Six years ago, I was sitting on what I thought was a great podcast, but only a few people were consuming it, which was frustrating. After hundreds of failed experiments, I changed that by adopting a powerful new way of marketing your podcast episodes: content stacking.

By investing about ten to twenty percent more effort after you record and edit, you can increase your audience reach by up to forty times more than if it were an audio-only podcast episode. I know this because, for the last three years, I’ve been getting those forty times results episode after episode, have seen other brands do it, and have shown other brands how to do this with our video podcast-specific content stacking method. This guide provides a straightforward process for creating twenty-four high-quality content pieces from a single episode, covering audio, video, written and image content. It’s a direct plan designed to enhance your podcast’s promotion efficiently and cost-effectively, helping you to achieve significant growth without extra frustration or financial burden.

“Volume Negates Luck” 

– Alex Hormozi

Back to six years ago and my podcast. I was only a few episodes in, but I knew I had something to help people with their health, fitness, and wellness. I saw video podcasting done by the more prominent brands and media companies and kept pushing it off, saying, “Not now; I’m not ready; it feels too complex and expensive.”

Around this time, I read The Podcast Host’s guide to combining podcasting, blogging, and video and stumbled upon Gary Vee’s famous “How to make 64 pieces of content in a day.” I also started to see clips from personal branded video podcasts like Alex Hormozi, and I asked myself how I could content stack my podcast episodes sustainably and effortlessly. 

I wanted the podcast clips to do three things:

1. Serve as stand-alone content and deliver value without leaving the social platform—not direct advertisements or promotional trailers.
2. Slowly and consistently build trust for my brand across platforms with high-value and high-volume content.
3. Tie it all back to the main episode so that if someone influences someone, they will click off the platform to my website and become a deeper fan.

I want to take what the more prominent media brands and influencers do with their content marketing efforts and make it applicable and advantageous for smaller podcasts with fewer resources. 

This deep guide is a cumulation of my last four years of talking to experts, researching, and experimenting to help make it as easy as possible to get the most reach out of your podcast episode. Any podcast in any industry can do this. And no, you don’t have to be an almost naked model, create memes/relatable ironic jokes, do trendy dances and stunts, or put a camera on your cat. The key to all of this is to use your existing content in multiple ways, which lessens your workload but keeps your content working effectively – that’s content stacking at its core.

Here’s another way to think about why you should content stack: You are potentially leaving listeners and viewers on the table who are ready to get value from you and your content creation style. Why not try it?

Who Am I?

I’m Daren Lake, and I’ve been in the pro audio production and podcasting space for over twenty years. I’m also the founder and executive producer of Pod Paste in Sydney, Australia. We help companies, marketers, and agencies create content that sticks by saving them hundreds of hours, amplifying their content’s reach, and allowing them to focus on what they do best: running their business.

The Framework Of This Guide

This guide consists of four main sections:

1. What To Do Before You Hit Record
2. Recording and Editing of the Episode
3. General Overview of Clipping Out Content
4. FAQ, Bonus Tips and How to Start Right Now

Section one, ‘What to do before you hit record,’ will focus on defining your focus statement, creating a content game plan, organizing guests, conducting research, and outlining to ensure a hassle-free recording experience.

Section two, ‘Recording, Editing & General Production’, will focus on strategies that simplify both technical and creative production, how to transform the raw podcast into marketing materials like short videos highlighting the top takeaways, and the tools I use.

Section three, ‘General Overview of Clipping Out Content’, is the meat and potatoes of this guide. It lays out, in a simple cookbook style, how to locate, clip, and create all of the content pieces from a podcast episode.

Section four, ‘FAQ, Bonus Tips and How to Start Right Now’, tackles frequently asked questions (FAQs) and includes tips on my gear and how to access Notion’s content database smartly. It wraps up with a real-world task, letting you try these tactics on a new or existing audio or video podcast to see if content stacking can help you ramp up your content game.

How can you squeeze all the juice from your episode fruit and get twenty-four pieces of content? We’ll answer that by getting into the first section.]

What Is Content Repurposing vs Content Stacking?

Before I define this, I want to clarify the difference between content repurposing and content stacking. Content repurposing is more prevalent in content marketing and is more of an afterthought strategy. You make content: blog, video, podcast, white paper, etc., and then you look to put it on different channels. Video is the easiest thing to repurpose. Still, I’ve seen a keynote speech with poor conference room audio too many times, and the video has turned into a podcast and social media snippets. The main objective of the content was to do the keynote speech, not turn it into a podcast or social snippet. Therefore, quality audio, camera, concise sections, etc., were not baked into the foundation of the content, making the repurposing fall a bit flat.

On the other hand, content stacking for a video podcast is carefully planning and organizing the episode to make obtaining the clipped content pieces easier and to make the podcast more effective on the platforms. It’s thought about before you hit record and draft your outline or questions.

Unpacking The Twenty-Four Pieces of Content

Below are the twenty-four “content stack pieces” I’ve found to be the most “important” to help market and promote an episode: 

• Audio file – full episode (one)
• Video file – full episode (one)
• Written article/blog post (one)
• Newsletter (one) – This is similar to a blog but can differ depending on your brand 
• Short video clips (five)
• Long video clips (three)
• Quote photos and summary carousel (ten)
• Infographic (one)
• Transcript (one)
• Audiograms (zero) I explain in section four, “FAQ”, why you shouldn’t use these ever

The twenty-four pieces of content are relevant for most podcasts, which are an average of twenty to sixty minutes long. The only variation that could occur is having fewer or more short and long video clips, depending on which would correlate with the length of your episode, respectively.

