Podcasts today, are a temple where listeners go to learn and grow.
Over the years, Podcasts have evolved tremendously and today serve as a hub of seriously engaging content, specially in the Business, Motivation/Life-Coaching and News spaces.
But, before we dive into ‘How to create a Podcast’, let’s first retrospect and analyze the ‘Why’…
Did you know that Audio (majorly Podcasts and Audio books) today stands as the second highest form of content consumed online?
According to recent research, the monthly Podcast listeners have grown from 17% to 32% year over year as of 2018, and are projected to only grow even more in the years to come.
If you think about it, the reasons are quite clear. Firstly, Podcasts offer a unique experience, providing valuable and in-depth information to the listeners. Secondly, unlike reading that demands the readers’ complete attention, listening is simply more convenient and can be done passively, while other reasons such as listening allows content/information consumption while commuting, jogging, relaxing, or just on-the-go. And last but not the least, Podcasts go beyond the usual forms of content such as Social Media posts or even Blog posts/Articles for that matter.
How to Create a Podcast of Your Medium Articles (for Free)
Medium.com is a thriving community of writers, thinkers, and storytellers with over 60 million unique monthly readers, bringing the smartest takes on core topics such as Tech, Culture, Politics, Business and Life.
We have already addressed the importance of creating Podcasts. Let us dive right into how you can create Podcasts of your Medium articles, for free!
Step 1. Download & Install The Play.ht Chrome Extension
To get started, you need to Download and Install the Free Chrome Extension on your chrome browser. Once you have installed the extension, login to your account and you will find additional buttons on ‘Your Stories’ page.
Step 2. Select Your Medium ‘Drafts’ or ‘Published’ Articles
Open the draft that you wish to publish and you will see a new ‘Publish now with Audio’ button. You can simply click this button and your draft will be published with an audio podcast.
a. From ‘Drafts’
b. From ‘Published’ Articles
Step 3. Publish with Audio
Click ‘Publish With Audio’ to add The Play.ht Embedded Player on your article!
And, if you wish to add audio to an article that you have already published, go to ‘Your Stories’ page and under the ‘Public’ tab you will find an option to ‘Add Audio’ to your published articles.
Select the article you wish to turn into a podcast, click on the ‘Add Audio’ button and the embedded player will be added to the article.
You can even select multiple articles at the same time!
Marketing your Podcast
a. Allow your audience to subscribe to your Podcasts using Email Subscriptions feature.
b. Change/customize the Podcast Player to suit your Brand or Personality.
c. Track the Listens, Shares and Downloads of your Podcasts using the Stats tab.
d. Get your Podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc.
Creating a podcast on the Podcasting platforms requires an RSS Feed URL — a link that has information about Podcasts and its meta-data such as the title, description, etc. and is in XML format.
With Play.ht, we generate the link so you can effortlessly publish on iTunes.
Check out one of our customers, Melvin who recently published his Podcasts on iTunes with Play.ht. He is a Creative Director at RapidGems Studio and Founder of Emm & Enn Art Studio.
Podcast engagement is higher than ever before
Unlike the usual nature of long-form content, Podcasts actually defy the basic nature of the content. in other words Podcast listeners actually spend extended amounts of time listening, making it not just an extraordinary medium for content consumption and engagement, but also allowing you to cultivate a deeper relationship with the audience.
“Three percent of monthly podcast consumers listen to the beginning of a podcast only. By and large, podcast listeners are loyal and committed to hearing out the full episode.” – Heike Young, Salesforce.
As we already know, consistency plays a crucial role with content. With Play.ht, listeners can subscribe to your Podcasts and opt-in to hear from you on a regular basis. By doing so, you will be able to develop trust and personal connection towards engaging your audiences like never before…