Podcasting Q&A

Creating the Perfect Visual Soundbite

• Buzzsprout

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Visual soundbites, or audiograms, are a great way to promote your podcast on social media. But sometimes, it can be hard to choose the right clip or artwork to share.

In this episode of Podcasting Q&A, Jordan and Alban answer three questions from Charles, the host of JUMP...Success is Waiting!, about selecting what soundbites to share, what length they should be, and what kind of artwork works best for audiograms.

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Jordan:

Visual sound bites or audio grams are a great way to share bite sized portions of your podcast episode to social media. But how do you choose which part to share? I'm Jordan host a podcast and q&a where we answer your questions about how to start, grow and monetize a podcast. This week's question is from Charles.

Unknown:

Hey, everybody, Charles here from jump podcast success is waiting. My question is when doing a visual soundbite, which section of your podcast should you use? And how long should you do the recording for? And what's better to use? A picture that you drawn up? Or a picture from your podcast? Hey, that's my question. Thanks for taking it.

Jordan:

Great question, Charles. To answer it. I'm getting a little help from Alban Brooke, the head of marketing at Buzzsprout. So Albin, I think when we're answering this question, is really a three part question. And we need to break it down into the three parts. So his first question is when creating a sound bite from your podcast? Which section should you use? And I think that one of the things that a person should think about when creating their sound bite and deciding which part of the podcast should be used for that sound bite is the intended purpose for the sound bite?

Alban:

Yeah, I think that a lot of people, they know sound bites make sense, because they see a lot of other podcasts to it. And you can't just start doing them, you want to understand why they're effective and what the purpose is. And that will inform all the answers to each of these questions. It's a, I think it's a really good question and a good time for people to start thinking about it. sound bites are a way for you to share a little snippet of your podcast on social media. And you can do this with something like the Buzzsprout, visual soundbite tool. What you're trying to do is entice people on social media to listen to the whole episode. And the problem you're trying to solve is if you just share links, and you just share images, and you just share the entire episode on social, you're not going to get any engagement. And the soundbite is an opportunity to attract people's attention and make them interested in actually learning more about the podcast.

Jordan:

Yeah, I think that's a really good point in when breaking down what part of the podcast is best? Sometimes, it can be really obvious to us which sound bites from your podcast should be used to create these visual sound bites or audio grams, but sometimes it's not as clear cut. And so you have to really think, okay, is my intended use for the soundbite going to be to educate somebody or to entertain people, maybe I want to take the funniest part of my soundbite to get people to click on it and want to listen to more? Or is it going to be engagement where I kind of stir up some conversation through the social channels. So those are definitely things to consider when choosing which section of your podcast you would like to use for a soundbite?

Alban:

Yeah, WNYC actually did a study there NPR affiliate, and they would share audio grams, but they would also share links, and they would also share images. And what they found was on Facebook, audio grams, which are sound bytes, outperformed images by 58% and links by 83%. Wow, yeah, they were finding that people were so much more likely to engage with the video of the soundbite. You know, even if it's just a way for moving, that's so much more engaging. And so when we're picking I say, like, I want to find the most engaging piece of content possible. And what that means is find something on its own stands alone, and is interesting. And it's what Joe Rogan and other YouTube podcasters did really well with their clips is they would find out of a three hour conversation, a five minute segment that kind of stood on its own was really interesting. And they'd cut it off into some clip, and people would find it independently. And then maybe later on go, oh, had listened to actually a much longer version of this conversation. Well, we're doing something similar. We're trying to say, I know you're not going to commit to the 45 Minute version of this podcast right now. But you're scrolling through Facebook, do you have 30 seconds. Now if I'm thinking I'm gonna use 30 seconds to a minute to capture someone's attention, it better have a really, really strong hook. So it's funny and people are laughing and they're enjoying themselves, or it's a story that has a very, very strong entrance, you know, you've only got a few seconds to catch someone. So go with the strongest hook possible. Avoid anything that needs a long lead in that needs a lot of context. We need a strong hook right off the bat.

Jordan:

And I think along with having a strong hook, you also want to make sure that you don't leave your social media audience hanging a little too much. It might be a little bit of an irritant for the people clicking on the soundbite. If you pull one of those, and you won't believe what happened and then it just stopped give them enough that they're like, Oh, that was really interesting. I want to listen to more of it. But maybe don't leave too big of a cliffhanger.

