How to create podcast audiograms to promote your show
April 10, 2024
How to create podcast audiograms to promote your show
Learn how to boost your podcast's visibility with podcast audiograms. Discover tools, tips, and strategies to create engaging content for social media.
How to create podcast audiograms to promote your show
Learn how to boost your podcast's visibility with podcast audiograms. Discover tools, tips, and strategies to create engaging content for social media.
Promoting a show on social media can be challenging for even the most popular podcasts. It's hard to stand out in a sea of quick video content, and even harder to get people to click away from their feed to subscribe to your show. Still, hosts often rely on social media as one of the main promotional tools for their podcast.
But even if social media isn’t the main focus of your promo plan, it’s safe to say that the kinds of video you'd use to market on social media are helpful for many other things, such as email newsletters, as a content upgrade to use in the show notes, or to upload to a video-specific channel like YouTube.
Which is exactly why podcast audiograms are an excellent marketing asset. If you haven’t learned how to create a podcast audiogram for your own show, this guide will help you understand why these short clips are so valuable and how to make them yourself.
What is a podcast audiogram?
A podcast audiogram is a short video that features an audio clip from a podcast episode. They often include a still or moving graphic—often synced with the audio—as well as text about the episode. These videos can be static images, footage from your recordings, or other video elements, such as animations or stock footage. Because of this, audiograms are also sometimes called videograms.
Audiograms are helpful to make your podcast promotions stand out on social media. In feeds filled with ads and pictures, an audiogram stands out. Animations catch a user’s eye while they’re mindlessly scrolling, and if the podcast branding and graphic design is done well, the audiogram can easily stop their scroll. Specifically, a video-focused audiogram is extremely engaging to social media users who are already used to watching short form video online.
That’s not the only reason why audiograms are so effective. Audiograms give hosts the opportunity to pick an enticing excerpt from the episode to hook in their audience and new-to-them social media users. Plus, they’re incredibly easy to brand with your podcast’s logo and brand colors. And you can create templates of your branded audiograms to cut down on the time it takes you to create these marketing assets.
Finally, and one of the most important reasons why audiograms are excellent marketing tools, is that quite often they include captions of what is being said, which helps with accessibility on social media. We all want our podcasts to be accessible to everyone, and an individual that relies on subtitles to help them consume audio content, needs your audio and video-based social posts to include captions.
Audiogram examples to learn from
You know you’ve created a great audiogram when you have two things working for you: captivating graphics that grab their attention, and a hook that entices viewers to stop scrolling and head over to their podcast players to listen to the episode.
Static images
While you have many options to create visually pleasing audiograms, a simple static visual is a great place to start. When I first launched my show, I had two static templates—one for solo shows and one for guest episodes. I could easily adjust the episode information on both templates and add a headshot of my guest for the interview episodes.
Single-host video footage
Another common type of audiogram features recordings of the actual episode. For solo shows, you’ll often see the upper body of the host as they speak. After using static images overlaid for almost two years, I decided to start using my raw recording footage, even if I looked the complete opposite of stage-ready, after reading Ashley Hamer’s article about growing her podcast by prioritizing video content.
And while my social audience might be smaller than other podcasts, the light amount of data I’ve collected in the past few months has shown that clips from the real recordings outperform the static image audiograms by far—regardless of how I look. In fact, it’s possible that my listeners relate better to me because I look like a normal, approachable, albeit tired, human being. The jury is still out on that one though!
Here’s an example of how this shift toward using recording footage is performing so well: I created a TikTok account recently, only uploading my first audiogram at the end of November 2023 to an audience I could count on one hand.
While my follower count has only grown to the whopping total of 30 users in the past three months, I’ve actually had thousands of views on my TikTok posts. In fact, I’ve had approximately 11,000 views over only 12 uploaded videos in just three months of incredibly sporadic posting. My most recent videos range from 700 to 1,900 views in the first seven—or fewer—days of being published.
Host-and-guest video footage
Interview shows often follow a similar approach to video-footage audiograms, though instead of just highlighting one speaker, it’s common to feature two videos in the clip, either side-by-side or stacked one on top of the other, depending on the ratio of the audiogram.
Alesia Galati, host of the Listeners to Leads podcast, takes a similar approach. She has a stacked audiogram that features the video footage of her interviews with guests. This visual also showcases her podcast cover art and has a large graphic at the top that indicates that the content being viewed is from a new episode.
What Alesia does differently than many other hosts is that she creates a static video cover for these audiograms. If you view her Instagram feed, the posts will show a static graphic that includes professional headshots of her and her guest, the episode number and title of the episode, and a graphic element that encourages social media users to listen in. When you click on that visual, however, the video clip, published as a reel on Instagram, will begin to play.
