Creating a podcast from Audio Articles

Nov 16, 2020

This year, the staff at Our-Hometown has spent a lot of time talking about how the newspaper industry is evolving to a more digital-oriented landscape, perhaps faster than ever thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic.

One theme they’ve touched on repeatedly is how you can repurpose media content and distribute it in more than one way and across more than one platform. One great example of this line of thinking is creating a podcast from Audio Articles.

Our-Hometown’s Audio Articles feature quickly converts articles into an audio file featuring the article text read aloud by a realistic-sounding narrator. A media player is embedded before each article so that users can choose to listen to the article rather than reading the whole thing, freeing up their hands while driving, working out, or performing other tasks that wouldn’t otherwise be possible while reading.

However, you could quickly and easily create a weekly podcast by downloading the audio file from a handful of the most popular or most important stories on your site for the week and merging them together into a single audio file using any basic audio editor. (See example here.) Just add a quick intro & outro and what you have is essentially a podcast that you can submit to your preferred podcast distribution service and blast out to all of your readers online via social media.

Most podcasting services will even let you embed your recent episodes directly into your WordPress website!

To download the audio file for an Audio Article, you’ll need to be logged in with your Admin/Staff account. Then, simply hover over the audio player that appears at the top of any article on the website and click the three-dot “options” button. The only option available should be to Download the audio file. Once you’ve downloaded a handful of audio files, use your favorite audio editing software to string them together into a single file and add any additional production elements to make your episode stand out.

Popular podcasting services such as SoundCloud, BuzzSprout and others will provide a code where you can embed your latest episode into your WordPress website, and can help you grow an audience!

If you need help getting your podcast embedded on your website, just send us an e-mail at ops@our-hometown.com with the provided embed code and we’ll be happy to help out!

This is just one example of how you can take a single piece of media and utilize it for different purposes, allowing you to to “do more with less” and save time in the process.