Can you make less than twenty-four pieces and still be effective? Of course. I look at it similar to batch-producing t-shirts in a factory. A one-off shirt run would cost $150, but printing 1,000 shirts would bring the cost down exponentially. The price difference is because starting and setting something up takes the most resources, usually a combination of time, energy, and money.

Twenty-four pieces also give the algorithms enough data to understand better your content and who to serve it to.

There is a limit to going too far under or over. From my research and experience, twenty-four pieces are the ideal middle ground for efficacy. Feel free to tweak this number to match your current objectives, capacity to produce these content pieces, and brand’s content marketing style.

A note on the rise of Opus clips and similar apps promises viral fame from one podcast episode at the click of a button. While we use them at times, I find, after many months of using them, that only a small percentage are useable. Also, they only leverage one type of content, which is short video clips. Other content formats can be created from your podcast that will prove effective for your content. I’ll focus on helping you do that rather than clip out a bunch of flat, short videos just for numbers sake.

Why Use Content Stacking In Podcast Promotion?

“The content you create isn’t the compounding asset – the audience is. Even though the content goes away, the audience doesn’t. The audience keeps growing as long as you post consistent, high-value content. ”

• Alex Hormozi

Content stacking takes your podcast episode further by turning it into different formats, ensuring it reaches and resonates with a broader audience. It also forces you to treat your podcast like a brand.

As much as I love audio (I’m a musician, music producer, and audio engineer), it’s still in the minority regarding digital content consumption globally. Podcast listeners want more in-depth exploration, data dumps, and human-relatable storytelling. 

But there is another world of people who consume short videos, written content, and social media content. While you may never convert those people to podcast listeners, why not serve them short clips and summaries of your podcast episode and meet them where they are? This outcome is where content stacking goes the distance. I have people who love my video social clips, YouTube deep dives, and newsletter but don’t listen to the audio podcast. If I never put out the content stacked pieces, I would have never served them and built my brand.

“The more content you put out for more audience demographics and segments, the more you can understand what they respond to and refine what you’re putting out based on actual data – instead of only depending on the subjective opinions of decision makers.” Gary Vaynerchuck – “Quantity can be the gateway [to] quality – a new way to think about content.”

Content stacking can help you reach other people who may never listen to a podcast by making your podcast available via video, written material, and visual infographics.

Most podcasts should strive to create as much evergreen content as possible. Unlike the temporary appeal of “now” content that quickly gets lost in the fast-paced news cycle, evergreen content remains relevant and valuable. This consistency forms a reliable base for ongoing brand awareness, engagement, and the sharing of insights. Content stacking is excellent for this, as you can keep putting out more content related to the episode to help convert those casual impressions into lifelong consumers of your podcast.

Let’s get into the first and most critical part of content stacking: outlining your episode.

Let’s take a quick break here. We know this might be a lot to take in. If at any point you would be interested in finding out how we can help your brand, company or podcast content stack and repurpose your video podcast episodes, please schedule a call or email us. Thanks!

Section One: What To Do Before You Hit Record

Outline Your Episode Before You Book Your Guest

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

• Abraham Lincoln

In my podcast production company’s experience, many clients book the guest and then figure out the podcast angle based on the person’s attributes. That sequencing creates double the work and a headache later when we try to content stack the podcast episode.

Problems arise because the client will shoehorn multiple concepts into one episode—concepts like their brand’s interest, the audience’s interest, the guest’s interest, and the guest’s experience. If we had a Venn diagram of this, the area where something is of value to your audience would be a tiny dot.

The best way to start your outline is by defining the purpose and value of your episode. The outline will ensure your content resonates with your audience and simplifies guest selection. If you can tie this concept to your brand’s mission/identity/core, you can get more return out of your outline work.

Again, the podcast framework is perfect for content stacking. If you have the capacity, a good podcast usually starts with written words, an outline or questions at minimum, and a fleshed-out script at maximum. This method is similar to YouTube scripting because it begins with a word.

Let’s see how this looks in the real world.

A Real World Example 

I have a running podcast that helps runners improve by one percent daily in their training, racing, and lives. I purposefully avoid hacks and quick fixes and focus on life-long habits, processes, and reasoning from first principles for new and creative solutions. I recently had an episode idea about running shoes, a hot topic in the running world, but I knew I wanted to approach it from a different perspective.

While the topic was “running shoes,” I found a deeper angle: “Why feet and running shoes are so important as you age.” This is a more substantial reason as to why this should exist.

By focusing on the specific benefits of running shoes for aging runners, I could directly address my audience’s interests, making a targeted and compelling content creation effort.

Start With Questions

A standard practice we use on our podcasts and with our clients is to start with questions. Not just interview questions for the guest. I’m talking about asking yourself questions to filter out the best content. Ask yourself who this will help, why it will help them, and how you will do it.

In some circles, such as narrative podcasting writing, this is called a focus sentence, as made famous by Jessica Abel. To take it one step further, you could ask, “How am I best suited to present this to my industry, and what can I do that is unique to me?” or, more bluntly, “Why does this need to exist in your industry?”

With our focus sentence, we can narrow it down to one step. Let’s retake my podcast as an example.

I was keen to explore supplements for runners but quickly realized this was everywhere. Looking for a new twist, I thought about what outcome supplements have for runners – they help them bounce back quicker after workouts, boosting their performance.

I then crafted the title, “Seven science-backed supplements to help you after hard runs.” This title became the filter I ran through as I drafted questions and the outline for my co-host to discuss. This focus statement also gave me the direction for my marketing material, making all decisions in pre-production, recording, and post-production much more accessible.

