Before you start reading, here’s a guarantee; you will be able to increase your podcast traffic by 5X if you utilize this secret.
Except you have an existing audience being migrated from other platforms, you will likely start with zero listeners and downloads on day one. In this Podcast 101 piece, we’ll look at how to increase your podcast traffic at least by 500%. Without mincing words, how to grow from 0 to 500 listeners using audiograms.
There are podcasters like Jeremy Ryan Slate, whose podcast downloads are about 10,000 every month. There’s no impossibility about this level of growth. You should read this piece and take it seriously if you are starting in the world of podcasting or an existing podcaster looking to grow.
We know you don’t want to put in the endless effort to launch and produce a podcast, and no one seems to listen. That’s why podcast marketing and promotion is one of our interests at Disctopia, helping podcasters grow from zero to something.
Growing podcast traffic is known to be arduous. Unlike blogs, you cannot rely on Google or YouTube algorithms to get discovered. You need to go outside of the box to grow and increase your podcast traffic.
While there are dozens of proven strategies to increase your podcast traffic, we’ll be exploring audiograms as a means of growing your podcast.
What is an Audiogram?
Audiograms are a potent means to get people’s attention on social media. Indeed, audiograms are an extraordinary and proven marketing medium to push out your podcast.
In an audiogram, a static image is converted into a video combining your podcast, transcription, and waveform.
The beauty of audiograms lies in how they tell stories that add value to your listeners using your podcast episodes. Audiograms do not require another app to view and listen; potential listeners have to click the audiogram to activate the sounds.
Think of audiograms like movie trailers, combining audio, texts, and images to grab people’s attention.
Why Should You Create an Audiogram Podcast?
When Neil Patel (you know him right, the king of SEO?) talked about podcasting, he mentioned that you’d need an edge. We believe that if you can get it right with audiograms, your podcast will go places.
Audiograms are fast becoming a way to promote and increase podcast traffic. There’s no better way to share your podcast and engage with your podcast listeners. If you look at these reasons, you will give a thought to audiograms as a podcast marketing medium;
- About 223 Million people check their social media every day.
- When visual content is involved, 95% of viewers retain the message compared to 10% when a text is involved.
- A tweet with audiograms gets an 8X engagement than one without a visual soundbite on Twitter.
- On Facebook, audiograms outperform static images by 58%. This is proven in a Study by Headliner where the same podcast was shared using an audiogram and a static image. While the one with audiogram was clicked 600 times, the other was clicked 115 times.
- Your podcast cover, which is a static image, may get lost in the feed, but audiograms often catch the attention of social media users.
- Lastly, most potential and existing podcast listeners use social media more than non-listeners.
What To Consider When Creating Audiograms to Increase Your Podcast Traffic
There are about 700,000 podcasts active podcasts in 100 languages. With the multitude of podcasts competing for attention, how can yours stand out and engage your podcast? That’s where the potency of audiograms comes to your rescue. Here’s what to consider when creating audiograms;
1. Use Eye-catching Images
Every second, millions of audio-visual contents are uploaded to social media. According to Cisco, by 2022, online videos will account for 82% of internet traffic.
That said, the images you’ll deploy in your audiograms must be irresistible. One that your potential listeners cannot ignore while scrolling through their feeds. You may need to test many options to discover the imagery that can halt their scrolling.
2. Intriguing and Overpowering Audio
Remember we said that audiograms are like movie trailers. There’s no way anyone won’t stop to watch a movie trailer. The reason is that movie trailers combine the best scenes, voice, and synced music.
That’s precisely what your audiograms should be about. Pick out a portion of your podcast episode that your audience will find intriguing, controversial, and shareable. It can also be a summary of the podcast episode.
3. Deploy a Catchy Headline
This is not the time to stick with your podcast title (unless you have a very good one); go with something that catches attention. Imagine the combination of the best images, audio, and headline. If one doesn’t appeal to your potential listener, another will.
Think of a funny quote from the episode, statistics, or catchy praise when choosing a headline.
4. Subtitling and Captions
While it’s audio content, you are better off including subtitles and captions. Why does YouTube include subtitles in videos? YouTube video producers don’t underestimate the power of adding closed captions.
This was given credence by a study by the Discovery Digital Networks where it was established that there’s a distinct increase in views for YouTube videos. This is especially within the first 14 days. Indeed, there’s a lot of good subtitling and captions can do for your audiograms.
5. Optimize For Different Platforms
There are different dimensions for every social media platform for images and videos. You cannot create one-size fits all audiograms for every social media.
You’ll need to pay attention to the dimensions required. This should not be difficult if you’ve made the most of social media marketing for podcast promotion. For example, you need a 1080px by 1080px for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. For Instagram Stories, TikTok, and IGTV, it’s a vertical audiogram of 1080px by 1920px. On YouTube, it’s 1920px by 1080px.
6. Audiograms Should be Short, Sweet, and Simple
The idea behind audiograms is to create a teaser that is good enough to drive traffic to your main content. That’s why we said it’s like a movie trailer; remember that a movie trailer is not the entire movie.
Your potential listeners won’t stay on Facebook to listen to the entire podcast. The max length of audiograms should be 1minutes.
What Are The Best Tools to Create Audiograms For Podcast For Free?
As a new podcaster, we know you are likely to be on a budget after spending a fortune on choosing podcast recording equipment and software. Not to worry, we’ve researched three top-notch tools that you can rely on to create audiograms for your podcast for free;
1. Headliner
Let’s say you do less than five episodes of your podcast show monthly; then, Headliner is best for you. You can also make more out of it if you want to go beyond static images.
If you submitted your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Headliner would have it in its database, from where you can pull the audio. If you don’t, enter your RSS link.
2. Auphonic
The strength of Auphonic lies in the ability to create audiograms for the entire episode, longer than just a snippet. Their free plan allows you to work around 2 hours of audio monthly.
Auphonic’s UI isn’t the best, but you should be able to work around it.
3. Wavve
The reason why Wavve is coming last is the length. You have only one minute of video monthly, quite limiting. Although, you don’t need long audiograms to get results.
A 30 seconds audiogram with all the right resources should gain your potential listeners’ attention on social media.
Final Thoughts Audiograms To Increase Your Podcast Traffic
By now, you should have seen enough reasons why you should give audiograms a thought in your podcast marketing. For a fact, audiograms can be a game-changer as it involves social media.
We look forward to seeing you achieve results in your podcast marketing. Let us know your experiences through the comment box.
