What We Learned Analyzing 50+ B2B YouTube Channels

**Justin Simon** (0:00)
Hey everybody, before we get started, I wanna thank my friends at Hatch for producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and strategy for one flat rate by visiting hatch.fm. All right, let's get in the show.
Welcome to Distribution First, the show where we flip content marketing on its head and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week, I share playbooks, motivations, stories and strategies to help you repurpose and distribute your content, because you deserve to get the most out of everything you create. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution First. So excited to have Joe and Sergey on from Sway One. And kind of the theme of the first quarter of the year for me here has been video, and we're just gonna keep tapping into it, because I think video is by far probably the biggest underrated type of content that companies can create right now, whether it's podcasts, whether it's standalone video, shorts, all that type of stuff. Actually, what they did at Sway One was dive into the data and actually try and look at where some of the top green spaces are for companies, what the commonalities are, what we can be doing with podcasts and video, etc. So I thought it'd be just a blast to have Joe and Sergei on to chat through the data and kind of probe my own questions about what we have coming out of this data as I was going through the port. So guys, welcome to the show.

**Joe** (1:35)
Thank you. Great to be on.

**Justin Simon** (1:36)
So, Joe, why don't you just really quick kind of talk to us through like 30 second split of what you guys did and then we can dive in to the actual data itself.

**Joe** (1:46)
For sure. Yeah. So as I'm sure everyone here listening is seeing, podcast boom, I guess that has kind of happened over the last five years in B2B. We've, I think, very recently in the last six to 12 months and something me and Sergei have observed is that the space is now kind of shifting from that kind of audio only approach that a lot of B2B companies embraced. We're now seeing a shift to video more specifically to YouTube, right, where the primary kind of distribution channel for a lot of podcasts now is YouTube. And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to create a kind of like a benchmark report, I guess, of what does success look like? What are some insights that we've been able to find by basically analyzing? It was around 80 different B2B video podcasts that are sitting on YouTube right now, because I think, and I'm sure, again, a lot of people listening to this will echo this. I know Sergei, we say the same a lot, that YouTube is a black hole for B2B marketers. It's a big black hole, so we wanted to create a report that would start to uncover some of the insights for marketers in this space.

**Justin Simon** (2:49)
And how many did you look at for this?

**Joe** (2:52)
80 It was literally like 80 different B2B podcasts, yeah.

**Justin Simon** (2:55)
Okay. How did you choose which 80 you were looking at? I'm just curious.

**Joe** (2:59)
So it was a broad sample size, so we didn't want to pick any just crazy outliers. So it was really a mixed bag. There were some on the very low end, there were some, we picked also some B2B creators as well, some B2B media companies. So we wanted to get a really good broad sample size. So a mix of small companies, larger companies, some VC firms, and then some B2B creators.

**Justin Simon** (3:21)
Awesome. I'm curious, as I was looking through it, there's so many little nuggets. I'm curious for both of you, Sergey and Joe, so maybe I'll throw it to you, Sergey. What was like your top insight coming off of this, where like after you got done, looked at all the data, you just, it's like stuck, like eating space in the back of your brain that you can't stop thinking about.

**Sergey** (3:38)
It's a YouTube optimization. It's the shows that are YouTube first, that are getting better views, that are optimized for that platform, that is overtaking Spotify, overtaking Apple podcasts, and that will only continue. And the listening, listener experience, and viewer experience will improve. We're not only going to be in the position, as we are right now, to just be watching YouTube for two hours, because that's not super convenient. And having executives, having thought leaders, C-suite on the podcast, who are great, who are great speakers, who know what they're talking about, and that was a big factor, in a sense that not just the fact that they need to be there, because we knew that before, it's just if they are not there, how big of a difference it makes in terms of success of the show. Views and listeners, like if you don't have the executives, C-suite guys on the podcast, that was a big factor.