At Headliner, we like to talk the talk, literally. Headliner re-launched our podcast, with a new format known as the Headliner PodPod, and saw audiograms’ impact firsthand!
Our social media and marketing comms have undergone a mini-makeover since the reboot too. Instead of telling podcasters about our great products, we are using them to create our marketing and pod-motional content.
This blog post will take you through how we used and measured aduiogram’s impact.
Background
As you may or may not know, Headliner has revived our podcast in a fun Season 2. Roughly 90 days ago, Headliner released our first episode of “The Headliner PodPod” (PodPod for short). The PodPod, as we fondly say, is a “podcast about podcasts, featuring podcasts by podcasters, hosted by people who help podcasts, podcast.” It’s all very meta. 😂
If you’ve followed the PodPod’s progress, you’ve probably heard us try out a few formats. But we’ve found one that works well for us, our goals, and our audience!
The Headliner PodPod functions as a podcast game that highlights our amazing Headliners. The team listens to 6ish podcast clips sent in by podcasters each week. Then, different team members will try to guess the correct podcast name based on what they just listened to.
In what has been called “entertaining even when failing,” the PodPod provides Headliner a meaningful way to connect with our audience – both new and old. It also helps us connect listeners with even more podcasts! (It’s a win-win!!!)
What Changed
Since starting the PodPod, our marketing communications have changed a lot – especially on social media. If you follow us, you’ve probably seen a lot of audiograms!
On video-first platforms, like TikTok, we have been posting audiograms using our core product, Make by Headliner. We’ve posted audiograms before, but it has been over a year since we regularly posted them. The audiograms also rarely featured Headliner, so they did not always align with our goal of brand growth.
For a little over 90 days, our social media overall has shifted from primarily static images to a mix of video files, including audiograms! Since making the switch, our video-first platforms (YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram) have seen between +200% to +400% increase in reach. +16.3k ears on YouTube, +5.5k ears on TikTok, and +1.1k ears on Instagram to be exact.
Benching for 90 days straight
It has been about 90 days since we revised our social plans and began measuring audiograms’ impact.
Prior to adding more audiograms to the mix, our social media reach and engagement were stable. So we had a decent baseline to benchmark our upcoming marketing efforts against.
We created a 90-day lookback window to benchmark ourselves. A 90-day lookback window compares the present day to 90 days ago. Lookback windows are easy-to-use tools that show growth or decline.
We created a 90-day lookback for our video-first platforms, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Compared to the previous 90 days, we saw a significant spike in overall audience reach and impressions that we attribute to audiograms’ impact.
Totally “Tube-ular” Audiograms’ Impact
Our YouTube channel saw the most significant change. Period-over-period, we have seen a +20% increase in subscribers. Since rebooting the Headliner Podcast, our YouTube channel has reached +20.3k more people (+116% increase) period over period.
A large part of the platform’s growth is attributed to audiograms distributed via our Podcast Playlist. Audiograms on the Podcast Playlist alone have accounted for 80% of our channel impressions in the past 90 days.
Podcast Playlist: Impressions Galore!
We post full-length audiograms to our YouTube channel via our Podcast Playlist every week. On average, each audiogram episode gets 1.9k impressions. One of our more recent episodes even hit over 5.3k impressions in the first week!
Typically, the majority of our impressions come from “New Viewers.” Over +93% of impressions came from what we call “New Ears,” with the remaining 7% coming from “Returning Ears.”
How we “Pod-Tube”
What’s even more impressive is that we only invest about 15 minutes of our time each week to run our YouTube channel. Yes, you read that right, 15 minutes.
Each week, the amazing Nicholas edits our podcast using Eddy by Headliner. Once he finalizes edits, he sends that project to Elissa, our Marketing Manager.
Elissa first exports Nicholas’s project as audio and SRT files. She also downloads the Promo Pack to make for easy SEO and optimization.
From there, Elissa makes a Manual Audiogram and uploads the audio into Make by Headliner. In the Audiogram Wizard, Elissa chooses a template, customizes it, adds intro and outro videos, and exports the video. While she waits for the video to export, she’ll also make a custom thumbnail using our Canva template.
