If you’re looking for ways to reach more people with your podcast, audiograms could be a great option. Audiograms are essentially short videos that include audio from your podcast, visual elements, which could include images and text, as well as animated elements such as waveforms, progress bars, and, subtitles.
Put these all together, and you’ve got yourself an audiogram!
Audiograms a great way to share your podcast with new listeners, and they can be easily shared on social media or embedded on websites.
For these reasons, and a whole lot more, we think audiograms are great! However, not all audiograms are created equal!
We’ve learned some tricks over the years and we’re sharing those with you today! In this blog post, we’ll give you some of our tips and tricks for creating awesome audiograms for your podcast.
1. The Audio
Okay, so I know audiograms are all about giving visuals to your podcast, but your audio is still super important! Just as content is king when it comes to your podcast episodes, so the audio snippets you choose to share via your super cool audiograms should be value-rich, and strategically chosen.
Because as much as you’re relying on the visual elements to grab the attention of your target audience, your audio is still doing the majority of the heavy lifting.
If your audiograms are going to effectively convert social media users to podcast listeners, you’ve got to pick the right audio for the job!
Strategically Pick Your Audio
And the right audio for the job may change from audiogram to audiogram, depending on your intention and the marketing angle you’re going for.
Are you wanting to leverage the clout of a well-known guest you’re interviewing on an upcoming interview? Then pick a piece of audio where they share a great nugget of wisdom which leaves listeners wanting more!
Does your latest episode feature a shocking development? Then pick a clip that takes listeners to the edge of their seats…and leaves them hanging! They’ll have to listen to the episode to find out what happens next!
And just like that, you’ve converted a casual peruser to a fully-fledged loyal listener simply by thinking strategically about which audio to share via your latest audiogram.
Basically, with each audiogram, you need to think about the corresponding episode, and specially, what can you use from that episode to lure your listeners in.
The following are just some suggestions of the types of clips you could use.
The Highlight
This type of clip works well if you interview great guests on your podcast. Pick a clip that, well, highlights something profound they shared, a key piece of info, or a memorable moment. These can make for great audiograms that both you and your guest can share.
But a word of advice, pick a highlight, not the highlight. You still want your listeners to get the best part of the episode from actually listening to the episode.
The Summary
You could also take a different approach to your audiograms. Instead of taking clips from the episode, you could record a summary. This type of audiogram almost becomes a voice message to your followers.
This type of audio gives you the opportunity to ‘directly’ address your viewers and tell them exactly why they need to check out your latest episode. You can tell them what is special about the episode, some of the topics that are covered, or what part you enjoyed most.
The Compilation
You could also piece together bits of an episode and use this as your audio clip for your audiogram. This is almost like a movie trailer, which shares intriguing bits of the upcoming release to get the viewers excited to see the film. This type of audiogram uses this principle for your podcast episodes.
You can have a lot of fun with the audio, piecing together all sorts of clips from the episode to intrigue your followers and get them tuning in to your podcast.
The Out-Of-Context Snippet
Another fun way to create effective audiograms is to use an out-of-context snippet. This could be the build-up to the crux of your episode, a fascinating part of a story your guest shares, or any piece of audio that is intriguing or interesting without giving anything away.
If you pick a great out-of-context snippet, you’ll get your followers hooked on the story, and excited to check out the episode as soon as it drops!
The Build-Up
Another interest-building technique is using the audio from just before your episode reaches its main “a-ha” moment. This gives viewers a little insight into what is going on, but doesn’t reveal the heart of the episode.
Almost like cliffhangers work to get you tuning in to find out what happens to your beloved characters next, so using the build-up technique for your audiograms will help build the anticipation around your upcoming episode, greatly increasing the probability that your social media followers become part of your podcast community.
Shareable Content
The last type of clip that makes for effective audiograms is shareable content. This is those bits of your episodes that just screams “Put me on social media!”
It could be a salient point, an amazing guest quote, a hilarious joke, or a snippet that showcases the great chemistry on the episode. If your strategy with your audiograms is to get social media users sharing your audiograms across their platforms, this is the sort of audio to use.
Some Additional Audio Tips
Quality
Make sure the audio clip you pick or record is of good quality! Use your audiogram audio to showcase the clarity and quality of your podcast episodes, and they’ll be effective in getting more listeners tuning in.
Length
The length can depend on a number of things. Firstly, which platform will this audiogram be shared to? Instagram? Then you need to keep the clip to the 60 second mark or under. Facebook? Then you have a lot more time to play with! Twitter? 60 seconds or less work best here.
The bottom line when it comes to your audiogram audio is to think about what you want to achieve with each audiogram, and to pick the clip that will help you meet this goal.
Keep it below 60 seconds, keep it high quality, and you’re more than halfway there to creating awesome audiograms for your podcast.