While there are many approaches to the visual elements of audiograms, what binds them together is that the content captures the interest of the viewer and encourages them to completely stop what they’re doing and head over to their podcast player to consume the episode in whole—and that's incredibly hard to do.
However, when you grab their attention by sharing a fresh perspective, building anticipation with a hook, or doing something funny, it’s easier to encourage them to stop what they’re doing and listen instead.
How to create effective audiograms to promote your show
Now that you know why audiograms are such effective little marketing tools, it’s time to learn how to make an audiogram for your own podcast.
Step 1: Select your clip
As previously mentioned, there are two key elements to choosing what to share, and that’s making sure the content is engaging and the clip is well designed.
There are many ways to choose interesting content for your audiogram clip. I’ve found that it’s easier to pay attention and take notes when something interesting is said in an interview to expedite the audiogram creation process later. However, no matter how hard I’ve tried to pre-plan what I’d like to use in a solo show, I’ve found that it’s easier to review the recording to look for content that's unscripted and unexpected. It’s clear to me the difference between my natural delivery and when I’m trying to force a point for a future marketing asset.
When it comes to choosing your own clips, I recommend staying curious when you relisten to the recording. Pay close attention to anything that may evoke an emotion, whether it’s funny, moving, or insightful. And remember not to give too much away. You want to tease the audience into listening to the full episode, not give them the Cliff's Notes version so they don’t have to listen in at all.
If you’re having trouble identifying clips of your own content, one new Descript feature that I’ve found extremely useful is the Find Good Clips tool. This feature extracts highlights from the full recording so that you can then use Descript’s social media templates to create high-quality audiograms.
The length of your audiogram is also extremely important. If you plan on using it on social media or uploading it to YouTube Shorts, it has to be 60 seconds or less. Trust me, I once uploaded a video that was just under 61 seconds to YouTube, and it ended up as a standard YouTube video.
But if you plan to use the audiogram in different ways, you have a lot more freedom to play with the length. For audiograms you’re creating to use in email newsletters, in show notes, or as short videos for specific YouTube playlists, small excerpts that are a few minutes may perform well. And don’t forget that you can create an audiogram of the entire episode and use that to upload to YouTube as a full-length video podcast.
Step 2: Choose the orientation and aspect ratio
When you know what clip you’d like to use, it’s important to make sure that you’re creating the audiogram in the most appropriate size and format. For social media clips, you want to match the platform in which you plan to upload the content. For example, you’ll want vertical videos for TikTok or Instagram reels, square audiograms for Twitter and Instagram posts, and landscape videos for Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
The orientation and aspect ratio may vary for off-social content. The design of your email newsletters or show notes may call for a square, landscape, or vertical audiogram. Try out the different orientations, determine what looks best, and stick with that aspect ratio consistently into the future.
Step 3: Create branded graphics, if necessary
Once you’ve clipped the audio or video and know how you’d like the image to be oriented, it’s time to actually create the audiograms. Choose engaging visuals that match the tone and branding of your podcast. Remember these can be static images, actual video footage, or even video animations.
Once the visual focus is determined, consider other branding elements, such as including your podcast logo, like I do in my clips, or your podcast cover art, like Alesia does in the previous video-based example.
If you choose to use a static image, her approach is helpful to follow. You may want to include elements such as the number of the episode, the title, and the names of the speakers. Don’t forget to include enough white space in your static image so these elements aren’t too crowded. Descript has some excellent templates built in that you can use as plug-and-play audiograms, but other tools like Canva can help you create initial branded templates of your own.
When you’ve found a design that suits your podcast, make a template so that you can plug and play future episode clips. That will make the process take significantly less time in the future. And if you're not so visually inclined, consider using on of Descript's pre-built templates instead.
When I was using static images for audiograms, the process took only minutes. Now that I’ve moved to video audiograms, I’ve been testing out different looks to see if anything performs better, which means the process is taking longer than it previously did. However, when I feel more confident that I’ve found a design that performs well, I’ll absolutely be turning it into a template.
Step 4: Add captions to your audiogram
While this may go without saying, before publishing your audiogram, it’s important to ensure the captions you’re using are correctly written and formatted. Pay attention to the spelling and grammar to make sure it makes sense and can be understood by users who aren't listening to the audio when viewing the audiogram.
While captions are absolutely important from an accessibility point, it’s also important to remember there are a lot of other social media users who prefer to keep their audio off while scrolling—I’m absolutely one of them.