And voila! There you have it, our YouTube content is ready to upload in 15 minutes or less.
Short N’ Sweet: Podcast Clips
Depending on that week’s posting schedule, we also post clips, or short-form podcast videos, as a teaser or reminder content. To create these pre-launch, we use Eddy’s clip finder.
For post-launch clips, we use our existing automation in Make!
Pro tip, for our YouTube and social media, you can tell when something was made based on the episode art. If there is episode art, it is an Automatic Audiogram. If there is no episode art, then it is a Manual Audiogram.
TikTok‘s Comeback
Headliner has also seen a lot of success on TikTok.
TikTok, a video-first platform, is widely known for its ability to create “viral trends.” Trends are hard to predict, can be time-consuming to develop, and, at least for our business model, they sometimes make little sense.
TikTok content in the past has been time-consuming and has yielded low returns. While we recognize the value TikTok can provide, we often allocate the least time to it. As a brand awareness play, we did not simply want to let the platform die out. Luckily, since rebooting the podcast, we have made quick, effective audiogram clips – which only take a few minutes per week!
Uploading audiograms has allowed our team to consistently post to our page, keeping our brand awareness up. It has allowed us to reach a lot of ears, too!
Audiograms’ Impact: Headliner reached +420% more ears!
Since rebooting the podcast, TikTok’s 90-Day-Lookback window revealed the audiograms’ impact. Headliner’s audiograms have reached +4k more ears (+420%) than in the previous period. With an astounding 5.5k video views, our audiograms, which take minutes to create, have been viewed +324% more than videos that took over an hour to script, record, and edit. Since shifting to audiograms, we also saw a 32% rise in follows.
One audiogram in particular stood out, garnering over 1.8k views and reaching over 1.7k unique users (or ears) in the first 3 days.
“Reely” good reach
We also use those same TikTok audiograms for other platforms too! Headliner also posts audiograms to Instagram Reels.
While we have a larger variety of content on Instagram, we have still felt the impact of audiograms first-hand! In total, audiograms have reached over +1.1k ears within the past 90 days.
Our top-performing post is also an audiogram! This particular audiogram reached 206% more people than usual.
Audiograms’ impact on other platforms/it’s not just us!
Headliner does post audiograms on other platforms, like Twitter and LinkedIn, but, not frequently as these platforms allow for direct links. Typically, we will post a link to listen to a full-length episode and leave the video thumbnail as the featured image. However, there are plenty of amazing examples of audiograms being effective promotional tools on these platforms!
For example, Headliner Steven Ray Morris, host of See Jurassic Right, regularly posts audiograms on his Twitter. Steven sent us this audiogram that got over 10k views on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Steven also wrote to us:
“ I started using Headliner, especially in the relaunch of the podcast this year, to show people not only the variety of the kinds of episodes (ie. casual conversations with Jurassic Park fans, interviews with filmmakers like the screenwriter of Land Before Time, chats with scientists, scripted and research-based audio essays), but that anyone can listen to the podcast regardless if you’ve seen Jurassic Park or not. The show is not only a conversation with my guests but the listeners as well.”
Mixing, matching, and repurposing
Audiograms only take a few minutes to make and upload. We also like to adapt the copy or even select a different clip per platform. This ensures our audience will not see the same thing twice but does not create extra work.
We use Make’s Automatic Audiograms to help create and batch podcast clips. Automations provide 10 clips to choose from. This way, you can easily vary social media content that resonates with viewers. It keeps your feed fresh!
We’ll also use Eddy’s clip recommendations to create more complex, styled Manual Audiograms.
Using audiograms helps us create a strong content plan and highlights the best Healdiner offers – audiograms and podcasts. Mixing, matching, and repurposing audiograms also ensures our content is diverse and engaging. This is especially important for people who follow us on multiple platforms.
Audiograms Wrapped (not Spotify…just the end)
Audiograms are our social media secret weapon. They quickly create meaningful content that supports our goals while helping us garner more impressions for our podcast. Headliner’s audiograms create quick, impactful content that resonates with our audiences, showcases our products, and allows us to market our company and podcast effectively.
Visit make.headliner.app to play around with audiograms and start growing your podcast.