So now that we have the framework, what is next? Of course, research, outline, and write it!

Organizing your documents for researching, outlining, and writing

Great content begins with solid research and a clear outline. Whether you’re obsessed with digital tools like Notion or more of a pen-and-paper person, getting your ideas organized from the start will save time and sharpen your focus.

Researching

Researching is when you find and collect the data that supports your focus statement. If your focus sentence is “Seven science-backed supplements to help you after hard runs”, look up what supplements have been recommended with science-backed evidence, what is anecdotal, and what doesn’t actually work. Record your sources to use in your citation and show notes later.

Does the topic you are exploring serve the overall purpose of getting your end consumer to a better place and helping them? If so, then talk about that. If you need help finding something that will help your target audience, let’s discuss the basic principles for avoiding building a skyscraper (the content stack) on unstable land.

How to research a topic

• For science-backed evidence literature, you can use PubMed and library research databases
• If you want to use some AI-augmented searching along with citations, perplexity.ai is a great tool. 

At this point in research, it’s an excellent time to check what others are writing about on this topic. If you can contribute to what is out there in a unique way, go ahead and make content about that. But if you feel like it’s a crowded space, pivot to the opposite angle or somewhere you’ve got an unfair advantage to speak on. Taking a few extra minutes on this will pay dividends later on in your content pieces’ content stack and publishing process.

Outlining vs Scripting

You are someone who does one or the other. I prefer a hybrid, creating a loose script and detailed outline. When I have an outline, I rant without being concise enough. But if I expand my outline with a loose script, I can speak to the script and adapt it as I read it for the recording.

[Editor’s NoteNote – YouTube transition only. Not for the blog]

Here’s a quick breakdown of each.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each.

Outlining

The outline serves two purposes:

• Creates your intro and summary for your podcast episode
• After the episode wraps recording, the outline becomes a road map for your content-stacking

This process is very straightforward. It’s the table of contents for your podcast episode. The more granular you can be, the better. I organize this with headers, subheaders, and bullet points to help me visualize the episode’s flow.

From here, you can do one of two things – speak from the outline or write to the outline and create a loose or fully fleshed-out script.

Scripting

If you write a script for your questions and answers, put your outline to work and write a concise and organized long-form blog. I suggest you write it how you speak so that it comes naturally and casually. Before publishing the written version, you can do a final pass to make it read more natively as a written piece.

Scripting your podcast in advance allows you to create content with clarity and focus, avoiding the dread of figuring out how to promote it after already spending time editing it.

One minor disadvantage of scripting is that you have to try to read it while looking at a camera or talking to your guest. The awkward script reading can degrade the listening/watching experience if you need to improve at reading a teleprompter and memorizing. Still, I’ve found that people will forgive a lower-quality delivery and performance (i.e., teleprompter-locked eyes) in favor of concise and well-considered thoughts and ideas. To combat this issue in your video editing, you can experiment with AI-assisted tools to help correct the “teleprompter-locked eyes” issue.

I lean further into scripted content for non-interview/non-fiction podcasts like solo and co-hosted shows that speak on drilled-down specific topics.

Scripting may not be relevant if you are an interview, talking head, or chat-style podcast.

Minimalist, filmmaking and podcaster YouTuber Matt D’vella has a great outlook on scripting vs outlining. “Even people who are great at freestyling off the top of their head [talking to camera with no script], everybody could tell a better story if they planned it and wrote out as much as possible.

Interviews and talking head podcasts would have a better end-user consumption experience if they took more time to gather their thoughts before hitting record. Loose scripting also makes recording more accessible and ensures a cleaner flow of crafted ideas, minimizing double talk and creating less unfocused back-forth banter.

Let’s take a quick break here. We know this might be a lot to take in. If at any point you would be interested in finding out how we can help your brand, company or podcast content stack and repurpose your video podcast episodes, please schedule a call or email us. Thanks!

Section Two: Recording and Editing of the Episode

What you’ll learn in this section:

• Recording now for efficient content stacking later
• Split your editing into two phases 
• Content Editing and Key Takeaways For Future Content Stacking
• Quick hack to make a valuable key takeaway from any podcast
• Best tools to use to do this

At first, content stacking might seem expansive and onerous, which is a normal feeling. One should check off over a hundred steps as they go. Creating the least friction at each step might seem negligible at first glance, but compounding that over 100 times saves over one hundred minutes. More content is needed to reach more people when you want to build up your brand.

Recording now for efficient content stacking later

The main objective of recording video and audio should be to capture your idea easily so that you can repeat it while maintaining enthusiasm. Yes, there are better ways to record that achieve higher “technical, trendy YouTube quality.” Still, unless you are a podcast that makes entertaining content for social media, we don’t care about those distracting edits.

Everything should be ready to go before you record. Spend 10-15 minutes preparing your camera, lighting, microphone, teleprompter/notes, and background. You want to avoid fighting technology and gear while trying to record your video and audio tracks. Create a checklist and refer to that list pre-recording for the least friction during recording. At the end of this section, I’ll touch on the gear I use to record and the tools I use to edit.

An example recording checklist 

Split Your Editing Into Two Phases 

Next, you want to think about editing, like using two different brains. There is editorial or creative content editing, which involves the actual words and ideas you’ve had, and technical editing, which involves manipulating the audio wave files and video frames.

Technical Editing

Editing a podcast is a personal preference. As this article is focused on content stacking, I’ll leave you with a few things to focus on. Do as little or as much as you need to get the podcast episode done. I do this directly after organizing my raw recorded files.