I remember how impossible it was when I tried to watch videos on social media while holding a sleeping baby. I had to guess at everything that was being said, and while I definitely sharpened my guessing skills during this time of my life, it was also frustrating and I found myself much more likely to keep scrolling through and only viewing videos with captions. And even though it’s been a while since I’ve held a sleeping baby for huge chunks of my day, I still prefer to view most content without audio—only choosing to unmute videos if I really want to.
It's not hard to do this, either. I personally use Descript’s tools to add captions and create a transcript of all the videos and audiograms I create.
Step 5: Share your audiogram far and wide
Finished creating your audiogram? Excellent. Now it’s time to download the clips and upload the videos to social media and wherever else you’ll use them to promote your new episodes.
As soon as I download my videos, I immediately upload them to my cloud storage for safekeeping. Then, I upload the videos to my social media scheduler software, which gives me more control over where and when the clips post. I especially appreciate software like this as I can often recycle the content I’ve previously uploaded and repost it in the future!
Headliner is a popular tool to make episode audiograms that are in video format or that use a still graphic. Podcasters can upload their episode file, or they can find their show via search or by inputting an RSS feed.
Auphonic is a great option for podcasters who want long audiograms. In fact, you can even make an audiogram of the entire episode to use as a YouTube video or as excerpts for private podcasts.
Wavve has an easy-to-use design dashboard that allows you to add waveforms, progress timers, captions, and more to the audiograms you create for each episode.
Buzzsprout Visual Soundbites is a great option for podcasters who use Buzzsprout as their podcast host. You can make an audiogram right in the platform using your episode cover art and a clip of your choosing.
Canva isn’t just for graphics. You can actually use their video tools to create manual audiograms by syncing audio with a still image or cutting the video recording exactly where you’d like it. The downside is that it takes extra effort to match captions to the speaker in Canva.
FAQ
How do you make an audiogram for a podcast?
You can make an audiogram for a podcast with tools like Descript, which make clipping short sections of audio and/or video simple for any user. In addition, most tools provide options to design the audiogram to match your show’s branding.
How long should an audiogram be?
The length of your audiogram depends on the platform you're using it for. If you’re using your audiogram on social media, it should be 60 seconds or less. If you’d like to upload the audiogram to YouTube, it can either be the full length of the episode, or you can section off parts of the episodes by cutting longer excerpts.
Where can I share my podcast audiograms?
There are many places you can share your podcast audiograms. You should consider where your ideal audience spends their time, but most social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Twitter, and TikTok, work well for posting audiograms.
Promoting a show on social media can be challenging for even the most popular podcasts. It's hard to stand out in a sea of quick video content, and even harder to get people to click away from their feed to subscribe to your show. Still, hosts often rely on social media as one of the main promotional tools for their podcast.
But even if social media isn’t the main focus of your promo plan, it’s safe to say that the kinds of video you'd use to market on social media are helpful for many other things, such as email newsletters, as a content upgrade to use in the show notes, or to upload to a video-specific channel like YouTube.
Which is exactly why podcast audiograms are an excellent marketing asset. If you haven’t learned how to create a podcast audiogram for your own show, this guide will help you understand why these short clips are so valuable and how to make them yourself.
What is a podcast audiogram?
A podcast audiogram is a short video that features an audio clip from a podcast episode. They often include a still or moving graphic—often synced with the audio—as well as text about the episode. These videos can be static images, footage from your recordings, or other video elements, such as animations or stock footage. Because of this, audiograms are also sometimes called videograms.
Audiograms are helpful to make your podcast promotions stand out on social media. In feeds filled with ads and pictures, an audiogram stands out. Animations catch a user’s eye while they’re mindlessly scrolling, and if the podcast branding and graphic design is done well, the audiogram can easily stop their scroll. Specifically, a video-focused audiogram is extremely engaging to social media users who are already used to watching short form video online.
That’s not the only reason why audiograms are so effective. Audiograms give hosts the opportunity to pick an enticing excerpt from the episode to hook in their audience and new-to-them social media users. Plus, they’re incredibly easy to brand with your podcast’s logo and brand colors. And you can create templates of your branded audiograms to cut down on the time it takes you to create these marketing assets.
Finally, and one of the most important reasons why audiograms are excellent marketing tools, is that quite often they include captions of what is being said, which helps with accessibility on social media. We all want our podcasts to be accessible to everyone, and an individual that relies on subtitles to help them consume audio content, needs your audio and video-based social posts to include captions.
Audiogram examples to learn from
You know you’ve created a great audiogram when you have two things working for you: captivating graphics that grab their attention, and a hook that entices viewers to stop scrolling and head over to their podcast players to listen to the episode.
