How to create an audiogram to promote your podcast using Audiogram app
A step by step guide to creating an attention-grabbing audiogram
2020 was a boom year for podcasts with 850,000 active podcasts. Marketing your podcast is essential to set yourself apart from the crowd. A great tool for this is the audiogram.
In this how-to article, you’ll learn how to quickly create and customize an audiogram for your social media channels using the Audiogram app.
What is an Audiogram?
Audiograms allow you to share interesting audio highlights from your podcast in a visual format with motion- see example below (traditionally an audiogram is a soundbar that shows sound frequencies in real-time).
Audiograms are a great promotional tool for reaching new audiences and subscribers as they are visually engaging, dynamic and give audiences an idea of what your podcast is like and turning your audio clips into video highlights is a great way to do this.
Why use the Audiogram app?
Audiogram lets you turn your podcast audio into an engaging social video — and it comes packed with great features. It is really easy and intuitive to use with a great, simple interface which gives you exactly the tools that you need to select your audio highlight and edit your transcription text, as well as multiple customizable audiogram design templates so you can make sure your audiogram is on-brand with your podcast series. Audiogram also has in-depth tutorial videos, FAQs and chat feed on the site to help you every step of the way.
There are both free and paid versions of Audiogram. With the paid version you get access to handy tools such as keyboard shortcuts to make the process of editing even simpler, as well as being able to snippet longer audio tracks, access to all the design templates, and unlimited edits and remix options.
Audiogram is my preferred audiogram app as it is easy to use and gives me the flexibility I need to create visually interesting and engaging audiograms.
Audiogram’s free plan gives you 2 free credits per month which let you publish up to 2 videos per month without charge, but they come watermarked. To publish more videos (without a watermark), you’ll need to upgrade to their Pro or Elite plans, starting at $19/mo.
Creating an Audiogram
To create an audiogram on Audiogram App takes between 10–15minutes. The steps are simple and follow this process:
- upload audio or import podcast episode
- adjust/trim the audio and edit the automatically generated transcript
- choose a template for any social network, customize it to match your brand
Create a custom audiogram using Audiogram app by following these simple steps:
#1 Import your audio
Set up a free account on getaudiogram.com
On the homepage click ‘Create Audiogram’ on the top left.
The next page will prompt you to upload your podcast audio. There are two ways to do this. You can either upload the audio file manually, or you can search for your podcast series by typing its name into the search box. In this example I used the search option for my podcast series:
A pop-up will appear with a list of all your podcast episodes.
Select the episode you would like to create into an Audiogram.
#2 Select your audio clipping
Your episode will be loaded up into audio editor. You will see two waves forms on the screen. The top bar shows the whole length of your recording and the green box shows the area that is displayed on the larger waveform below. On the top bar, you can click and drag the green box along the recording to navigate to the section of the podcast you want to focus on.
On this screen it presents the classic audio editing controls such as play/pause, fast-forward/rewind, as well as a Zoom in and Zoom out buttons to help you be more precise in finding your starting point. Then click inside the larger waveform bar to place the ‘play head’ which is a red line.
Make an audio selection by clicking in the large waveform and a blue selection box will appear. This represents the clip which will be used to create the audiogram.
To adjust your audio selection, grab the slides of the blue box indicated by the small white dots to make the snipped shorter or longer.
If things go wrong, use the ‘Reset Selection’ button to put everything back to the beginning and you can start again.
If you are unsure how long your audio clip should be, click the ‘question mark’ button in the top toolbar and a pop up will appear giving you helpful recommendations for clip length for the various social media channels.
The selection box will change colour to indicate the length of the clip:
Blue for up to 2:20 seconds for all social channels
Yellow for timings up to 10 minutes and suitable for Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube
Purple which is for recordings of 10 minutes plus and is suitable for Facebook and YouTube.
This option also costs 2 additional credits. Note that captions are only generated for audio selections of up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds.
If you have a free account Audiogram will allow a 1-minute maximum recording, or if your paid account clipping goes beyond 2 minutes 20 seconds. To visually notify you of this, the blue selection box will turn orange.
Example of the purple selection box
Once you are happy with your audio clipping selection, then click ‘Create Audiogram’.
You are now prompted to decide which type of audiogram you’d like to create, either ‘captioned’ or ‘traditional’:
Traditional shows the moving soundwaves of your recording but with static text and no transcribed text. If you want to create an audiogram quickly and are more focussed on big headline text, then the traditional card will work perfectly for you.
Captioned show the sounds waves and your synchronised captioned text.
In this example, I am going to create a captioned audiogram.
#3 Creating your audio text captions
On the next page, Audiogram has automatically created a transcript of your audio recording. This is great because you don’t have to use an additional app or employ some serious speed typing skills- very nifty!
Play the clip using the red play button on the top left to follow along with the audio and the auto-generated text to check for accuracy. You should check that the text matches up with the audio recording as the transcription might not be 100% accurate. To make any corrections such as spelling mistakes, punctuation, or missing words, simply click on the word in the text box and type in the amendment. My recommendation is to remove any text stutters, umms or ahh sounds from the text. This will make it easier to read the transcript in the audiogram later.
Once you have made your amendments, you may feel that you need to add in or remove a page break. A page break can be used to show logical breaks in speech or in a thought, a change in speakers, or for emphasis. To place a break, click the ‘Add or Remove Page Break’ button and move your mouse to the area you where you want to place the break and drop it there.
