Blog Text to Speech: Convert Your Articles to Audio

Blog Text to Speech
Blogging


Text to speech solutions have been available for over a decade, yet not many people have been keen on using it. Why? No education. People don’t know much about it, and why it’s good. 

Now put those mommy pants on, get that shot of espresso, and be the couch potato you are! Let’s take you to on a textual journey of Blogging, and text to speech

What is Text-to-Speech?

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Text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of technology that reads digital text aloud. It’s sometimes called “read aloud” technology.

With just one click of a button or the touch of a finger, Text to Speech can take words on a computer or other digital device and convert them into audio.

When you have the big giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM working constantly on providing better and better text to speech solutions, you know it’s where the Future is! 

Diving more into what Text to Speech offers, here are some of its highlights, and why it pleases every eye that falls on it. 

1. Creating High Quality Voiceovers

Most of the text to speech software’s, or text to speech voice generators online leverage the best voices from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM, making them a legitimate alternative to voice artists. 

Why pay thousands or millions when you can get amazing voice overs for less than 1/4th of the price?! 

2. Neural Voices

The next amazing feature of this technology are Neural Voices, or natural sounding voices. 

Neural text-to-speech voices or Neural TTS, are created using a new type of speech synthesis powered by deep neural networks. When using a neural voice, the synthesized speech is nearly indistinguishable from the human recordings.

Moreover, neural voices can be used to make interactions with chatbots and voice assistants more natural and engaging. Also, convert digital texts such as e-books into audiobooks and enhance in-car navigation systems. 

With the human-like natural prosody and clear articulation of words, neural voices significantly reduce listening fatigue when users interact with AI systems.

3. A Variety of Speaking Styles to Suit Your Need

Yes, you heard it right! If you thought neural voices were a bonus, you don’t even know what’s coming for you. When we say the best voices, we mean the best, and some of these contain multiple speaking styles, which you can change as per your scenario.

From a regular conversational voice style, to a newscaster style or even a digital assistant like Siri or Google Assistant. But wait, why stop there?

You can even change the emotion or tone of your voices too! Happy? Sad? Empathetic?

That’s nothing, few of these voices even have a Lyrical speaking style designed for all the poetry enthusiasts.

Blog Text to Speech

blog text to speech

Here we are, the main attraction, the reason you guys got click baited into reading this post.

Like the name says, no gimmicks, it’s simply converting a blog into a text to speech audio format. Or just have an audio form of your article available for your readers as well.

The most underrated, yet the most efficient use of this technology is content marketing. Blogs have been the go to source of information for all ages. But have a thought. What if, you also have an audio player on your blog article, which says you can also listen to this. 

Guess the amount of user traction you’re going to develop out of this. In this busy day and age, where things mostly happen when we are multi-tasking or are on the go, anyone would want to perceive information in the most easy and accessible way possible, and what’s the best way to do it other than having two earbuds relaying that same information for you? 

One of the most important things you can do to your content is to make sure it is as accessible as possible, and Text to speech does just that! 

Text-to-Audio or click-to-listen story formats have been available for over a decade. Adding to that, there is a sudden rise in audio listeners, and innovations in audio technology.

Here’s what having Blog Text to Speech does for you:

  • Increases Accessibility – Audio Articles are a great way to improve your Website Accessibility. Visually impaired readers will benefit greatly from the ability to simply load an article and press play!
  • Increases Engagement – Adding audio content to a static page can drive five times more engagement to the post. The more engaging and entertaining the content, the more likely the message will stand out and gain the attention of a target audience.
  • A more Convenient Source of Information – 69% of audio content is consumed while doing other activities. When a reader doesn’t have the option to sit down and scroll through an article, they can just press play and listen to the article while multi-tasking.
  • Generates More Revenue – You can generate revenue by selling a unique audio ad. Monetize ad space above the audio player, which includes a “Sponsored By” message and logo that links to the advertisers website.
  • Generates Analytics – get reports of your Audio Articles – View real-time listening stats to see just how valuable this tool is to your readers and advertisers!
  • Gives exposure to a much younger Audience – It gives exposure to a user base that’s 65% aged 35 or younger.

Blog Text to Speech with Play.ht

Blog Text to Speech with Play.ht

All you’ve been reading about until now is what’s blog text to speech, what does it do, and how is it useful. Coming to the interesting part, the working. 

Introducing Play.ht, a state of the art text to speech AI Voice Generator, which converts your text to speech at the click of a button! 

Why Play.ht?

Play.ht leverages only the best text to speech voices from Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson and Microsoft to generate accurate and realistic speech. 

Choose from a growing library of 508+ natural sounding AI voices across 60+ languages to convert text to audio.

With play.ht you can create a unique Audio Storytelling experience for your audience.

With the latest addition of Neural Voices from Microsoft, and Amazon Polly, you can experience sounds more natural, and lifelike, which are indistinguishable from the Human voice.


how to 1
Convert text-based content to audio, then edit for pronunciation, tone, and pauses for natural narration.

Powered by machine, and deep learning you can also customize the voice and access voices with different speaking styles and emotional tones to fit your use case.

You can also tune the voice output for your scenarios by easily adjusting rate, pitch, pronunciation, pauses and more.

Offering a little Extra

Play.ht also comes with plugins for WordPress and Medium.

Now you can convert your WordPress blog posts and Medium stories to audio right from your blog.



With a fully customizable audio player, change the look and feel of it according to your theme’s design.

By getting listeners as well as readers, you’re targeting two birds with one stone!



Play.ht also provides audio analytics which lets you know exactly how your audio is doing with key metrics like listens, shares, and downloads.

By making your articles come to life – without all the hassle of recording it yourself, is what Play.ht does for you!

How to convert your Blog text to speech with Play.ht

Converting text to speech online has never been easier!

With our bug free, easy to install plugins, and browser extensions, you can start converting your blogs or articles in a matter of seconds!

How to add Audio to your WordPress Blog posts

This requires Play.ht WordPress plugin to be installed on your blog. If you haven’t installed the plugin yet, follow this tutorial – Installing Play.ht WordPress plugin

The Play.ht WordPress plugin makes it easy to convert your posts, pages or courses into audio and embed that audio.

Here are the steps for converting your first blog post to audio –

1. From your Posts page, select the post that you’d like to convert to audio, and click on the ‘Convert to audio’ button.
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2. You’ll now see an editor with your post contents.

You can add or remove text to reflect in the audio. Adding to that, changing the voice, listening to sentences, fixing any pronunciations can also be done.

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3. Once you are ready with the edits to audio, click the Convert button.

Converting a blog post to audio consumes words

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You will now have the audio embedded in your blog post!

How to add Audio to your Medium Stories

Adding an audio version to your Medium story makes it accessible to a wider group of audience. People who are visually impaired, and people who prefer listening will find the audio extremely useful.

Make sure you have the Play.ht Chrome Extension installed – https://play.ht/extension/

There are two ways of adding an audio version to your Medium story. Let’s look at them one by one.

1. Adding audio to a Medium story from the Stories page

Under the Published tab from your Medium stories page you will find buttons for adding audio. (as shown in the screenshot below)

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2. Publishing a new Medium story with audio

When you are ready to publish a new Medium story, you can publish it with audio. When you click the Publish button you will see a new section to publish the story with audio.

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Simply select a voice you want for the audio and click the Publish now with audio button!

Conclusion

Be it WordPress, or Medium, Play.ht has got your covered!

With the best pricing, and even better tools to work with, you’re not one step short, but two steps ahead of your competitors. 

Well what’re you waiting for?

Sign Up now!