The Podcast Domino Strategy
The Podcast Domino Strategy
I think people are promoting their podcasts the wrong way.
Hear me out.
Everyone wants their podcast to grow fastest on YouTube.
Why?
Because YouTube pays you Adsense for views, the CPMs for Brand Deals/Ads are the same as audio only, and the YouTube Home Page algo will feed your show to new viewers without you having to lift a finger.
It’s universally known that if you want to grow a podcast, you either launch audio only and wait 10 years, or you prioritize video, launch on YouTube, and try to funnel all the attention there.
But here’s my realization…when’s the last time you watched/listened to a full podcast episode (1-4 hours) on YouTube?
Exactly…you haven’t. Nobody does.
If I had a dollar for the amount of times I’ve heard someone say, “Nah I didn’t watch the full episode…I watched the clips”, I’d be a quadrillionaire.
People don’t watch full podcast episodes on YouTube.
I will admit, most people that are audio-only listeners do listen to full episodes on Apple/Spotify, but that’s because there is no audio clip platform.
Okay, so what’s this all mean?
Here’s the common playbook people run for podcasts:
Publish the audio-only episodes on Apple/Spotify (but tbh, we don’t really care about these downloads unless we’ve been around for a while and they are high)
Publish the full episode on YouTube (main goal is to drive everybody here)
Make YouTube Clips like Joe Rogan (5-10 minute straight cuts from the full episode, thumbnails like Rogan)
Make 3-5 60 second short-form clips for IG/TT/YouTube Shorts (designed to drive people to the link in bio where the full YouTube episode is linked)
And what actually happens is:
Friends share the audio with friends, but that’s the only lever for growth so it grows super slowly
Few people watch the full episode on YouTube (unless you have a cult following)
Nobody watches the YouTube clips (unless you have a cult following)
Most of the shorts get immaterial views. Once in a while a short goes viral on IG Reels or Tiktok, it gets a million views, lots of shares, your IG/TT page grows, but there is no noticeable increase to your audio/video episode views
Hmm…seems like a lot of work for a leaky strategy.
Here’s my idea…the domino strategy.
People are primed for content on short-form. Billions of eyes absolutely brainwashed to consume short-form content every single day.
Instead of making a short that has a beginning, middle, and end (designed to make the viewer think you sound smart), what if you just made the short with the beginning, some middle and then a cliffhanger, specifically designed to not deliver all of the information?
For example, if we had a segment in wknds where we said, “These are the 3 ways we’re making the most money right now as creators…”
Most podcasts would try to rip an edit that actually gave you all 3 ways. So when you were finished watching, you thought they were credible and maybe would follow the pod.
Seems logical, but actually…suboptimal.
People’s brains work like drug addicts when they watch short-form content.
If you give them the drug (the full answer), they will be satisfied and move on. If you don’t…they’re going to come looking for the dealer.
Instead of giving them the full answer up front, I’d design the short to either give them none of the ways, or maybe given them one and say something like, “the second and third way were 5x bigger - you’ll never believe what they were” and then abruptly stop the short there and make them go to YouTube to complete the loop.
So step 1, cliffhang through short-form (Domino #1).
But here’s where it gets really different.
My goal is not to drive them to the long-form episode on the YouTube channel.
Why not?
First of all, most pods are super boring and slow at the beginning.
Would you take someone on the edge of their seat for one specific piece of information and then make them sit through 20 minutes of boring fluff and have to hunt for the answer?
No…give them the answer.
Put the answer to the shorts cliffhanger in a 5-7 minute clip, specifically designed to expand upon the short.
Now the clip is not edited like Joe Rogan (just slapping an I/O on a 5 minute segment, adding a thumbnail and posting)…instead you custom design/animate the first 30-60 seconds of the clip to be as visually engaging as the short.
This way, there is less visual drop-off when they jump from IG → YouTube.
The link directly to that clip will be in bio, and when they get there, they will be met with a similar engaging style.
After watching the 5-7 minute clip, they will get the answer to the original question framed in the short.
Domino #2…a Youtube medium-form clip edited like a short-form video.
Now you have them in YouTube watching your videos, in a format closer to what they were watching before.
If they’re really interested in what you have to say, they will then be much closer to getting to the full episode in YouTube (which you’ll link in the clip shownotes and call to action at the end of the clip).
Most people won’t make this conversion, but that’s okay. You were getting zero net conversion from shorts before, so anyone that does make the leap is likely going to be a true fan.
This Short → Clip → Full vs Short → Full strategy works well for a couple reasons:
People want to consume clips….nobody watches full podcasts on YouTube
Clips can be edited similarly to how the Short was edited for visual and rhythmic consistency
Clips can be focused on one topic…the same topic as the shorts. Long episode have lots of topics which makes the viewer have to hunt through time stamps to find what they want
Clips can be posted daily, which means if your team is running at full efficiency, you will have fresh eyes coming into your YouTube channel daily vs 1x per week (this will pump your channel algo like crazy)
You can run ads on Clips
Long-form podcasts are really just the canvas source material to cut compelling clips.
Of course, the long-form also exists to provide amazing conversations for superfans to listen to as well, but superfan views only helps increase depth.
If you want to grow wider, the domino strategy is a much better way to get new eyes into the ecosystem that stick at a higher rate.
We’re starting to test this on wknds and will circle back on how it goes.
Fwiw, what makes this hard is that you need an editing team with enough capacity to edit clips (often 5-6x volume) with the same rigor as you would shorts (plus you still need the full episode). So this is not a strategy where you can cut corners until you have it systematized.
One last thought…here’s why non-converting shorts are a head fake.
If your podcast gets 10K downloads on the full episodes (or clips) but 2M impressions per week on TT/IG, that won’t help you with monetization.
Sure maybe more people on TT/IG know your face, but if there isn’t a conversion to the content stream that brands pay for, you have a leaky bucket.
The domino strategy is designed to maximize the stickiness and flow through from non-monetized channels (shorts) to monetized channels (clips, full episodes).
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