If you are happy with everything and the texts and audio match up perfectly, then you can go ahead and press Approve Captions and move onto the visual editing stage.
However, you may also notice that the timing of the voice and text is not totally in sync. You can correct this by pressing ‘Edit timing’.
#4 Edit your timing — this step is optional and should only be used if there are timing issues with the transcription. If you don’t have any issues, skip to Step 5.
From here, you can see your corrected text and a new waveform bar along the bottom. This bar represents the start and end time of each word.
Press the play button on the bottom left to preview the audio. Once playing you will see the words in the text box, and the words in the time bar highlighted in orange so you can clearly match them together and see if they are perfectly timed.
If you find a word which is out of sync with the waveform bar, then click on the word in the text box. This will focus the waveform bar on that specific word so you can edit the timing.
In this example, the word ‘Meet’ has been highlighted as this was out of sync with the waveform.
Using your mouse, you can move the black vertical lines in between each word along the waveform bar to make the time spent on that word longer or shorter. Use the audio wave bars to help you see when there are silences (very small bars) or when there is speech (longer bars).
Once you have made an adjustment click on the word in the waveform to preview it. You can also click on a word at the beginning of a sentence in the text box to listen to the whole sentence again to make sure it sounds just right. Then you can continue listening to the transcript to look for any further sync issues.
Paid users can use the Keyboard shortcuts button to use the keyboard to journey through the text rather than using the mouse to make adjustments.
When satisfied, click ‘Approve Timing’.
#5 Creating your Audiogram Card
Now here’s the really fun bit, creating your audiogram card!
On the next page, you will see a wide variety of audiogram design templates and you have four options to choose from: motion, guest, standard, or premium designs. These are all customisable e.g., you can change the colour, text and images. You can either select a square or landscape shape or a portrait/vertical orientation for Instagram Stories/LinkedIn Stories/Fleets. You can search for your desired aspect ratio by using the filter option button on the top right. Once you have created and exported a completed audiogram, you will see a section called My templates. This saves your most recent templates and can save you lots of time when creating future audiograms. The number of credits required is shown in the blue square in the top right-hand corner of the template.
Select the option that aligns with your podcast branding. In this example, I’m going to select a motion template number three. I prefer the motion designs as this adds an extra level of interest to the audiogram for viewers. To proceed, click on the template you’d like to use to start customising.
We are now looking at the visual editor tool. On the left-hand side is a very helpful toolbar which gives you access to everything you might need to customise your card. At the top is a play button where you can watch your audiogram come to life (I usually use this at the end so I can see how it looks as a whole and if there are any tweaks I need to make). The Sub-title is where you put the title of your podcast and the episode or guest name, so people know who and what they are listening to. In Podcast album Art you can upload a jpeg image of your podcast series cover art to bring the card on brand.
In ‘Add Colour’, you decide what colour theme you want to overlay onto your background image. In this section, you can either select from a colour pallet, or you can input an RGB, HEX or HSL code to match to your branding.
In the design template I selected, I can select two background images as the card will switch between the two images when playing. To add an image, click the background image add image button and upload your Jpeg. Helpfully you can adjust the image when uploading to make sure it is centred on the area you need.
You can also remove any unwanted or preloaded images by pressing the small ‘x’ on the image.
What’s really helpful about this tool is that when you make changes in the toolbar the changes also immediately appear on the template design in the viewer so you can make alterations quickly.
Once you are happy with your adjustments, play the audiogram through to double-check for any errors or if you need to add in an extra element. Then you can ‘Export your Audiogram’.
#6 Post-roll creation
You will now be presented with an extra promotional card which is added onto the end of the Audiogram. This is a great way to get audiences to engage with your podcast, or to give them a call to action. There are three options to choose from: Grow Social, Call to Action, Drive Subscriptions. Select the action you want to focus on. If you don’t want a post-roll, then click ‘No-Post Roll’. In this example, I chose Drive Subscriptions.
You will now see a screen similar to the visual editor where you can make some adjustments to your post-roll card. From here I can change the album artwork, background colours, add text and also turn on or off the four podcatcher sites my podcast appears on. My podcast appears on all of these distribution sites, so I have left them in place. At the moment you can’t add any additional/different podcast sites. Once you have made the updates you can click ‘Export Audiogram’.
#7 Exporting your Audiogram
Well done you’ve made it! You can now see your final completed audiogram card.
Here you can choose to watch the audiogram again by pressing the red play button on the top right, or you can select ‘Edit’ to go back and make changes to the transcription or design.
You may just want to change the colour, photo or text of your audiogram card and this is simply done by pressing the ‘Remix’ button and it takes you back to the visual editor.
To export, I recommend the ‘email to your phone’ option as this makes it easier to add onto Instagram, and then also select ‘download’ so you have a copy for your desktop or file system. Your audiogram is saved in your Audiogram account for future reference and for remixing and can be found on your Audiogram account home page.
And there you go! You are now ready to share your Audiogram on your social media channels and spread the word about your podcast series.
Extra feature
Brand Library
A really useful feature in the account settings is a create your own ‘brand library’. This is where you can save podcast artwork and colours, so they are readily available every time you create an audiogram.
Audiogram did not sponsor this article but provided access to a pro-account to activate all available features for this guide.