Static images
While you have many options to create visually pleasing audiograms, a simple static visual is a great place to start. When I first launched my show, I had two static templates—one for solo shows and one for guest episodes. I could easily adjust the episode information on both templates and add a headshot of my guest for the interview episodes.
Single-host video footage
Another common type of audiogram features recordings of the actual episode. For solo shows, you’ll often see the upper body of the host as they speak. After using static images overlaid for almost two years, I decided to start using my raw recording footage, even if I looked the complete opposite of stage-ready, after reading Ashley Hamer’s article about growing her podcast by prioritizing video content.
And while my social audience might be smaller than other podcasts, the light amount of data I’ve collected in the past few months has shown that clips from the real recordings outperform the static image audiograms by far—regardless of how I look. In fact, it’s possible that my listeners relate better to me because I look like a normal, approachable, albeit tired, human being. The jury is still out on that one though!
Here’s an example of how this shift toward using recording footage is performing so well: I created a TikTok account recently, only uploading my first audiogram at the end of November 2023 to an audience I could count on one hand.
While my follower count has only grown to the whopping total of 30 users in the past three months, I’ve actually had thousands of views on my TikTok posts. In fact, I’ve had approximately 11,000 views over only 12 uploaded videos in just three months of incredibly sporadic posting. My most recent videos range from 700 to 1,900 views in the first seven—or fewer—days of being published.
Host-and-guest video footage
Interview shows often follow a similar approach to video-footage audiograms, though instead of just highlighting one speaker, it’s common to feature two videos in the clip, either side-by-side or stacked one on top of the other, depending on the ratio of the audiogram.
Alesia Galati, host of the Listeners to Leads podcast, takes a similar approach. She has a stacked audiogram that features the video footage of her interviews with guests. This visual also showcases her podcast cover art and has a large graphic at the top that indicates that the content being viewed is from a new episode.
What Alesia does differently than many other hosts is that she creates a static video cover for these audiograms. If you view her Instagram feed, the posts will show a static graphic that includes professional headshots of her and her guest, the episode number and title of the episode, and a graphic element that encourages social media users to listen in. When you click on that visual, however, the video clip, published as a reel on Instagram, will begin to play.
While there are many approaches to the visual elements of audiograms, what binds them together is that the content captures the interest of the viewer and encourages them to completely stop what they’re doing and head over to their podcast player to consume the episode in whole—and that's incredibly hard to do.
However, when you grab their attention by sharing a fresh perspective, building anticipation with a hook, or doing something funny, it’s easier to encourage them to stop what they’re doing and listen instead.
How to create effective audiograms to promote your show
Now that you know why audiograms are such effective little marketing tools, it’s time to learn how to make an audiogram for your own podcast.
Step 1: Select your clip
As previously mentioned, there are two key elements to choosing what to share, and that’s making sure the content is engaging and the clip is well designed.
There are many ways to choose interesting content for your audiogram clip. I’ve found that it’s easier to pay attention and take notes when something interesting is said in an interview to expedite the audiogram creation process later. However, no matter how hard I’ve tried to pre-plan what I’d like to use in a solo show, I’ve found that it’s easier to review the recording to look for content that's unscripted and unexpected. It’s clear to me the difference between my natural delivery and when I’m trying to force a point for a future marketing asset.
When it comes to choosing your own clips, I recommend staying curious when you relisten to the recording. Pay close attention to anything that may evoke an emotion, whether it’s funny, moving, or insightful. And remember not to give too much away. You want to tease the audience into listening to the full episode, not give them the Cliff's Notes version so they don’t have to listen in at all.
If you’re having trouble identifying clips of your own content, one new Descript feature that I’ve found extremely useful is the Find Good Clips tool. This feature extracts highlights from the full recording so that you can then use Descript’s social media templates to create high-quality audiograms.
The length of your audiogram is also extremely important. If you plan on using it on social media or uploading it to YouTube Shorts, it has to be 60 seconds or less. Trust me, I once uploaded a video that was just under 61 seconds to YouTube, and it ended up as a standard YouTube video.
But if you plan to use the audiogram in different ways, you have a lot more freedom to play with the length. For audiograms you’re creating to use in email newsletters, in show notes, or as short videos for specific YouTube playlists, small excerpts that are a few minutes may perform well. And don’t forget that you can create an audiogram of the entire episode and use that to upload to YouTube as a full-length video podcast.
Step 2: Choose the orientation and aspect ratio
When you know what clip you’d like to use, it’s important to make sure that you’re creating the audiogram in the most appropriate size and format. For social media clips, you want to match the platform in which you plan to upload the content. For example, you’ll want vertical videos for TikTok or Instagram reels, square audiograms for Twitter and Instagram posts, and landscape videos for Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
The orientation and aspect ratio may vary for off-social content. The design of your email newsletters or show notes may call for a square, landscape, or vertical audiogram. Try out the different orientations, determine what looks best, and stick with that aspect ratio consistently into the future.
