According to recent data, more than 220 million people check their social media at least once a day. With so much time spent scrolling through their feeds, screening hundreds of posts, only the most engaging type of content will manage to catch their interest. This includes videos, photos, and, most recently, audiograms. It’s also a known fact that a podcast’s quality depends on the equipment used to record, produce, and distribute it. Choosing the right podcast recording software and podcast posting services is also crucial.
If you are doing podcasts, you probably know how difficult it is to advertise them. If people are not actively searching for this type of content, grabbing their attention is very difficult, especially when they have access to readily-available content in the forms of short videos and images, which have become the equivalent of digital mass marketing.
People consume media content more than ever before, but this type of content needs to follow the rules: it needs to be short, concise, and, above all, it needs to make the audience curious to find out more. The aforementioned audiograms tick all these boxes and have become one of the best ways to advertise podcasts on social media, where information needs to travel fast.
Below, we will be taking a look at what audiograms are, how they can help you grow your audience, as well as the best practices to follow if you want maximum results.
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So, what exactly are audiograms?
If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve probably stumbled upon audiograms by now. They are short audio excerpts from a podcast – usually 20-90 seconds long – accompanied by visual art, a sound wave, and sometimes even an audio transcription. This type of content is meant to give people a taste of what your podcast is all about and make them curious to find out more.
Data reveals people are more likely to remember a message when receiving it in video format rather than written format. In fact, 95% of people shown a video are likely to retain the message, whereas only 10% of those who read it experience the same results. This means using a visual medium to send the message to your audience is the smarter choice here.
Audiograms require much less commitment than a full video, both from you and from your audience, which makes them into the perfect bite-size type of content meant to tempt the fence-sitters into committing to a full-course dinner. And, what’s more, you can easily create them yourself.
What makes audiograms so effective?
According to experts in the industry, people are eight times more likely to engage with a tweet containing an audiogram compared to a tweet that does not include one, whereas on Facebook, audiograms outperform posts that contain links only by 83%. To what do we owe this?
Images and static posts can easily get lost in social media feeds, but audiograms tend to be more eye-catching. It may be because this type of content is still new to some, which makes them curious, but this is not the primary reason why people are more likely to engage with an audiogram than with a post containing nothing but a link to your podcast and a short description.
An audiogram doesn’t ask much from users: it streams automatically, it does not require opening a different app to play, and the sound can be easily turned on or off with a click. If you also include transcriptions, people don’t even need to make the extra effort to turn the volume on. Many podcasters include a link to the podcast episode the excerpt comes from so that those interested can easily access it – and, once they catch a glimpse of your thought-provoking content, they will be much more likely to check out the rest.
Audio content is also much more difficult to index, which means many of the traditional marketing methods, such as SEO, keyword targeting, and content marketing, will fail to bring out the desired results. For Google to index it, you would have to offer content in text form as well, which takes a lot more time and effort to create. This is why social media sharing becomes a much effective strategy.
How to create an audiogram
Now that you know how audiograms can help you grow your audience, it’s time to see how easy you can create and share them online. We are going to use Reel, a tool that helps you create engaging podcast audiograms with little to no design skills required.
The first thing you need to do is sign up for free, then select the podcast episode you want to create the snippet from. The tool uses Apple Podcasts as its main search engine to find podcasts, but if your content is not there, you can use direct RSS feed URLs or upload mp3 files.
Once the episode is uploaded into the tool, you are free to select the segment of the episode that you want to use as an audiogram. The reel can also automatically create transcriptions, so all you have to do is select the language from the list and let the tool do its job.
The last thing you need to do is choose a template for your audiogram. You can either select one from the many pre-made options available and customize it to suit your brand or design the template yourself. By adding dynamic captions and waveforms, you can make the audiogram more eye-catching even when there’s no audio playing.
Once you are done, all that’s left to do is download the audiogram and publish it anywhere you want to.
Best practices to follow
Regardless of which tool you want to use to create your audiograms, there are a few aspects to keep in mind for proper optimization:
- Start by optimizing your audiograms for the platform you plan to post it on. Square templates work best for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, whereas vertical audiograms work best on TikTok and IGTV. Widescreen formats are best saved from blogs and YouTube poss.
- Adding transcriptions may seem like extra work, but given the fact that most people watch content with the sound off, it is the best way to ensure your message gets through.
- Last but not least, keep things short and simple – a 20-30 seconds segment accompanied by engaging imagery is enough to pique the interest of those who fit your audience profile.