Alban:

Yeah. I mean, think about when you go to a restaurant and you're giving the appetizer sell it the appetizer was like three chips. And like just in a salsa for those three chips, and you've got two people. All you will do like, oh, great, I got an appetizer. But all that really did was annoy me, because now I'm even more hungry. And is this such a scam, it actually feels like a negative. But if you're gonna give people an appetizer, give them an appetizer, give them a story or a piece of insight. Because what you're trying to do is say, Hey, thank you for trusting me with 30 seconds, I have fulfilled that trust, I have lived up to the promise. And there's 30 seconds, we're so good, that maybe you're willing to trust me for 45 minutes. And so if the person you're interviewing or your co host says something great, really bring that out. Instead of trying to do too much of that cliffhanger, you can just be annoying, you know, you just feel like a kind of clickbait BuzzFeed title or something.

Jordan:

That's true. Yeah. And, you know, if you're having a really hard time deciding between segments or lines that you want to share with your soundbite, or audio gram, you can do more than one. There's nothing wrong with pulling 237 audio grams out of one podcast episode. And in fact, it might be even better to be sharing all these things like, oh, man, there's so much great information in this podcast episode. Like, here's another one, you gotta check this out. And I think that's really enticing for people as well.

Alban:

You can actually do little bit of this work on the front end, when you're interviewing somebody asked for a main takeaway. I was recently on a podcast where I think the exact words he used to release like, what's the secret of the industry that you've learned? And I thought, Man, that's a really good 32nd clip, whatever the answer is to that, there's always going to be a good soundbite. And you don't have to include the question and then the answer, just jump into the interesting answer. To red flags, I see when people are doing sound bites, they just do the 30 seconds at the beginning of the podcast, because they don't want to do the extra work of finding one. And often that's not the strongest hook of the episode. And the other is the host really wants to be involved in the soundbite. And so what they do is they have their question, and then they have the answer. And then they've got their joke. And they kind of have all of that in there. But if you look at the ones that perform the best, it's actually the ones where the host is stepped back, and is saying, I'm presenting this guest who's really good. And this point is really good. And if there's like four speaker changes in the 45 second clip, well, you're not going to be able to provide as much value, it makes it a little bit more difficult. So just be careful. If you find yourself doing either of those, you're automatically picking the very first segment, or you're picking a lot of speaker changes, those are maybe ideas that there might be a better segment for you to choose.

Jordan:

That's really great. Another thing that you can do when trying to decide what lines would be best and be more proactive about it, rather than after the episode is published, then trying to figure out which part would be best. While you're editing, you can always write down all of that was a good line, just jot down that line. And then you can go back and find it when the episodes publishing, you're using the little soundbite tool in Buzzsprout, then it'll be a little bit easier for you to jump around and find it, especially if you've already thought about which one would be best.

Alban:

Yeah, I mean, when you're editing, often people do keep a piece of paper, they're saying, Okay, I'm gonna edit that out, you listened through once and he put down all your notes of what your major edits are going to be if you're doing a lighter version of an edit. And that is the time where you listened to it the first time when you feel your attention get grabbed will pay attention, because that is a good moment for a soundbite.

Jordan:

So the second part of Charles's question is, how long should the soundbite be? And I really think that this depends on a couple different things. It depends upon the content of the soundbite, but it also depends upon the platform that you're uploading to, well,

Alban:

you have some explicit limits, you know, certain video formats will allow you to be over 30 seconds or a minute, you know, look at the social platform that you are optimizing for, you know, optimize for one in particular. But it's not as important that the soundbite be 20 seconds or a minute or three minutes. You know, that's not as important as making sure those first few seconds are going to really capture people's attention. You look at good YouTube videos, good tic TOCs Well, those are very different mediums ones, you know, looking at 2030 minutes, watch time and one other one might be 2030 seconds watch time, but both of them start the same way with an excellent hook. And so you've got to nail those four seconds at the beginning. And if it's boring, then it's going to really blow up no matter how long the clip goes on. So I really am saying put all the effort in that front piece. And then you know, sweetspot is probably 30 seconds to a minute. But I wouldn't stress that as much as making sure that hook in the beginning is really powerful. I agree

Jordan:

with that. And it's almost like a cultural thing at this point, having those four seconds to really hook somebody because we have been so conditioned to micro content, that it really takes something strong for us to go oh, wait, and then stick around for 2030 seconds. Ever since Instagram reels I know when I'm just like scrolling through scrolling through scrolling through Doom scrolling really. Ever since Instagram reels started allowing like one minute, I find that if a reel is going 45 seconds, and it hasn't fully gotten me engaged, I will skip it. It's so ridiculous to think about the fact that for I can't hold my attention for 45 seconds. But you know, it's just gotten. So yeah, it's really important to think about what platform they're on. Because you know, people who are on Facebook might have a little bit more of an attention span, and they will listen to a sound clip, that's 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes. But when you're on Tik Tok, or Instagram reels or something like that, you probably have 15 seconds maximum, honestly.