Step 3: Create branded graphics, if necessary
Once you’ve clipped the audio or video and know how you’d like the image to be oriented, it’s time to actually create the audiograms. Choose engaging visuals that match the tone and branding of your podcast. Remember these can be static images, actual video footage, or even video animations.
Once the visual focus is determined, consider other branding elements, such as including your podcast logo, like I do in my clips, or your podcast cover art, like Alesia does in the previous video-based example.
If you choose to use a static image, her approach is helpful to follow. You may want to include elements such as the number of the episode, the title, and the names of the speakers. Don’t forget to include enough white space in your static image so these elements aren’t too crowded. Descript has some excellent templates built in that you can use as plug-and-play audiograms, but other tools like Canva can help you create initial branded templates of your own.
When you’ve found a design that suits your podcast, make a template so that you can plug and play future episode clips. That will make the process take significantly less time in the future. And if you're not so visually inclined, consider using on of Descript's pre-built templates instead.
When I was using static images for audiograms, the process took only minutes. Now that I’ve moved to video audiograms, I’ve been testing out different looks to see if anything performs better, which means the process is taking longer than it previously did. However, when I feel more confident that I’ve found a design that performs well, I’ll absolutely be turning it into a template.
Step 4: Add captions to your audiogram
While this may go without saying, before publishing your audiogram, it’s important to ensure the captions you’re using are correctly written and formatted. Pay attention to the spelling and grammar to make sure it makes sense and can be understood by users who aren't listening to the audio when viewing the audiogram.
While captions are absolutely important from an accessibility point, it’s also important to remember there are a lot of other social media users who prefer to keep their audio off while scrolling—I’m absolutely one of them.
I remember how impossible it was when I tried to watch videos on social media while holding a sleeping baby. I had to guess at everything that was being said, and while I definitely sharpened my guessing skills during this time of my life, it was also frustrating and I found myself much more likely to keep scrolling through and only viewing videos with captions. And even though it’s been a while since I’ve held a sleeping baby for huge chunks of my day, I still prefer to view most content without audio—only choosing to unmute videos if I really want to.
It's not hard to do this, either. I personally use Descript’s tools to add captions and create a transcript of all the videos and audiograms I create.
Step 5: Share your audiogram far and wide
Finished creating your audiogram? Excellent. Now it’s time to download the clips and upload the videos to social media and wherever else you’ll use them to promote your new episodes.
As soon as I download my videos, I immediately upload them to my cloud storage for safekeeping. Then, I upload the videos to my social media scheduler software, which gives me more control over where and when the clips post. I especially appreciate software like this as I can often recycle the content I’ve previously uploaded and repost it in the future!
Headliner is a popular tool to make episode audiograms that are in video format or that use a still graphic. Podcasters can upload their episode file, or they can find their show via search or by inputting an RSS feed.
Auphonic is a great option for podcasters who want long audiograms. In fact, you can even make an audiogram of the entire episode to use as a YouTube video or as excerpts for private podcasts.
Wavve has an easy-to-use design dashboard that allows you to add waveforms, progress timers, captions, and more to the audiograms you create for each episode.
Buzzsprout Visual Soundbites is a great option for podcasters who use Buzzsprout as their podcast host. You can make an audiogram right in the platform using your episode cover art and a clip of your choosing.
Canva isn’t just for graphics. You can actually use their video tools to create manual audiograms by syncing audio with a still image or cutting the video recording exactly where you’d like it. The downside is that it takes extra effort to match captions to the speaker in Canva.
FAQ
How do you make an audiogram for a podcast?
You can make an audiogram for a podcast with tools like Descript, which make clipping short sections of audio and/or video simple for any user. In addition, most tools provide options to design the audiogram to match your show’s branding.
How long should an audiogram be?
The length of your audiogram depends on the platform you're using it for. If you’re using your audiogram on social media, it should be 60 seconds or less. If you’d like to upload the audiogram to YouTube, it can either be the full length of the episode, or you can section off parts of the episodes by cutting longer excerpts.
Where can I share my podcast audiograms?
There are many places you can share your podcast audiograms. You should consider where your ideal audience spends their time, but most social media networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Twitter, and TikTok, work well for posting audiograms.
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"With two podcasts, my team and I rely on Descript to save hours with editing, formatting, and redistribution to social. If you can edit a Word document, then you can easily use Descript." -Michelle B. G., G2 Review
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