogue.

I also started using a Chartable Smartlink with my last episode which tracks click-throughs and conversions and right enough, 10%.

Final thoughts

If you have it in you and you can do it sustainably, definitely put some time into reels. I can’t say whether audiograms will perform the same as a video with a person in it, but you can give it a go and see what works for you.

There are also some services out there that are AI-driven and can generate videos to go with your audio. Your mileage may vary with these but it’s also an option if you want something different from the usual audiogram.

You also don’t need to be like me and post your clips on all the platforms. Look at where your audience is and be picky about where you’re spending your energy. Or just share it on the platforms you hang out on more. For me, aside from Twitter, all the other platforms showed growth so anything is an improvement on what I had before.

And I emphasise, make sure it’s sustainable. You don’t want to burn yourself out over this stuff.

Have you had any other interesting experiences with sharing reels for your content? Know if there are any other automatable tools for posting videos with SRTs to socials? Let me know. I’d love to carry on living my life.

Stay curious,

— Michele

Cover image by PIRO from Pixabay.