• Remove distracting filler words (don’t be too heavy-handed here, as you can suck the life out of a conversation)
• Remove the well-known interview style “messy talk-over” that permutates talking head podcasts
• General mixing, sound cleanup and mastering

Content Editing and Key Takeaways For Future Content Stacking

I content edit after technical editing which helps me be clear on what is said and how clearly it’s said. This mindset means your content editing focuses on the best takes and performance. The focus statement can help you filter out during this phase.

A nice bonus during the content and technical editing phase is that you can start putting on your content stacking hat and thinking about what sections can serve as what I call “Key Takeaways.” Key takeaways are the parent container for what will become content assets like short clips, extended clips, infographics, quotes, etc.

Sometimes, those key takeaways can be multiple content types. Please break the content editing phase into two passes. One pass would be around finding the best takes, and the other would be deciding and marking what key takeaway would turn into certain content. This will save time later, so you can focus on producing your content stack piece rather than thinking, “What quotes should I grab?”

I used to do both simultaneously under the umbrella of editing, and it would be a mess as I jumped between tasks, missing fundamental things. We are shaving minutes off each step to save headaches later, which I’ll explain in more detail in section two.

Quick hack to make a valuable key takeaway from any podcast

If you struggle to find critical takeaways buried in deep and meaningful rants from an interview format show, find the top three things someone could learn or take away from this episode. That is a vital content piece and would be great as an infographic or a short video that you or your guest record at the end of the recording. If it’s a listicle format podcast (e.g., The Top Seven Ways to Wash Your Cat), you have seven things to put on the content stack piece.

Best tools to use to do this

Unfortunately, this piece isn’t about in-depth recording gear and editing tools. The Podcast Host has gone in-depth on a few of those topics:

• Easy podcast video editing with Reaper
• Best video editing software for podcasters
• In-depth video podcast guide: Your questions answered

Instead of a technical, in-depth guide, I’ll provide a few tools widely used in the video podcast space and broad universal guidelines so that you can apply whatever tools you use in your workflow.

Use any audio or video editor you are comfortable with to minimize time at this stage. Try not to edit audio separately in one app and video in another. If you are most efficient at editing your audio in your video editor, please do that. It’s more important for you to spend time learning content stacking than learning how to use a new editor.

If you prefer a traditional audio editor or digital audio workstation (DAW), I recommend Cockos Reaper. It’s one of the few DAWs that handles video exceptionally well. Reaper’s video editing is basic but powerful. Once you get used to the video interface, you’ll see that its lightweight nature makes editing and exporting efficient for content stacking.

The only thing Reaper can’t do at the time of this writing is speech-to-text editing. Descript is a great place to start with speech-to-text editing. Speech-to-text editing is a time saver for content stacking production. Seeing the words via text psychologically makes it easier to jump around and mentally digest even the most extended podcast episodes. When we export and organize the twenty-four-piece stack, I can create markers and sub-compositions/sessions that hold the key takeaways for future content asset production.

The last tool I’d like to mention quickly, while not a direct recording or editing tool, is Notion. I prefer Notion over most content management systems because of its modular abilities. The ability to bounce between the three phases of content stacking—production, publishing, and platforming—is critical in keeping your sanity and wrangling your marketing content with supportive descriptions, production information, publishing dates, etc.

I’ve created a Notion production, publishing and platforming template made specifically with video podcasters in mind who want to have everything organized in one place to content stack with ease. If you are interested in this, please reach out and email me.

Let’s take a quick break here. We know this might be a lot to take in. If at any point you would be interested in finding out how we can help your brand, company or podcast content stack and repurpose your video podcast episodes, please schedule a call or email us. Thanks!

Section Three: Clipping Out Content

“Going viral is often what happens with a business that, not understanding who its intended audience is, tries to appeal to pretty much everyone. If you want a piece of content for your business to generate a billion views, you probably don’t understand the purpose of that content or whom it was really created for. Engagement and connection with your niche are more important and far less costly to generate.”

• Alex Beauchamp, former head of content at Airbnb (direct Quote here) from the book “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis.

This section is the juiciest of our sections and the stage where all the hard work and careful planning from the last two sections pays off. As stated before, this framework of content stacking involves repurposing your podcast episode into various forms of content. These content pieces can be long and short video clips, written articles, infographics, quote images, and more. The method I lay out will ensure you use the least time, money and energy to get the most out of your episode.

Content stacking is still relatively new in the long-form content world. Some of the wording and definitions are vague, but “clipping” seems to be the most common term. From the primary episode, we’ll clip out some already-made content while creating brand-new content from the ideas.

A warning before I jump in: Throw your perfectionism out the window. You want to get things as good as they can be, exported, and published. If you get caught up in small details, those extra one to two minutes you spend on all twenty-four pieces can add up quickly, resulting in frustration and burnout. Follow this guide and just get it out. It’s one of the few times in content marketing where quantity may trump quality.

Clipping long-form video (medium length)

What you are doing

Export a three to fifteen-minute section from your podcast episode. The length of the extended clip will vary depending on your type of podcast, the final run time of the episode, and the quality of the content you’re clipping out. I recommend making the aspect ratio standard 16×9 “wide-horizontal-normal” for this content type.

Why it’s important

The goal is to get more content onto platforms that like long-form content. At the time of writing, these platforms are YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. “Long-form” content is another vague term, but I like the rule that anything that takes longer than two minutes to consume is long-form content.

How to do it right

A simple example is clipping out one of the top five things from a listicle-style episode. You likely went deep on each point and spent a few minutes on it. This great stand-alone beginning-to-end content piece will give value and help/entertain someone.

