An Alternative To Creating Podcasts: Play.ht’s Free Audio Narrations
Skip the pain of going through the process of creating a podcast but reap the same rewards, if not more!
While podcasts have been around for more than a decade, there has been a massive surge in the listenership in the recent years which has resulted in a lot of attention from advertisers, businesses and consumers.
And the reason is pretty obvious…
Podcasts don’t just offer a richer experience to an audience, listeners can even subscribe, download and listen to the podcasts whenever they feel like.
But it’s not all pretty.
Creating your very first podcast can be hectic, especially if you are not that familiar with technology.
On the other hand, Play.ht’s automated audio narration of an article refers to an audio narration that is created by a very powerful engine that uses a combination of Artificially Intelligent voices, with the latest addition being Google WaveNet.
4 Major hurdles in creating great podcasts —
1. Time
It takes a lot of time to create a podcast.
From recording, to production and onto final publishing. You have to edit, before and after you record because it’s not about how long you can talk, rather what you talk about. Not to mention the learning curve involved in getting used to the editing software.
With Play.ht, you can add an audio narrations to your Medium Stories simply by clicking the button — “Publish With Audio”.
Yes, it’s stupid simple!
2. English Speaking & Communication Skills
It goes without say that decent english language speaking and communication skills are a prerequisite to starting your very own podcast. You might have really good ideas to talk about but there is no point if your audience is having a hard time understanding what you are saying.
Not everyone has very good command of the english language. Especially, if you are a non-native english speaker (like myself).
Thanks to Play.ht’s latest integration with Google’s WaveNet voices, the audio narrations are extremely natural and resemble very closely with real human voices.
3. Money
You have to buy a professional microphone, an editing software and a hosting service to publish on a podcasting platform such as iTunes or Soundcloud.
And, if you think that you can manage with a regular headset and a built-in microphone, you will just end up creating a really long voice mail.
With Play.ht, you can add audio narrations to your stories with the click of a button and publish on all the major podcasting platforms almost just as effortlessly.
Play.ht takes care of all the essentials, from creating the audio narration to helping you publish on a podcasting platform without you having to go through any of the nitty gritty technical stuff.
4. Consistency
Without consistency, the whole process of planning to jump into the podcast market is pointless. You might argue that writing articles demands no less. The difference lies in the process of creation of an article and that of a podcast.
While writing an article uses only your writing creatives, creating a podcast requires much more time and efforts because you are not just creating a piece of content from scratch, but you are also recording it, editing and publishing it.
Keeping up with consistency is one of the many aspects where audio narrations really shine.
This is because it allows you to skip the entire process of recreating a whole new piece of content. Rather, you can just ‘re-purpose’ the efforts that you put in creating your original piece of written content, convert it into an audio narration and use it to target a whole new audience.
With Play.ht’s audio narrations keep all these barriers at bay help you in reaching out to the podcasting audience, effortlessly.
Although podcasts have been on the rise over the past couple years, bloggers, content creators and digital marketers still have not started investing in the podcast market because of the reasons listed above.
Little do they realize, they are missing out a massive chunk of audience that could potentially help their content succeed and bring the attention it deserves.
An Alternative: Play.ht’s Automated Audio Narrations —
Whether your readers are driving, commuting to work, hitting the gym or maybe just tired of staring at a screen, Play.ht’s audio narrations are the single most effective tool that you can use to tap in to their attention and engage them at their convenience.
Unlike articles, that demand a reader’s complete attention and focus, audio narrations also come with the added advantage of multitasking.
Not just because nobody reads an article or watches a video while driving to work, but also because listening to audio is just really convenient, making it a complete marketing channel on its own.
The listeners are able to subscribe to your audio narrations by giving you their email addresses. When they do, it enables you to stay at the top of their minds and helps you in the process of continuing to develop trust and connection on a much deeper level.
Play.ht’s audio narrations not only allow you to deliver more content to your audience, they allow you to better engage for longer periods with your audience as the content is delivered in a way that’s easy to consume.
How It Works for Your Medium Stories
Play.ht’s audio narration is nothing but an audio version of a Medium Story made available to the readers to provide them with the opportunity to listen to the story using an audio player (The Play.ht Embedded Player) embedded in the body of the article.
The Play.ht Embedded Player has as a built in functionality to help you collect your listeners’ email addresses. This helps you keep your audience updated on your latest content and gives you the opportunity to establish trust with them.
Now you know why there’s this cool looking audio player floating around in most of the popular publications on Medium!
Open up new opportunities for your content to get found by 800 million accounts on iTunes and over 250 million active users on SoundCloud.
If you don’t already have audio narrations on your articles, know this; you are missing out on a complete marketing channel for your content.
