You must have probably heard that lately, the medium of choice for content marketers and content creators is videos. But videos aren’t the only medium that you can use to get your audience’s attention and build trust.
Audio is another great medium and has some solid advantages over video. As a consumer, you can often consume audio content while doing other things (i.e. it doesn’t require your full attention). As a producer, there’s lower friction to create audio content, since you don’t need to consider how you look, your surroundings, etc.
While it has been around for a long time, changes in mobile technology and consumer behavior are creating a resurgence in audio marketing.
Why audio?
The purpose of social media is to build trust with your community by…..you guessed it, being social. In other words, social media lets you scale up in-person conversations, so you can have them with a broader community. What better way to scale up an in-person conversation than to have a conversation – with audio.
Here are a few emerging audio-based platforms that you should consider looking at if you want to get into audio marketing.
Anchor by Spotify
Anchor allows a user to record small audio files (called a wave) and share them just like you would share a tweet or Facebook status update. Followers can also reply with their wave, creating a conversation or a collaborative podcast of sorts.
Anchor is the best way to make your podcast, and it’s officially part of Spotify.
It offers a great way to build relationships with both new and existing customers, encourage discussion on relevant topics, and is also a great way to conduct interviews.
Credit Anchor
Anchor is a great way to get started with audio marketing, if you find podcasting to be difficult and a lot of work. You can get going on Anchor in minutes and start communicating with your audience just like in a real conversation. The onboarding process is great, and it’s worth signing up just to check it out!
SoundCloud
SoundCloud has been and still is a platform that individuals and companies can leverage to grow their audience and influence. For listeners, it is more like an audio-based social network.
Harvard, for example, uses SoundCloud to upload recordings from forums, commencement speeches, and even audio guides to campus tours.
PlayStation uses it for its blog series and soundtracks for favorite video games.
Adobe, on the other hand, has created audio white papers on topics like developing a sophisticated app strategy and driving mobile digital sales.
SoundCloud has weathered some financial troubles and is banking on a music streaming service to solve the problem. It is worth keeping an eye on because if the streaming service doesn’t fly, then they might be in trouble.
Having said that, SoundCloud does have a big existing user base, so you can push your audio content out to more people via the platform. Also, it solves the hosting problem for podcasters or anyone wanting to develop audio content.
Stitcher
Stitcher is an on-demand internet radio service that streams the show or podcast rather than requiring the media to be downloaded to the device.
Credit Seekpng.com
Users can favorite their stations, and Stitcher also offers recommendations based on user listening habits and the listener’s favorite station. Often people who use Android use Stitcher, because it doesn’t have a default Podcasts app like the Apple devices. Several podcasts are available on Stitcher including Shopify’s TGIM Shorts, Entrepreneur on Fire, and Donald Miller.
Consider using Stitcher given its popularity with Android users. It is also now available on iTunes. Deezer, a global music streaming company, acquired Stitcher increasing its audience base. With over 40,000 shows and podcasts, Stitcher could be a great way to gain increased exposure and build your audience.
TuneIn
This is a service that connects users with online radio and podcasts. It has a feature similar to that of a DVR whereby listeners can save shows to listen to later. Navigation within TuneIn is also a lot easier than iTunes.
Credit TuneIn
With over 100,000 live radio stations and on-demand content like podcasts and other shows, TuneIn claims to have an audience of over 60 million. TuneIn also provides tools to help promote your content such as an embeddable player, access to their API, follow buttons, etc. All of which make TuneIn worth investigating in terms of growing your audience around audio content.
Whatsapp / FB Messenger
Whatsapp is a service that Facebook acquired wherein users can either text or record an audio message, which can be sent to another user in their contact list. Your audio messages can be shared with a group of contacts or 1-to-1. It can be a great social way to build relationships with new and existing customers.
Credit BBC
It’s not a marketing platform as such, but we think there is potential for it to turn into one. And even if it’s not a marketing platform, it’s still an awesome way to build relationships with people and connect on a deeper level than text-based options.
A Unilever Mayonnaise brand, Hellman’s wanted to increase usage of its products in everyday cooking. So it offered consumers a 1-on-1 real-time service via Whatsapp that connected people to professional chefs who answered their questions, shared recipes, and shared videos of cooking.
The results? Over 5 million people connected, with over 13,000 sign-ups for the service, and 1 in every 2 website visitors signed up for the service.
Snapchat
While SnapChat is often thought of as a video-sharing platform, businesses, and artists can use this platform’s audio to engage their fans and followers as well.
Credit Panda Security
How?
By posting teasers of upcoming announcements and releases, exclusive content such as behind-the-scenes recordings, talks or presentations, and other everyday events.
You can also increase engagement by responding to fans’ Snapchats. Snapchat is thought of as being an app for close friends and creates a sense of connection that is unique compared to other social sites.
Snapchat is also largely audio-based and allows you to communicate almost like you would when meeting a person face to face. This allows users to seamlessly transfer from text to stickers, to pictures, to audio to video, all while communicating with their Snapchat audience.
Peach
Peach is a new, trendy mobile app that allows one to blog/journal like Tumblr and it also allows a user to share audio, video, photos, GIFs, and text status messages. However, it is a very simple platform with the flair of using “magic word” lists of options to document a specific post, if one cares to use the feature.
The simplicity of this app draws appeal from its user-friendliness to gain a sense of trust among its users, though it is limited to just friends to see a profile, no one can publicly follow a user.
While there has been some talk of this service going the way of Ello, a social media platform that was considered a Facebook alternative only to disappear into relative oblivion. Despite that, it still has a core group of avid users like Choire Sicha, co-Founder of Awl media network, who use it regularly.
While there are risks while going with a new social media platform, for example, they could cease to exist in the next 12 months, there could be huge rewards as well. Early Twitter users were rewarded by being featured as suggested users to follow and grow their audiences into hundreds of thousands of followers. Gary Vaynerchuk for example got on to Youtube and Snapchat early on and was able to build huge audiences.