Another example of the interview format is an excellent question-and-answer exchange. You get all the nuances of the answer, and since it’s a podcast, they most likely went deep, so you can be light on the edits here. You should have done all of your editing in the technical/content editing phase of production, which was from section two.

Again, using Descript or Alitu has proven to be the easiest thing for us with their ability to treat speech like text. Creating sub-compositions, markers, and highlights makes exporting the exact section you want easy. 

The rule of thumb for a thirty to sixty-minute podcast is that you can get about two to three long clips. Do whatever you can do consistently without burning out. Say no to perfectionism. An example of a long video clip from this article’s content stack.

Clipping short-form video

What are you doing

Export fifteen to sixty-second sections from your podcast episode. The length will vary depending on your type of podcast, the overall size, and the quality of the content you’re clipping out. The aspect ratio should be a 9×16 vertical portrait; see YouTube Shorts, TikTok, FB/IG Reels, and LinkedIn.

Why it’s important

I’ve aimed for the shortest video while keeping the main idea intact. The sweet spot is between twenty and forty seconds for clipped-out podcast-specific clipped-out content. We are not gaming the short-form platform algorithms.

We want to put our best foot forward here and get to the point as quickly as possible while being a stand-alone piece of quality content where the end consumer can take something away from it without going off the platform. Have someone consume this four or five times, and you start building trust and confidence in your brand from the end consumer. One of those times, they may end up clicking into your bio or the link you’ve provided to go and check out the entire episode.

This is why it’s crucial to have high-volume, consistent, and high-quality content. You can play just a bit with algorithms without changing your content creation structure.

How to do it right

A great example is a hot take, where someone’s opinion is gold or a rapid exchange between two people. Also, from our long-clip example, you could take one of those listicle items that were three or more minutes long and cut it down to sixty seconds, removing double talk, filler words, etc. This can add time to the process, so I suggest picking something that is already close to sixty seconds, as we want to spend only some of our time editing shorts in this content-stacking journey.

A tool that we use to help with this and save some time is Opus Clips. It uses AI engineering to find fifteen or more “viral clips” from your long-form podcast. It then resizes your clips to be vertical 9×16 format. It usually knows who is speaking and will choose the right person in the shot when they are speaking.

It also generates nice-looking captions on the video. This is feeding three birds with one scone because we don’t kill birds, and it’s a great time saver. Unfortunately, it’s AI, and you do need to play operator and fix some mistakes it may make.

Opus is interesting because it finds what it thinks are the best short clips from your podcast, titles them, and gives you a score and report card based on virality. Don’t be offended by this trendy Tik-Tokky feedback; it’s pretty generic and not optimized for niche video podcasts. Unfortunately, Opus Pro AI only works on podcast-specific talking heads style content, not an audio-only episode with stock video/images.

Descript now utilizes AI and offers a similar feature to Opus clips, where it analyzes your full episode and recommends short clips. As time goes on, they will both get better, and the tool that is best for you should become more apparent.

An example of a short video clip from this article’s content stack.

Clipping long-form written content

What you are doing

Podcasting is a writing-heavy medium. You are outlining your episode’s top-line critical takeaways in a reader-friendly way. Think more fleshed-out show notes but not the full transcript. Something in the middle: comprehensive but very concise. 

You could also find very specific subtopics or ideas that were quickly touched on in the podcast and flesh them out in a stand-alone blog piece. They can be as short or as long as you want; I’d stay within the boundary of 500-1500 words for time and SEO considerations.

Why it’s important

People love to read. If you are directing audio and video traffic to your website, you should have the blog give them the most value without consuming the entire episode. They may not hit play or only listen to twenty seconds, but they might read half of the article.

If your brand’s strength is written content, this is where you could invert my content stacking model. You can do less video/visual stuff and more written pieces.

On Tim Ferriss’s podcast, Matthew Mullenwig stated that he thinks every podcast has 10 to 15 blog posts worth of content. He also suggested that Tim and other podcasts could create a dense podcast-specific Wikipedia of topics, guests, etc., all related to the podcast. 

How to do it right

Focus on three to five key sections that tell the whole story of your episode. There is no need to go into detail. I’d avoid rules but focus on the guidelines that this content should give value to a reader.

Sprinkling in quotes and infographics you’ve created will help make the blog post or newsletter more visually stimulating.

Another exciting way to make a blog post is to compile your dense quotes. You can do a combination of quote text images of what the person is saying or who the person is and text quotes. The Podcast Host’s episode about the top promo and growth lessons does a great job of this. Remember, people love to skim things and read. These wikis could help boost SEO on your website.An example of a written content from my running brand.

Clipping quote and podcast summary carousels

What you are doing

Find or sum up succinct word passages that evoke a reaction from someone swiping. The best image format is the universal 1:1 square, 1000×1000 pixels.

Why it’s important

People love to skim, swipe, react and share. 25% of people you show your content to may never listen to or watch your podcast. These quotes give them a condensed version of your great work so they can get a general idea about it.

How to do it right

The shorter the copy, the better.

A degree in graphic design is not necessary. You can choose from thousands of quote templates on Canva and online. Don’t get cute and spend too much time overdesigning this. Use your brand colors, logos, etc. and be consistent. People care about the message, so make sure the copy is clear and your chosen words resonate with them. Depending on the platform, I like to do carousels of 5-10 images. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram have a limit of ten, while YouTube posts have a limit of five.

Again, there are no strict rules, but we’ve found that combining passages, summarizing rants, and directly quoting parts from the episode makes producing these content pieces easier.