2. The Image
So, it should be fairly well-established that the audio is massively important when it comes to audiograms. However, the whole point of using audiograms to promote your podcast is to be able to promote your podcast via social media.
And social media is all about visual content! So, the next part of creating effective audiograms is to pay a lot of attention to the images you use on your audiograms. Here are a few tips to consider.
Color
Color is your friend! Remember, you’re aiming for eye-catching! As viewers are scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or other social feeds, they are bombarded with visual material. You will need an eye-catching image for your audiograms to halt that scrolling. So have some fun with color!
Related read: Tips for Creating Great Cover Art for Your Podcast
Guest Photo
If you’re interviewing guests, use their photo on your audiogram image. If they’re well-known to your followers, this will be a great way to get more eyes on your audiograms and consequently, more ears on your podcast.
On Brand
Remember, your audiograms need to be an extension of your podcast brand, so make sure you stick to your brand aesthetic, but feel free to get creative. Your podcast cover art is a great place to start. Many podcasts use this as their audiogram image and it’s always a good choice. But you do have some room to play with when it comes to your audiograms.
You could consider opening up your brand’s color palette for your audiograms and use colors that still have a strong correlation to your brand, but give you more options to play with when it comes to designing images for your audiograms.
Quality
Again, quality is important when it comes to your image. Clear pictures, graphics, and logos are a must! Make sure that the overall product looks high-quality, and you’re another step closer to having winning audiograms on your feeds!
3. The Animated Elements
So you’ve crafted your audio, and you’ve created those eye-catching images, now we need to look at the element that really sets audiograms apart…the animated elements.
We strongly believe that you should include at least one animated feature into your audiograms. This helps set audiograms apart from images, and alerts viewers that there is something to be seen and heard here! These animated elements help transform your podcast content into video content, which tend to do really well on social media!
The Options
The most common animated element used on audiograms is the waveform. Waveforms work as a perfect signifier that what you’re sharing is more than just an image. It also adds a level of interest to your audiogram, which helps keep the viewer on your audiogram.
All available platforms for creating audiograms, such as as Wavve, Audiogram, and Headliner have all sorts of waveform styles and colors to choose from, so find a combination that looks great with your artwork and really grabs the viewer’s attention!
You could also opt to use a progress bar as your animated element. Most platforms have this as an option, but you are limited when it comes to styles. But pick the right color to compliment your image, and your progress bar will also be an effective animated element on your audiogram.
4. The Subtitles or Captions
The fourth and final element that really makes audiograms so effective is the ability to create subtitles or captions for your audio.
Remember, on most social media platforms, videos start playing automatically without sound, leaving it up to the user whether they want to unmute or not. And if someone is scrolling their social media at work (don’t pretend like you haven’t done it!) or in public, they likely will keep those videos on mute.
And so if your audiogram has no captions or subtitles, all effect you put into selecting that perfect audio will come to nought!
But with handy subtitles, every bit of information can be gleaned!
Promotes Inclusivity
But most importantly, captions or subtitles on your audiograms go a long way to making your content more accessible to a larger audience, which should always be your goal. Adding captions opens up your podcast to so many more people, but
Related read: Podcast Accessibility: Why And How To Make Your Podcast More Accessible
Most audiogram creation programs have a transcribe feature which will automatically transcribe your audio selection. You will just need to do a quick read-through to make sure everything has been transcribed as it should be, as AI does not always get this right!
Additional Tips
Before signing off, we do have a few additional audiogram tips to share with you…
Think About Your Platform
Whenever you create an audiogram, think about where you will be sharing this particular audiogram to. Depending on your audience, as well as the different social platforms you use to promote your podcast, different things may be required.
Does your Instagram or TikTok audience represent the younger echelon of your audience demographic? Perhaps you need to use that hilarious joke your guest shared and a vibrant wavelength to grab their attention.
Are your Facebook followers typically a bit older and favor factual information more? Then share that nugget of wisdom that same guest shared and tone down the wavelength a bit.
Both of these versions of the audiogram will fall within your brand and aesthetic, but you’ve just tailored them to best meet your audience’s needs.
Watch Out for Interruptions
You know that we think captions are important, and that all audiograms should have them. However, if you want to make it easy to caption your audiograms, try to pick audio clips where you, your co-host, or your guests don’t interrupt each other or talk over each other. These make it really difficult to caption, and may mean that some of the information is lost.
Final thoughts
We love the versatility that audiograms give podcasters. They make it possible to share your message and promote your podcast across a variety of platforms in a really fun and, most importantly, engaging way.
Audiograms provide you tremendous options in terms of repurposing your material to help you reach a far larger audience.
So onboard our tips and tricks, pick the platform that’s best suited to your needs, and start creating eye-catching audiograms. Consistently share high-quality audiograms across your social media platforms, and you’re sure to consistently reel in new listeners.
Related read: 8 Top Resources To Create Audiograms for Excellent Social Engagement
