Between Two Mics: The Remote Recording Podcast

How to Build a YouTube Channel in Podcasting with Maribel Quezada Smith

• Zach & Rock from SquadCast.fm

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Maribel Quezada Smith, video and podcast producer, has been the face of the SquadCast YouTube channel since earlier this year. We started brainstorming together on a video strategy late last year and got to work to make it all happen. In this episode, Maribel chats with SquadCast co-founders Zach Moreno and Rock Felder about what went into the strategy, our goals, dreams, and next steps.

Listen in for information about:

  • YouTube statistics for podcasters
  • How we decided on a cadence and tone for our videos
  • Where we see the channel going in the future
  • Why shorter videos are easier to make and are very popular at this point in time
  • How to get started with a YouTube channel for your podcast and why now is the right time to experiment with it

Also in this episode:

Credits:

  • Written and produced by Arielle Nissenblatt
  • Mixed and designed by Vince Moreno Jr
  • Artwork and logos by Alex Whedbee
  • Music by Shawn Valles
  • Hosted by Zach Moreno and Rock Felder
  • Transcripts by Sabeena Singhani

PAM UZZELL: Hey! Before we get to this week’s episode, I wanna tell you about a podcast. I think you’ll enjoy. And it’s recorded on SquadCast. I’m Pam Uzzell, and I’m the host of Art Heals All Wounds. It’s a podcast about artists whose work grapples with, well, the issues we all grapple with. Their stories about their work will inspire you to live your best creative lives. You can find it wherever you listen, and on my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast.com. Now let’s get to the show.

[music]

ZACH MORENO: Welcome to The SquadCast Podcast. I’m Zach.

ROCK FELDER: I’m Rock. 

ZACH: And we’re the co-founders of SquadCast. 

ROCK: What’s SquadCast? SquadCast is the best way to record remote audio and video. You can do it with anyone, anywhere, and at any time. We’re using SquadCast right now.

ZACH: Yeah. And on this podcast, we talk about remote content production. We podcast recommendations. We showcase our customers’ amazing podcasts, and we nerd out about the tech that makes this an awesome industry and ecosystem to be part of. 

ROCK: All right. Let’s get into it.

ZACH: All right. Welcome to the show, Maribel. How are you today, Maribel?

MARIBEL QUEZADA SMITH: I’m doing much better than last week, Zach. Thanks for asking. Cuz last week I had COVID. So.

ZACH: Glad you’re, uh, able to, to speak with us today. Grateful for your patience. So we could get this episode together. It’s gonna be a good one. Little, little bit of an intro. Maribel, you are a, a content creator, extraordinaire, video and podcast producer, probably many other things. And you’re the, you’re the co-founder of the BIPOC podcast creators founded by adifferentiate creative and, and, uh, many more skills as well. We wanted to have you, we wanted to have you on show for a bunch of reasons, but one of the biggest is because you’ve been at the forefront of our, our recent-ish launch, implementation of, uh, of our YouTube strategy. You know, we, we have a YouTube channel now. Thanks to, thanks to you. And, uh, you know, a lot of hard work has gone into it.

MARIBEL: Yes. Cue the applause. This is where the editor puts the applause, right? 

ZACH: Word up, word up. It’s, it’s been, uh, really, really great collaborating. And yeah, since we started collaborating with you, Maribel, it’s, it’s grown to a well over a thousand subscribers. Let’s talk about like how we, we thought to start working together. Let’s hit the rewind button a little bit. What was the, the vision for us, uh, with the videos that we would be producing together?

MARIBEL: Well, you know, going back to that time, I feel like it’s been almost a year. Uh, I feel, yeah, almost a year since we started talking. 

ROCK: She Podcast.

MARIBEL: She Podcast!

ROCK: She Podcast is when you first pitched us.