Bonus—If you have podcast followers who like dense stuff and read things, you can keep dense, longer quotes as they are. The challenging part will be keeping the image clean and clutter-free.An example of quotes/infographics carousel on Linkedin.

Clipping infographics

What you are doing

Infographics are data- and word-rich visuals based on different concepts in your podcast episode that are easy for people to digest while scrolling their feeds. Just like the quote format, the best image format is 1:1 square, 1000×1000 pixels.

Why it’s important

Again, people love to skim, and an infographic with something that interests them, like ” The top five body-weight only strength exercises for runners,” is a great way to get them to understand the overall gist of your episode. All of the value is in the image.

These are also great to insert into your website’s blog post or newsletter or for other marketing assets like advertising creatives, etc.

How to do it right

With plentiful online templates, you don’t need design skills to do this. I try not to overthink this, and I avoid creating something that is too abstract or complex to put into one simple image. A few easy-to-replicate formats that work with most concepts are listicle, pros/cons comparison, and interactive decision tree: If/else options

Create a short bullet point description before you design this or if someone else is developing it.

Canva has some great templates, but you may need to edit them to get them where you want them. Don’t overdesign. Make sure all words and icons/graphic images you use are simple. Avoid putting too much text in there, as things can get confusing for the end consumer.

Bonus—Feel free to create more than one infographic if you have a few juicy concepts that can be distilled into an image. Most of my episodes end up having more than one. I will search Google for infographic ideas and frameworks and ask for permission to post and/or give full credit to the original source if I use it.

Closing

This content stack is just one variation of many. You can modify what pieces you create to suit your brand’s objectives or cater to your skill sets and interests. Other formats include animations, illustrations and even using the transcript in a creative way that could be valuable content for your audience.

Remember that the key to getting this right is defined by the workflow you can sustain for tens and hundreds of episodes. You may need an adjustment period to get your processes, systems and workflow right.

I’ll share my Notion-based content stacking template, which I made to combine the podcast production, publishing, and platforming phases at the end. The template makes sharing information modularly from parts of the episodes early in the pre-production and editing phases easy to find when you want to promote your podcast.

You might have some questions or objections about how to actually do this for your podcast, so let’s move on to the next section to hopefully answer those.

Let’s take a quick break here. We know this might be a lot to take in. If at any point you would be interested in finding out how we can help your brand, company or podcast content stack and repurpose your video podcast episodes, please schedule a call or email us. Thanks!

Section Four: How To Start Now, FAQ, Bonus Tactics and Case Study

“Content marketing isn’t a short game; it’s a slow burn. And that burn still kindles into a fire at some point, but it takes time and effort to get there.”

• Britney Gardner, Marketing and brand strategist

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time should I realistically expect to spend doing the content stacking?

For most normal podcasts, plan a learning curve of three to five hours in the beginning. Once you get processes and systems that work for you, it can take one to three hours, depending on many factors. While useful, short video clips take the most effort from our experience. Be careful wasting your time with these.

If you’re serious about growing your podcast, manage your expectations and plan time in the beginning to really figure it out. It’s an unrealistic expectation to think you can spend thirty minutes and spin out twenty-four pieces of content. 

James Clear on the Creator Science podcast posed a unique framing around going the extra mile, “The difference between doing a plus work and a minus work. Any sort of media provides infinite leverage. All of the returns are at the tail end. Doing a plus work is not like 1, 2 or 5x better. It’s 100 or 1,000x better.”

Why didn’t you cover video podcasts?

I purposely skipped over video podcasting because I covered that in a free thirty-two-minute webinar about why you should use video in your podcasts.

Summary of that video:

• Video podcasts boost reach and engagement.
• Ideal and non-ideal candidates for video podcasts.
• Benefits of repurposing video content.
• Enhanced SEO through YouTube.

This guide also avoids in-depth social media marketing techniques to focus on content stacking, amplifying your brand’s visibility and attracting listeners who prefer shorter content.

Note from Editor, Colin Gray:

Stick with audio if you prefer it. You can still turn an audio podcast into a blog, newsletter, and quotes. Adding video offers more benefits, but it’s optional!

What traps do people get into that bog them down?

Don’t overthink and over-engineer your content stack. Focus on creating a great video podcast episode first; then, everything else is just extra. 

When you first start content stacking, don’t get caught up on the never-ending hamster wheel of social media techniques. This will drain you quickly.

Prioritizing one focus lets you excel. Content stacking enhances your brand’s visibility and attracts listeners who prefer shorter content. It helps find those likely to click through to your video podcast. Trying to game algorithms can waste time and energy.

How long until I know that this is working?

I’m sorry, I don’t know. Not a great answer, huh? Unfortunately, you won’t really know until a minimum of five, if not ten, episodes. Depending on how frequently you publish episodes and the content-stacked marketing assets, this could be anywhere from three to six months into this. You must also stay consistent and quickly adapt if things need to be fixed.

You should be output-focused. It means putting out the highest volume, quality, and consistency of content that you can. For some people, that is one episode stack per month, and for others, that is one smaller episode stack per week.

You will know when your other profiles start growing, along with episode listens. This is a slow grind and is not sexy, but it works. The problem is that most people fail because they need to stick with it, be consistent, and put out valuable content for the right people.

Will I annoy people with so much content?

If it’s valuable and quality content, no, not at all. Have you ever told someone to stop entertaining you and making your life better because of all the things you’re learning? Exactly. It’s also not 2005 Myspace, and chronological feeds are dead. 

Because of the algorithms, most people don’t care about you and won’t see all of this content. Even if they do, they’ll stop following you faster than before because your content isn’t a fit for them. This is what you want.  And to the people who do care about you, they will appreciate the fact that you show up consistently in their feeds with insightful stuff.