Alban:

I mean, I catch myself on some platforms that it's not a joke, that's two seconds. So the hook needs to be that strong, that it's very, very clear what the payoff will be if I stick around. And then if that turns into 45 seconds or turns into two hours, that's okay. As long as you're actually delivering on the promise of this first few seconds,

Jordan:

I think about storytelling. A lot of times when you're telling a story, you can work backwards. And so if you have a sound clip, and it just starts with, so there, I was dressed as a clown in the middle of a bar mitzvah. And the person who's watching that audio clip might go, Wait, how did they get there? I want to hear that story. I know that that's a hook that is often used in storytelling, too.

Alban:

I mean, it's a cliche that the record scratch, you're probably wondering how I ended up here. Like that's a cliche, because it works. Because it's so easy to start a story. Think about the beginning of Indiana Jones. Yeah. And he's going through the temple trying to steal the artifact and you're like, I don't know who this guy is. I don't know his story. It doesn't start with him being a professor at school, and like trying to teach students as a professor, but it starts with Him in the temple with like about to get crushed by a boulder. Start with the hook, start with the interesting thing, and then work your way back to actually getting the story because people want to know where they're going. I mean, think about how we see this on YouTube, a great Mr. Beast video will be like, I'm about to be buried alive for two days. And you're like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? Versus somebody's like, Hey, guys, welcome back to the channel. No, I haven't uploaded in a while. But I've seen a lot of comments. And people have been asking, you know, where's the channel going? It doesn't matter who it is, I'm gonna be like, Oh, they're not talking to me there. I don't know who they're talking to you. This just doesn't seem interesting at all. Every second really counts.

Jordan:

I think that sometimes podcasters are really scared when Korean or sound bites, that they're going to give too much away. And they don't want to let go of the prize at the end of it. You know what I mean? And so they're scared about spoiling things for their podcast episode. But yeah, there's so many movies where you're at the climax, or you know, the hangover, they're waking up in the hotel room, and it's trashed, and there's like a tiger in the closet. And you're just like, how did it get there in sometimes the journey to that point, is really enticing to. The third question from Charles is, which is better a picture you've drawn up or a picture from your podcast? I think that what he meant by this question is, which is better? A stock image, or maybe design that has been created for the soundbite versus your podcast, cover art or a screen grab from maybe the interview video?

Alban:

Totally depends on the context. So I would often say it should be a custom image, there's going to be a few times, so it shouldn't be. But if you have a really, really strong brand for the podcast, and people already know it really well, then you might get away with hey, here's that strong brand, you know, and love. It's the daily and now you're listening to Michael Barbaros voice about something that's interesting, that's happening. That might make sense, because that's actually helping catch their attention. But if it's a story about a haunted house, put up a picture of a haunted house. If it's a soundbite about a story that involves Dave Chappelle, it doesn't matter if Dave Chappelle was on the podcast, put a picture of Dave Chappelle up so people are like, Oh, what's this and they, you know, are kind of captured. Anything you can do to capture people's attention is going to really help when they're watching us. So I say upload custom images or use the Canva integration that we have in Buzzsprout. So that you can create your own image. That often is better. But it's also a trade off with how much time do you actually have to do this soundbite. The hook is more important, finding the right moment in the podcast more important. So if we're dealing with a limited amount of time, then you could maybe stick with your standard podcast cover art,

Jordan:

you know, what comes to mind is marked safe podcast, they're tick tock that went viral, they had a video of people on a roller coaster ride, following the roller coaster. And as we were watching the video, they're talking about this one disaster that happened with the roller coaster ride, and then ended it with to hear the full story, go to our podcast. And that works really well, too. So if you have stock video or stock images, you can also use that to just kind of backup the imagery that you're talking about on the podcast,

Alban:

Ken Burns in all the documentaries he's made has helped people realize that a visual element with audio often can replace a full video experience, you know, having images of the thing you're talking about is much more immersive than just listening to audio. And it doesn't have to be the exact same thing that you're talking about. So you don't need the video from the disaster on the roller coaster. But some pictures of a roller coaster during that story that actually sets the tone so much more. If you don't have the exact imagery of what you're talking about. Go to a website like unsplash.com and get some really beautiful royalty free images that match what you're talking about. And so if it's a celebrity, find a picture that celebrity if it's a roller coaster ride went wrong. Find a picture of a roller coaster. If it's a haunted house, find a scary looking house and add this visual element. And if it's only 45 seconds, you're not going to have to have moving images the whole time. But just that one image that sets the tone will help quite a bit.

Jordan:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming back on Alvin and helping me answer this question.

Alban:

Thank you for having me.

Jordan:

I hope this episode of Podcasting Q&A has been helpful to you. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode, go to speak pipe.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes to leave us an audio message. And as always, Keep podcasting