MARIBEL: It was, yes. I remember talking to Rock. I was like, Hey, uh, pull you to the side. I got something for you. I have an idea. I think we should do this thing. And, I was actually surprised to hear you say, yeah, that sounds kind of cool. And then Arielle was there and she was like, yeah, I think I like that. And Zach said something, and I’m okay. Alright, well maybe we can talk. Right. So obviously that evolved. We had some calls, we had some meetings, but the biggest thing was we started with a strategy. We started with a strategy session and ideation process, brainstorming. Um, and it was a very valuable exercise. I don’t know if you remember, but we were together for a little bit over two hours. I wanted you for three, y’all wouldn’t give me three you only gave me two.

ROCK: We’re tough with meetings. 

ZACH: Jam board style, right? 

MARIBEL: Yeah.

ZACH: Like there was a, there was a quiz jam. Yeah. We had a lot of fun, a lot of, lot of different things to get stuff out of our head.

MARIBEL: It was interactive. We had to get our ideas out on paper. We did like a brainstorming session. It was jamboard style. Um, got a lot of information out on the table because I think that’s part of the problem, sometimes. A lot of people in different stages of the creation process have ideas floating in their heads, but they don’t know how to organize them, or they’re not even entirely sure, like what direction to take them in. And that’s the first thing that I always wanna do with, with clients or in any project. Okay. Let’s get everything down and then let’s organize. Right. And, and no idea is bad at the beginning. you know, but then we start narrowing down. So we narrowed down. And we talked a lot about audience too. Do you all remember that?

ROCK: Absolutely. We always talk about audience here at SquadCast, and it’s one of the things we encourage our customers, you know, the way to grow your show is to have an audience first mindset. So I’m glad that you made sure that we, uh, were walking the, the talk though, because it is surprisingly easy to lose sight of that, but you absolutely did. And, and thank you for that, cuz um, something you always need to keep in mind.

MARIBEL: Yeah. I, that’s something that, again, when we’re, a lot of us producers, cuz I come from the production world where all I had to ever worry about before this side of things, all I had to ever worry about was script writing, you know, directing, field producing, things like that. Right. The, the actual, uh, process of the production. But what came before that was usually done by somebody else.  The thing is that doesn’t happen in smaller companies or smaller organizations. And so I had to learn to also-

ZACH: You wanna create and just like jump right in, right? 

MARIBEL: Exactly. But we need to also do the, the work, you know, before that, like you have to talk about audience, you have to talk about goals. You have to talk about, um, what is missing in the marketplace. Like there’s some marketing in there. There’s some branding in there that has to be discussed when you’re talking about creating content. 

ZACH: Totally. 

MARIBEL: Even if it’s video, audio, whatever. That’s the part that I always try to spend some time on with anybody that’s working with me. And no, I’m not a branding expert, but I’m telling you, I’ve learned a lot over the years because I have had to, I’ve had to understand audience. And if you don’t create with your audience in mind then what are you doing? Who are you talking to? That was actually my talk at She Podcast. Who are you talking to? [laughs] Because that’s part of the problem. Nobody knows right. Sometimes.

ZACH: Yeah. And then it shows it’s like, you’re gonna face many decisions along your creative journey. And, yeah, what I try to, to advocate for. And what I try to try to do myself is, is to, is to consider how this decision one way or another would impact the audience. So how, how is the audience impacted by this? Because it’s like, yeah. I mean, we think about microphone, would it look cool on my desk? And what’s fancy and people talking about over here and all this stuff, but it’s like, does it, does it impact your audience? What, what is the impact on your audience? Like, I think that’s a, a solid question to, to help keep you, keep you, um, focused on, on what’s best for them. 