How much should I worry about algorithms on platforms?

Setting up a content stack is quite a leap for most indie podcasters. The only thing you should worry about algorithm-wise is consistently getting a lot of good stuff on the platforms. Most of them work because they need data from your content, your account and how people interact. This takes months and a lot of content before it understands what you are and who likes it. The more niche, the better, but you must be as specific as possible. If you are a broad and general podcast, this might take longer than someone focusing on underwater basket weaving for single moms in their 30s and 40s living in Canada.

Once you get comfortable, you can start researching what works best on specific platforms and experimenting. These smaller hacks and optimizations do work, but they are similar to taking nutrition supplements if you want to live a healthier life. Focusing on the core tenets of health: eating well, getting sleep, and exercising will fix most of your problems.  In content marketing, the primary core tenant to always focus on is creating content that is valuable to the right people.

What platforms should I publish my content on?

The choice of social media platforms depends on your target audience. It would help if you decided where you naturally like hanging out online, find out where your audience spends their time, and focus your efforts on those platforms. The platform you choose is subjective to your podcast or brand’s needs. While I avoid being prescriptive, I’ll change to be prescriptive for a moment to give you a better understanding of the platforms. 

In a loose order based on how most podcast content marketing performs:

LinkedIn

I start here because it has the most applications for podcasts and treats video, image and text equally. This platform is excellent for every content type.

It’s also great if you are active on LinkedIn, and when you post, you receive decent engagement. I’ve seen a lot of things work there and a lot of things bomb. It plays by similar rules to all the other platforms but prefers B2B marketing and work-related content.

Facebook

Unless you are Gen-Z, Facebook has had a comeback in the last few years, and its organic reach is pretty good. Similar to LinkedIn, it likes all the formats of content. Millennials, Gen-X, and Boomers are active on this platform, which is a large population of people who listen to podcasts. It also does well with niches that are outside of the business type that LinkedIn tends to focus more on.

Facebook also does FB Reels, competing with Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.

X, formerly known as Twitter.

I personally have never cracked the X/Twitter code, but I know that people on Twitter read things. Readers like long-form content and will also listen to a podcast or watch a long video. Even though I don’t have experience here, I know through observation that many journalists and podcasters are on here and doing well. While X is not a video-first platform, video content still performs well.

YouTube

I would have put this second, but YouTube is a video-first platform. While it does have static images and text-formatted posts that do well if you have an engaged audience, the algorithm is suited to pushing your video podcast episodes. Their YouTube Shorts strategy, which is a competitor to Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Reels, is quite generous to accounts with low followers. If your video is good, it will show many people you don’t know.

With my sub 1,000 YouTube subscription account, I have consistently had short videos get a few thousand views that have converted to subscriptions. I didn’t have to make any new content because it was clipped out from my full episode.

You can also relate a long video, such as the entire episode, to your YouTube short video clips. The stats are inconclusive as to whether this drives up your long-form consumption, but I’m just happy more people are consuming the stuff that I’ve created, so I’ll take it.

Instagram

This is a great visual platform for most industries, niches, and audience age ranges from Gen Z to Millenials. I have a lot of experience on this platform over the last seven years. Unfortunately, if you are not visually appealing and use good video, starting out here with a small following niche audience will prove challenging for growth. It’s not impossible, but I would try the above platforms first.

Anecdotally, short video platforms prefer short twenty- to forty-second video clips that feature someone with a microphone in front of their face. These clips get to the point, tell people something they never knew, or entertain them.

Instagram is also great for valuable carousel photos and infographics.

You can utilize the Instagram Story direct links feature if you create good behind-the-scenes style content and have an engaged audience. Putting the direct link to the full episode on a short video clip story may get the standard 1-3% click-through rate to convert your audience to full episode listeners. On Instagram, people tend to read the descriptions in your posts, allowing some people to microblog with images and short videos to help promote their podcasts.

TikTok

This platform is still a mystery to me, and I haven’t cracked it quite yet. The rules that work on YouTube Shorts and Instagram also work here. However, this platform skews towards the Gen-Z and younger age demographic. The shorter and more to the point your video is, the better. I also found that longer short videos in the 40-60 second range work well if you say something that the algorithm and other people think is good.

Photos and infographics tend to perform below average. Unlike Instagram and FB Reels, only a few people read the captions here, so I put very little energy into that.

Threads (Instagram)

This is Instagram’s latest answer to X/Twitter, and after a year, it’s actually going better than most predicted. I haven’t really been on here but will look to start posting more text-based content here and lightly promote my podcast episodes.

I still need to experiment before I can comment on this, but please try it out if you like text based short content.

I’ve been using audiograms to promote my podcast; why can’t I just keep doing that?

Audiograms were trendy and cool in 2018 when most social apps weren’t video first. Things have changed quickly, and people find them boring, so they don’t perform well. Darren Lee and others think they do more harm than good to a podcast.

A more effective way if you don’t have a video podcast is to have you or your guest use their smartphone camera to record a thirty-second video telling people what they will learn in the episode.

Annalise Nielsen from Pacific Content explains more in-depth why they don’t work, along with some great evidence, examples and other solutions.

Something that has decent engagement is what I’ve called a “videogram”. It’s moving images and video with kinetic-style text on top. These are hit-or-miss engagements that and a bit of production time to get right. The laborious nature of this format is why I didn’t include them in the content stack. We do offer these to clients who have audio-only podcasts and no video to clip from.

How should I set up my podcast website?

In short, have all your content stacked on your podcast website. The goal is to direct all traffic to the podcast website, where they can consume it however they want.

