This is an adapted version of the speech Gemma Roberts, COO at Subly, gave at the Growth Conference by The British Podcast Awards 2022. Subly was the sponsor of The Best Business Podcast Award.
If you have a podcast, we have a question for you to consider.
Your podcast has been heard, but has it been seen? Moreover, has it been read?
It sounds silly, we know, and we promise you we do actually know what a podcast is. But even though podcasts are audio content meant for listening, you should consider the fact that the way people consume content has changed.
If you aren’t cross-posting and promoting your content on all available platforms and making it accessible to everyone, then you need to step up your game.
Why You Need to Make Your Podcast Seen
Let us use stats to paint a picture of this new reality: Wyzowl reports that, on average, people consume 19 hours of video content per week. With an increase of 8.5 hours since 2018, that’s a significant chunk of their time.
Now, consider that the same report states that 86% of people now watch video without sound, and our questions are suddenly starting to make much more sense.
Creating a good podcast is hugely time-consuming. It’s not just sitting in front of a mic and talking about anything that comes to mind for half an hour. From coming up with ideas, planning, scripting, booking guests, to creation, production and editing – making a podcast is a true labour of love.
When it takes days or even weeks to make a single episode, it’s important you make every minute of that work count. You should squeeze as much out of every episode as possible to help build your audience, reach and following.
The output and visibility of your podcast should mirror the effort that went into it. And the best way to do this is repurposing.
The Magical Art of Repurposing Content
In the world of content marketing, repurposing is the equivalent of recycling – and who doesn’t recycle these days?
When you repurpose the content you already have, your ultimate goal is twofold: optimising your content for SEO, and reaching untapped audiences on social media and video platforms.
Okay, so you’re down with repurposing. But how do you do it?
Here are some of the ways you can conquer platforms you haven’t posted on before and engage new audiences using the content you already have.
Add Captions to Your Podcasts to Engage New Audiences
The first step of your repurposing journey is adding subtitles to all of your podcasts.
That’s one of the easiest ways to gain new listeners. There are hundreds of millions of people living with some degree of hearing loss in the world, and we promise you – they are as interested in podcasts as anyone else.
All you need to do to make your content accessible is to convert your audio content to a video with captions. You can do that by adding static images or soundwaves to the file to make it more visually appealing, and embedding your subtitles.
Just like that, your podcast is YouTube-ready! Subtitled videos or audiograms have also become hugely popular on Instagram. With half a billion daily users, this is an audience that you don’t want to leave untapped.
Many platforms, including YouTube and Instagram, offer auto-generated captions. Don’t fall into this trap. Auto-captions are notoriously bad at understanding accents and dialects, and when they come across a name or a brand name they usually get confused. The results are often not only wrong, but downright embarrassing.
A subtitling tool where you have full control will give you results that are as polished as your audio. That way you can make sure that your message isn’t changed or lost.
When you’re posting your podcasts on YouTube, don’t forget to create chapters in them. This will allow Google to pinpoint specific information in your videos and show them in search results. It will also make the content easier to navigate for the viewers.
Use Snippets to Show Your Best Sides
Snippets are a great way to capture people’s interest. On social media, everything comes in bite-sized pieces. Your podcasts are probably a lot longer than that, but fret not. Just take an in-depth episode, and turn it into daily snippets. This way, you will turn your content into a length that is palatable to social media audiences, plus you’ll make it last. One episode could give you enough material to post for several days.
Another way to use snippets is to use teasers to promote your podcast on social media. These should be short and intriguing. You can highlight some of the best moments from an episode with a clip that doesn’t last longer than a few seconds.
And don’t forget to make a snippet of your favorite moments from different episodes. You can make your podcast highlight reel at the end of the year, after a milestone number of episodes, or even when you reach a certain number of listeners. People like to be reminded about the things they enjoyed – just think of all the Spotify Most Listened posts on your social media feeds at the end of the year!
Add Transcripts to Harness the Powers of SEO
When you use a platform like Subly, you have the option to download a transcript of your audio or video in the form of a file like SRT, VTT or TXT. This gives you the raw material you can edit for reading.
The options are endless – you can use transcripts to create blogs, or pull quotes for social media, for instance. Transcripts are also useful for creating descriptions for your podcasts. Google can’t listen to your audio and rank you that way, but a good description will help you with SEO and rankings.
You can also use SEO to your advantage by uploading the entire transcripts. This is a simple way for Google crawlers to find out exactly what your content is about. Not to mention, it’s a convenient and easy way for your listeners to go back to an episode and find information they might need.
Attract International Listeners with Translations
Once you have completed all of the above steps, you have done a great job of maximising the visibility and accessibility of your content when it comes to the speakers of your language. But the internet is global, and there is an international audience for your content. Don’t let the language barrier stop you.
Translations can be tricky. You probably don’t speak all of the languages you are translating to, so you have no way to check whether what you are posting is correct. That is why you need a reliable tool that you trust to do this job for you. Some subtitling tools like Subly offer automatic translations based on the original transcript.
The internet moves quickly. When you post a new podcast episode, it gets an initial kick when most people listen to it, but that attention turns into a trickle after a while. It can be frustrating that listeners move on so fast from something you put so much hard work in.
But you can give your content longevity if you repurpose every podcast episode. The key to making your content last is adding subtitles, transcriptions and translations to them. With Subly, this process can be quick and effortless. Let Subly do the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on the creative process.