MARIBEL: And what are you trying to get out of, out of this? Right? Like what’s the goal? So that was another question that I wanted to make sure we answered, like, okay, SquadCast team. What’s the goal of creating all of these videos for YouTube? Because it’s awesome for me. I love doing this stuff, but I want you to be able to get something out of it. That’s the whole point. We’re all, we’re all in business for a reason. So talking about that honestly, uh, is very important. And that’s something that I think a lot of people often miss as well. Like when you go into creating something, you need to have some sort of goal in mind that you’re gonna be working towards, and it can’t just be, well, I wanna make money from this. Okay. But how are you gonna get there? You need some steps before that. Some of our goals were, yeah, we wanna increase subscribers. We wanna make sure that we are educating and inspiring people to create better content. And we didn’t just wanna hit people with like salesy stuff. We wanted to give them good information that they could come back to and rely on, over and over again. Um, you know, we were talking about that the other day, how we have to be very careful about making sure that we remember like, advertising is advertising and educational or entertaining content is another thing, right? Like I think sometimes as creators, we forget, and we end up mixing everything and then the message, the overall message is lost on the audience.

ZACH: That’s another reason I love the, the planning, the level of, uh, detail we did in the, in the planning, because you always have that to return to as well when new questions pop up, um, that’ll, that’s always gonna happen. And, you know, in our case, we, we landed on yeah, focusing on, on, uh, helping creators grow, whether they are beginners, intermediate, or advanced or everything in between. Not there’s a lot of content out there for, um, beginner, beginning creatives. Um, but there’s this huge gap in the middle and then some advanced stuff. So we wanted to be, uh, we wanted to design for that and, and, and, and then the, the visuals, this being a YouTube channel, right? Like the, the audience is different than the, uh, audience of this podcast. And I wanna get your thoughts, like more broadly on that if we can come back to that in a second, but, but also then like the thought leadership of where, what is, uh, you know, the creative journey like, what are the things that, um, we have opinions about when it comes to helping creators, um, you know, grow their, grow, their production team, grow, you know, be more efficient as a creator, um, and grow in the ways that you want to from, from your, the content that you’re working hard to create. But what, um, what are your thoughts? I mean, you, you like, like, like SquadCast, we talk about kind of sitting on this intersection, right. Of content creation, audio and video. We don’t have a ton of opinions about where this content ends up. Although, you know, we started this out of, uh, background of coming from wanting to wanting to help serve, um, podcasters, but video was the most requested feature. So there’s a lot, there’s some overlap here. So, you know, um, us, uh, being, uh, podcast kind of uh, you know, focused company, adding a YouTube channel is kind of already, already going in that direction after adding video recording to, to the platform. So yeah. What are, what are some of those like differences and like similarities maybe that, that you see, um, when it comes to, uh, like the, the creating content for YouTube, creating content for your podcast and then like the overlap there. Audience is just kinda one area. 

MARIBEL: Woot.

ZACH: I know that’s a big question. So let’s break it down.

MARIBEL: Uh, so some of the overlapping similarities, I guess for me, the first one that comes to mind is the planning that goes into it. You still have to have a lot of planning for both. Um, the consistency is key, but when I say consistency, I, I don’t just mean like creating it, you know, on a regular schedule. I also mean quality, like is your quality consistent every episode or every video, everything you create needs to have a certain level of quality, whether your level is entry, that’s fine. If you’re just starting out and you have a beginner, uh, expectation of the quality, that’s fine, but then keep it consistent. And then consistently, can you keep growing from there? So those are some of the things that I think are very important and overlap a lot. I know that’s a general thing to say, like preparation. That has a lot of things that go into it. Brainstorming, idea, generation, research, uh, researching, uh, key search terms, uh, researching what people are asking about, what are they wanting? What’s the audience needing right now? What is the hot topic of the moment that people are discussing on Twitter? All of those things go into the process of creating what we’re doing on Youtube. But should also go into the process of creating anything that you are trying to involve your audience in. You should be constantly asking questions from your listeners or your viewers. Hey, what else do you wanna hear from me? What else can I help you with? What questions do you have? What, what more information can we provide? Uh, because otherwise, uh, who are we creating for again? I, sorry, I, I keep harping on the same things,like audience, audience. 