An example of a podcast episode on my website is here, and below is a screenshot to show how I arranged it.

I’m trying to give someone the path of least resistance to consuming it however they would like. I don’t have granular activity stats on what people do when they hit the website, but I’ve grown my newsletter and other platforms at the same rate since most of my traffic comes directly to my website.

I also have a page with all of my podcasts in one place, which I link to from all my bios on my social media sites and email signatures.

Is this overkill? Some say yes, but we are content-stacking machines, and our goal is to be in as many places as possible with the least effort.

How to get started ASAP with content stacking

If you’ve gotten this far, you are most likely interested in how this would look for your podcast brand. Throughout this article, I did not sugarcoat content stacking as an easy-button formula for podcast success. It’s the opposite of easy but doesn’t have to be complex.

The simplest way to get started is to approach this like a software developer and create a minimal viable product process (MVP). In software development, an MVP is a version of a product with just enough features to gather validated learning. Similarly, in content stacking a podcast episode, an MVP approach involves creating the simplest and most essential content pieces to test and refine their effectiveness before scaling up.

You can approach this in one of two ways, depending on whether you have a video for your podcast. You can follow some or all of my recommendations. It’s best to start out with what you have a natural curiosity or strength for. For a refresher and best practices for creating this type of content, please refer back to my guide in section three.

If you have a video podcast

Clipping and creating long-form content from video (examples of the below are on section three)

• Create a blog post or newsletter from your episode. Here’s a sample blog post and a sample newsletter based around the podcast but still offering other value.
• Use Descript to create long video clips between 5-15 minutes.
• Clipping and creating short-form content from video

• Create quote carousels that sum up your episode.  Here’s an example quote carousel. 
• Clip out short videos using Alitu, Descript or Opus Pro AI. Here’s an example of what they did with a short five-minute podcast.
• Create infographics summarizing a few points or zoom in on a specific complex framework or idea

If you have an audio-only podcast

Clipping and creating long-form content from audio

• Create a blog post or newsletter from your episode.
• Make a stock video and image b-roll video to accompany your audio-only episode – An example of a videogram here
• Create long clips from the above full episode in which you manually add stock b-roll video/images. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Opus Pro AI only works on podcast-specific talking heads style content, not an episode full of stock videos/images. This is looking to change in the future.

Clipping and creating short-form content from audio 

• Stock video Clips – Use the above stock video and image b-roll video to clip out to short clips.
• Record to Camera Summary—Sum up or have an LLM (Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) sum up your podcast into three short 30-40-second videos for you to read to your phone while talking to the camera.
• Create a videogram – These are much more effective than audiograms, which consistently perform poorly. There is no right way to do this, but the more images or videos you have in vertical format with interesting transcripts or captions, the better. 20-30 seconds in length is best, and edit down to the best parts using exciting images/videos. An example of a videogram here
• Quote & episode sum up carousel – example here [Link TBD after producing content stack assets].
• Infographics

Case Study

Over six months since first publishing, the content stacked episode achieved 39 times more reach. And over 12 months, it was up to 40 times the reach, which is proof the long tail of long and short-form content is very long. Here’s more in depth case study data on content stacking the episode.

Playing the game of trust

“Step 1 – Make as much good stuff as I can

Step 2 – Post it everywhere I can

Step 3 – Learn as much as I can”

• Alex Hormozi’s “Fancy” Content Stacking Plan grew him from 0 to 7.8 million subscribers in 40 months.

If you’ve gotten this far and feel like it’s a lot to take in, you are right; it is a lot. This is challenging, and there are no hacks to skip over. You need to go the extra mile to really squeeze the juice from the fruit. But I promise, it is worth it.

Initially, it will feel messy, but I hope this guide makes it cleaner.

You should be on as many platforms as possible. I agree with that, to a limit. But, you should find the place where people want your stuff and do more of it. But you will know once you’ve tried a lot, assessed it, learned and repeated it ad nauseam. I want to save you the headache and heartache so you can focus on doing what you do best: making your podcast quickly and easily clipping it out to as many people as possible. If you follow this guide, it will do that for you.

By shifting to thinking of your podcast as more of a brand, you can do more and let the compound interest of time and content pieces on many platforms help your brand grow.

When you content stack for a while, you start figuring out how the algorithms on social platforms work, what formats and types of content resonate with people and how people consume your full episode. You may even start making new goals around converting people from one platform to your podcast, which is the exception more than the rule. That’s all great, but remember what game you’re playing through all of these slick content marketing tactics – You are a podcaster first!

Algorithmic growth is only as good as the content, and word-of-mouth growth is because the content is so good people tell other people about it. Which would you rather do? Always prioritize your best podcast content for your audience and yourself. Content stacking comes after that.

Jay Clouse from Creator Science has a great take on zooming out of this content creation and marketing game. I refer back to this when I need help making content, and it might help keep you focused as you start your content-stacking journey on different platforms.

“Your culture is obsessed with reaching new attention. It’s obsessed with the flashy vanity metrics of followers, subscribers, and views. I’m telling you, it’s the wrong thing to chase.

The health and viability of your business aren’t based on how much attention you can capture—they’re based on how much attention you can retain. To take it a step further, it’s not even about attention as much as it’s about trust.

People buy from those they know, like, and trust—full stop. Capturing attention helps people know you, and it might even help them like you, but it doesn’t guarantee trust.”

Let’s take a quick break here. We know this might be a lot to take in. If at any point you would be interested in finding out how we can help your brand, company or podcast content stack and repurpose your video podcast episodes, please schedule a call or email us. Thanks!