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Listen to your branding

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Quick…when I say “branding,” what’s the first word that pops into your head?

Is it logo? Style? Design?

Probably something visual. Maybe your mind goes to “brand guidelines” for fonts, colors, and artwork.

Have you ever considered your auditory branding?

Now that live streaming, podcasting, and voice commands are pervasive, you need to add audio to your branding checklist.

Here are some key considerations to make sure that you’re up to speed:

  • If you are using live streaming tools, what’s your tone of voice? Is your speech clear? Do you use profanity or not? How formal/casual are your words?
  • For podcasting, are you using professional audio tools? Do you do leveling or post-production, if you’ve got multiple input sources? Do you have a “voice for radio?” If you don’t have a pleasant cadence or tone, what can you do to improve your speaking voice?
  • If your company name or product name is spoken into a natural language voice command system (like Siri or Amazon’s Echo device), is it easy to produce correct results? Do you have hyphens, apostrophes, synonyms or other roadblocks to easy voice entry?
  • Think of all possible customer touch points where audio might come into play…from your “on hold” music to the background sounds in your office when you’re on a conference call. Are you projecting the right sensation to your customers or partners? (Do they hear your dog barking and realize you’re working from home, or do they hear Starbucks noise and wonder about your professionalism?) Nothing wrong with either of those scenarios, as long as they match the rest of your branding.

Take some time today to do an “audio audit” to make sure that this important aspect of your branding is supporting your mission.

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: Patrick Breitenbach

How to incorporate audio into your marketing content

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Periscope, Blab, Snapchat, Vine, and other apps are making it easy to create and share video clips.

But if you try watching a Blab while you’re jogging, you might end up eating pavement.

Allow me to propose audio as a great addition to your marketing content tool kit.

Audio clips and podcasts have some advantages over video:

  • Multi-taskers love to listen to audio (think treadmill, commute)
  • You don’t have to be “camera ready” to record audio
  • People learn well by listening, reinforces message
  • Intimacy, being in someone’s ear is a very distinct connection-builder

Audio also has a few drawbacks:

  • Can be harder to find via search (make sure you post a transcript to alleviate this issue)
  • More difficult to repurpose
  • Works best with special equipment (sound leveling, microphone)
  • Might be hard to monetize, need sponsorships
  • Some audio platforms don’t provide embed code for easy sharing

If you’re ready to give audio a try, here are some tools that will help you record and share.

Anchor

Anchor is like an audio social network, where members can post audio messages and receive audio replies from others. Consuming the content is like listening to a never-ending interactive talk show that covers a lot of random topics. The platform is still fairly new, so there’s lots of opportunity to get creative and become an “Anchor star.”

Once you’ve recorded a clip, you can share it to Facebook or email a link to yourself, but there’s no embed code as of this writing (which makes it harder to incorporate Anchor clips into a blog post or other content).

AudioBoom

AudioBoom is a global, streaming audio platform with a wide variety of content, from small local podcasters to big brands like the BBC. It’s mostly geared toward those big podcasters, but with a free account, you can still upload audio files and share them to Twitter and Facebook. If you upgrade to a paid account, you get access to all of the bells and whistles of a professional recording platform, with ad support, distribution, and social sharing tools.

Clyp

Clyp is a very lightweight, intuitive way to upload and share audio files. There are some social networking aspects, like voting up other members’ clips, but the thing I like the most is the ability to just drag an audio file onto their home page and instantly get a shareable link. Warning, since it’s free to upload, the list of popular clyps can be NSFW.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is the granddaddy of audio sharing sites, and has more recently skewed toward musician uploads, but still has great tools for uploading and sharing other audio files. What I like the most about SoundCloud is the nice embed code you get for each clip, making it super easy to incorporate sound clips into your blog or other web content.

You get up to three hours of free space to store your audio files, as well as the ability to engage with comments on your audio. Upgrading to a paid plan gives you more pro tools including analytics and unlimited space.

Next steps

  • You don’t have to launch a major new podcast in order to take advantage of audio options. With some of the tools I mentioned, you can just record a quick 10 minute audio note and include a link in your next newsletter. You can start engaging and interacting via audio on some of the social tools, to get used to the idea.
  • Remember that you still need to pay attention to your tone of voice, your enunciation, and make a good impression. It’s OK to use the microphone from your earbuds for those short, casual clips, but if you plan to routinely record audio, invest in an external microphone. They’re not that expensive, and will sound much more professional. Here’s a fantastic episode from the Content Pros podcast that will help you get started.
  • If you’re recording for business, try to find a space where there will be minimal ambient noise. Hearing your dog bark or your phone ring in the background will undercut your message.

Are you currently incorporating audio into your marketing outreach?

Feel free to share your handle or podcast name in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Featured image via Flickr CC: Patrick Breitenbach