ROCK: It’s a good thing to harp on though. So, uh, no complaints here, I’m sure. One of the things though that I wanted to unpack further with you is what the workflow is like now, now that we’ve gone through that awesome planning phase that, like Zach said, it was the delight to go through every step of the way. So really appreciate that. And, uh, yeah, it was truly a great experience to work through and take lessons from. But now that we, you know, got a plan and are starting to implement it, walk us through what that looks like, cuz you’re, you’re totally right, Maribel, like, of course, thinking of the audience and preparation, consistency, quality, those are all mantras here at SquadCast, and so we, because we say them and do truly believe that that’s what it takes to grow your show and kind of realize your dreams that, uh, all content creators, I think, aspire to, whatever that may be. Yeah. So how does SquadCast do it when it comes to producing our video content with you?

MARIBEL: So what we do is we break it down into batches, and the best way that we do that is we plan for four videos at a time, basically. So we do four videos a month, for now. What we do is we, we meet at the beginning of the, of every month. We start to talk about ideation again, brainstorming, preparation, and then we write. Um, usually that’s something that we do between Arielle and I. We’ll write these scripts. Um, and then we, we batch record, because it’s the most efficient way to do it. That’s another thing, like I’m always all about efficiency. Hey, how can we do this in the best, highest, highest quality possible, but also efficiently, right? We don’t wanna be wasting time and money. So batch recording has been a key for us. We are recording four episodes, at least at a time. Because the production, as you know, can be expensive. So we wanna be able to do that. And then we go into the edit and where post-production is super important. And I think that’s something to kind of talk about a little bit right now.

ROCK: And tough with video. It’s a different beast, right?

MARIBEL: Yeah, exactly. But the, the more important thing that most people skip over is that it takes time. So the shortest amount of time you’re gonna spend is probably recording. Like, that’s gonna be the fastest thing you do in your entire creation process, but it’s the thing that most people spend the most time worrying about. And it’s a, it’s a good thing if you’re planning for it, like if you’re spending a significant amount of time planning for the recording, that’s fantastic because that means you’re gonna be a lot more efficient when you sit down to record, or when you do the videos. But if you’re only thinking I’m gonna spend all this time and money on the recording side of things, but I’m not gonna plan, and I’m not gonna worry about post production, or spend any money on post production. Uh, then you’re not gonna be able to sustain the content. You’re not gonna be, be able to have high quality.

ZACH: Yeah. And then we publish those videos weekly is the cadence, right? So we, we pretty much work a month at a time. And that includes the, the planning. And how, how about the production proper? What are we doing here? We, the scripts are written for, for you Maribel, uh, to deliver on camera. Like can walk us through, uh, what, what, like a recording day is like, you got four of these scripts, what do you got? Uh, how, how does it turn into the magic? 

MARIBEL: I feel like I can show you better. So you can go to TikTok or my Instagram and watch me do it. Yep. I’m just kidding. Plug.  No, but the usual production days, I mean, we, I, we show up. The crew myself, we have different backgrounds. So we set up, uh, for different shots, and it’s usually a one camera shot, and we have a teleprompter. Which is honestly a big, huge, huge time saver. It helps us tremendously because we’re able to record a lot faster. I don’t know about you, but I can’t memorize five minutes worth of content, and I’m not an actor. So don’t ask me to do that. I can’t perform at that level–

ZACH: It get, it gets ranty, you know, like if you try to do it, it, it doesn’t have the same flow of, of following something that you wrote in advance for the–

MARIBEL: Yeah. And the thing is here, I will say this, not everybody’s capable of reading off a teleprompter. So you have to be careful about who does it and how you do that. Because some people do sound like they’re reading, when they’re reading off a teleprompter and you definitely wanna avoid that. So it, it’s great if you have someone who can deliver something without looking at at notes, uh, you can also do an outline, and you don’t have to write a script per se. You don’t have to be reading the whole thing. You could just be showing bullet points on the teleprompter and then triggering the memory. Right? Oh, I gotta talk about this now. Or I gotta talk about that. But the truth is because we’re trying to be efficient. We need to hit those points very well while we record so that when we go into post production and edit, we don’t have to spend extra hours cutting and moving things around and deleting filler words or ums or awkward pauses, which are gonna happen. And we don’t necessarily want that in these types of videos. Like, it’s all about style. Here, we’re having a conversation. This is a podcast. So it’s expected that I’m gonna say like five times and you know, and all those things, right? The filler words. And that I’m gonna stumble, but you don’t want that on your YouTube video. You don’t want that when you’re trying to learn something or grasp, grasp a topic quickly. And so again, it goes back to the, the style and the type of content that our audience is looking for and that, that they expect from the brand SquadCast, the brand, right. They expect high quality. That’s what we’re giving them. And that’s why we use a teleprompter. That’s why we spend a significant amount of time researching and writing for that. You have to write to speak. It’s totally different from me writing a book or writing a blog post. You have to remember that. And so not everybody can do that, which is why a lot of YouTube, um, content coaches out there will tell you don’t write a script. Don’t, don’t follow a script because you’ll sound like you’re reading. Well it’s because most people don’t have the ability to write for that. And so there are, there’s a combination of things, right? That’s why you have a producer. That’s why producers. We spend years honing the skills to be able to write, to speak, to be able to read correctly, or to coach somebody into conveying the message without sounding like they’re reading. Although a lot of that has to do with the person themselves. 

ROCK: That’s what I love about this whole experience is it’s just so much that we’ve been able to learn because while there are a lot of similarities between podcasting and creating video content, there’s still like so much more to learn and that’s, what’s been great having a resource and an expert like you to help us along that way. But we are, still, very much learning alongside, uh, the rest of the podcast community who are embracing video, but Maribel, what have you learned working with us and helping us grow our YouTube channel and our video content creation pipeline machine? I don’t know, whatever you wanna call it. 

MARIBEL: I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned how to, honestly, I’ve learned how to become a little bit more efficient too, when it comes to the process of the whole, the whole process. Like I’m, like I said before, I’m all about efficiency. So I have been able to hone in to our process a little bit better, create some templates, helping us kind of move through things a little bit faster. I feel like our, our calls are more productive now. Uh, we spend less time trying to figure things out and more time actually generating the ideas. And that’s one of the things that I’ve, that I’ve loved , also, about working with your team is that everyone’s so open to trying new things and to looking for better ways of doing things. That to me is like super exciting. That’s why I wanted to work with the team. That’s why I was so excited about creating this content because I knew that this was the right match. It’s like we were meant to be. Right. And so it’s-

ROCK: Heck yeah. 

MARIBEL: It’s yeah. So it’s been a really good experience in learning to become more efficient, but also honestly, YouTube is changing so much and changes so quickly that I’m enjoying learning about the changes at YouTube, and the things that we have to do better. And ironically, I used to hate numbers and analytics, but now I’m like a total analytic fiend. Like I see it. I see it again. I wanna see these numbers. Let me go underneath the hood and see what this audience is doing. Like where are they dropping off? Why? Let me learn more about where they’re coming from. What’s leading them here? YouTube gives you much information about your content and how people are consuming it. I mean, like, if you look under the hood of your podcast host, you’ll see a lot of numbers. You won’t see the stuff that YouTube gives you. 

ZACH: Way less. 

MARIBEL: YouTube is like not a joke. They are amazing at that, and they’re getting better at it. So that has been a really cool journey as well. Although I have less time for it, but it’s, I think it’s part of the process too. I have to say you cannot produce good content for online mediums if you’re not looking at the numbers in some way. And not that we are all about the numbers, cuz I will say that’s-

ZACH: It’s great that we have ’em. 

MARIBEL: Yeah, but it’s, we’re not necessarily focused on the numbers, but we do need to know them, and we need to understand why things are happening because the beautiful thing about math is that it doesn’t lie. So that’s how you know you’re working towards something. 

ZACH: I want to come back to something you just said in, in a moment here about how things are changing and evolving. But before we get into that, the, um, what are your goals? What are the, the hopes for the channel? And like, just more broadly, like you as a creator contributing to the, the YouTube platform, like, what are some things you would wanna see from a platform, you know, like YouTube that, um, that you think would help here. And what goals do you have, like for the, for the channel?

MARIBEL: Oh, man, I would love to see the SquadCast channel, keep growing and just, you know, blow up eventually, you know, go viral. I, obviously, everybody has that goal when it comes to YouTube or any other medium. But the biggest thing that I think is gonna satisfy a lot of what I want for this channel. Just seeing the positive effect that it has on creators. Is it helping? Is our content actually making you better? You, the creator.

ZACH: That’s the real metric. 

MARIBEL:  Exactly. And so honestly, like the biggest satisfaction comes from the comments and the, and the people that reach out and say, I really enjoyed that. It was very helpful. It helped me understand this thing. It helped me learn about that thing. It became, you know, it, it helped me change the process that I was struggling with. If we can do that, that’s the biggest thing for me. That’s why, we, that’s why I do a lot of the things that I do. It’s, I want to actually help people become better at something. And so that is a huge goal for me. I have to say, uh, if I have time for a short little story. It’s kind of cool that this has come full circle for me, like being with SquadCast on this project has been almost a little bit of a dream come true in a way that…When I had this dream, when I was going to college originally, I went to college to become a broadcaster. Okay. I, I applied to Ohio University, the Scripps School of Journalism, school of journalism, which was top 10 in the nation. Really hard to get into. I got rejected twice. So I decided my sophomore year that I wasn’t gonna be in front of the camera, and I just, you know, gotta let go of that. So I became a producer. I went the production route, and I studied production. And then that’s where I’ve been doing for the last 16 years. But doing this with SquadCast, I’m now in front of the camera. And it’s just so funny that like, it’s come full circle. I’m now actually doing that thing that I thought I wanted to do, or that I wanted to do many, many years ago. And I kind of let go of. Now, I’m getting to do that and the production, which I love. So, it’s been a little bit of a self discovery as well, for me. It’s been a challenge because I’ve also been very nervous and, you know, we get down on ourselves as well when we’re in front of the camera. I also hope that on the personal side, I learn to just be better at letting myself grow through the process, allowing myself to learn from the mistakes and become, you know, better at it. Just become more, more in tune with what the audience wants and be able to continue doing it because I really do enjoy it.

ROCK: That is so awesome to hear and melting my heart. Thank you for sharing that. Yes, that’s so cool. Cuz you know, when you did approach, I guess it was me first, I, I can’t remember the specifics exactly, but it sounds like you do so that’s great to hear. When I thought about it and approached the team, we have this internal saying that, uh, I think I helped start, but, uh, it’s really been cool to see the team take it on where we say, if it’s not a heck yes, it’s a heck no, we say the F word though. But I’m censoring myself. Well with you, it was an instant heck yes, team wide. Uh, and from the start from the jump from episode one, that you’ve helped us launch. It’s been no doubt that we have improved our quality. And it’s been such a, a, a treat and a pleasure to see your face pop on there and show up in, um, my feed or stream or whatever, for when you new YouTube video was published every Thursday, check it out. Um, but yeah, so like thank you for sharing that, cuz uh, we feel the same way, and uh, but I’m glad you asked us cuz it’s like one of those things that we were kind of searching for, but didn’t necessarily know and it just shows that you never know what’s gonna happen if you ask and, and here we are. So thank you.

MARIBEL: Yeah. That’s awesome to hear. Thank you so much. And I love that philosophy. I, I might have to apply that in my own situations in life. 

ZACH: It helps. 

ROCK: It makes decisions so fun.

MARIBEL: If it’s not a heck yes, it’s a heck no.

ROCK: It’s so fun to hear, right? 

MARIBEL: No, but it makes sense. It’s, it’s a good way of looking at it. I mean, I know that business isn’t always like that. Like, you can’t always make decisions entirely that way, but honestly, a lot of the things that we struggle with it’s because we are halfway in, into the decision. 

ZACH: It’s hard to say no.

MARIBEL: Right, like we’re not really entirely sure that we wanna do it. Yeah. And sometimes we don’t wanna say no, but we really wanna say no.

MARIBEL: So I love that. I’m gonna have to implement it.

ROCK: You’re part of it. So yeah, go with it. 

ZACH: What I was-put a pin in before to, to return to it is talking about your discovery process and exploration of these technologies and platforms like TikTok, Reels, Shorts, there is a battle going on for the shortness of video watching. How, what, what are those things from your perspective? And then like, how does the, how does the process of creating content for those formats? Those are video, right? We’re talking about video here the majority of this conversation, but there’s some distinctions between Shorts and Reels and Stories. Then, uh, then there are the more traditional YouTube videos. So what, what do you make of that? 

MARIBEL: Well, I mean, again, a whole lot of information can go into this and we only have a few minutes, but I will say like, if you are thinking about creating content for any kind of medium, whether it’s YouTube, Reels, or if you’re doing video. If we’re online. You, you can’t do it without thinking about shorts. You have to think, you have to think about where people are hanging out. And a lot of people, I mean, like a lot of people are hanging out on Instagram, watching Reels and on TikTok. And so YouTube is competing with that in a way by creating YouTube Shorts, is what they’re calling them. So it’s the same format we’re talking vertical, 9:16. So it’s the phone size video, essentially, if, if I’m getting too technical, but what I’m thinking is, okay, how do we make that more efficient, cuz it’s not always possible. And I mean, I just got done talking to a billion dollar company about their strategy, their social media video content creation strategy. And even they can’t keep up with everything, with creating content for all of these platforms, if they can’t keep up with it right now, because it’s happening so fast, of course, independent creators can’t be expected to keep up with it. They can’t create a single, uh, video for every single platform, all the time, every week. That’s a lot to ask. So what I’m thinking is the more efficient thing to do right now is let’s create one type of short that can be shown on TikTok on Instagram Reels and on YouTube Shorts, at the same time every week. If we can stick to that cadence for a little while, then we can start to review metrics. How is that doing and how is it performing on each platform? And then we can make decisions from there. Okay. So perhaps our format needs to change a little bit for YouTube, maybe our audience, because it leans older on YouTube. We need to speak in a different way. Maybe we, we go a little younger on TikTok, and we, and we go a little fresher on Instagram, and maybe YouTube’s a little more serious. I don’t know. I mean, I’m just spitballing here, so please–

ZACH: We trust your intuition.

MARIBEL: Don’t take that to the bank. But what I’m saying is don’t overthink it right now because shorts is a thing. Okay. So if you can just at least get one video done a week that you can repurpose over these three places, you’re winning. And that’s where we’re heading at SquadCast. We, we know that we don’t have the time right now. It’s a lot of work to be creating content every day. So for now we’re like, okay, let’s start with one. And let’s look at the metrics, let’s see how the audience responds. And then we can make decisions from there because that, this is one of the things that a friend of mine and my brand strategist, actually a great guy named Alex Santiago, helped me decide and helped me do. He said, Maribel, just start putting them out there. Okay. Don’t overthink it. Start putting the content out and look at your metrics. It’s the best advice he could have ever given. It was worth all the money that I paid him. The branding was fantastic. Thank you, Alex. I love my branding. He did a great job, him and the designer, but that advice is what really put me over the top. Being able to consistently create once a week, creating one video a week for the, for Reels and TikTok, is what really allowed me to figure out what my audience wanted and then learn from them and create better every time.

ROCK: It’s great advice and totally doable as well. So, uh, shout out to, uh, your friend there for giving you some great advice on top of the design, which it sounds like that’s what they were hired for. So that’s good too.

MARIBEL: Yes.

ZACH: Repeatable as well. If I can interrupt here for a second, we, as creators will be faced with new formats, new options, new things that come about. That’s great advice anytime som ething like this happens. Like Clubhouse. Hey, let’s try it out. Let’s see what kind of data we get there. Light on the data. It’s, I don’t know if that ship has sailed, but you know, we try it. [laughs] Right. And I think that’s kind of, uh, you know, we try it with purpose and intention and then measure it and see, see how we’re doing and, uh, how it affects things. So.

ROCK: Before we let you go, though, Maribel, we gotta ask you the big question that I think a lot of podcasters are asking themselves. Do they need a YouTube channel? Do you recommend that? What are your thoughts on that? And then, uh, we’ll let you go. 

MARIBEL: The answer lies on: How much time do you have? And what does your audience want? That’s really the, the key. So if your audience, if you really think that you can find an audience in on YouTube, go for it. Don’t overthink it. Start just even by putting the podcast episode out with, with a picture on it, right. If it’s static, that’s okay. Even just static can help, and it can help you figure out if the audience is really there. And if you can continue from there. But you need to make sure that you answer those questions beforehand.

ZACH: Yeah. That’s where I think it comes down to audience, uh, has been a common thread through this whole conversation. Sometimes they’re gonna have their ears. Sometimes they’re gonna wanna watch with their eyes and everything in between short, long. We want to reach them where they are. And, and I think, you know, being in touch with your audience and having a relationship there, there’s some different strategies of how these, these formats can fit together as well, to your point about repurposing. Um, there’s, there’s a number of different things. Of course, on SquadCast, you can record the same conversation and get the audio and the video from it, that gives you potential there. But yeah, there’s editing, there’s lighting, there’s cameras, all the things that we’ve discussed today. So thanks for giving us your perspective on it. 

MARIBEL: You have to think about all of the things that go into producing video. And like I said, the best way to know and understand what that actually looks like is follow me at Maribel_QS. And I’m not just saying that to plug. I really mean it. Like, if you follow me-

ZACH: No, you show what it takes. 

MARIBEL: Yeah. You’ll see the behind the scenes.

ROCK: That was our last question. 

MARIBEL: You’ll get to see how it works, how I do it, all the process that goes into it. It’s heavy, but it’s fun. We make it fun. And then also I do have a course that’s gonna be launching soon. So if you’re interested in learning more about how to create better video content, or if you wanna start creating video content, but you don’t wanna spend the money on a production company, which is understandable. You can sign up for my newsletter at my website, MaribelQS.com, and I will let you know as soon as the registration opens for my online course, which is gonna be very helpful for that purpose to, to understand how production works, to get you a process set up, to be able to, uh, help you basically just become a better content creator when it comes to, to video.

ZACH: Thank you for guiding us with all of your wisdom through the, the video world and, uh, how we can grow as podcasters and content creators. We really love the collaboration and work that, that we’re working hard to create together. Thank you, Maribel, for this conversation today for, uh, all the work that you’re doing to make our videos awesome. And thank you for being a delight to work with.

MARIBEL: Thank you guys for trusting me with the vision, and I am so excited for the future. 

[music]

ZACH: Thanks for tuning in to The SquadCast Podcast. This show is hosted by us, Zack and Rock.

ROCK: it’s mixed and designed by Vince Moreno Jr.

ZACH: It’s edited by Arielle Nissenblatt.

ROCK: Our music is by Shawn Valles.

ZACH: Our transcriber is Sabeena Singhani. 

ROCK: Our designer is Alex Whedbee.

ZACH: And you are our listeners, and we appreciate you. Bye!