There are plenty of different types of promotional content that will help you boost your audio tour’s sales. Read on for four that are effective and easy to create.
Q&As
Q&As are a great way to communicate a bit about who you are, why you created your audio tour, and what people will get out of the experience. They’re also quick to put together, and often easier to get published elsewhere than press releases.
We’ve come up with a handful of questions to save you time (and spare you the awkwardness of having a Q&A session with yourself!) Answer the questions that appeal most, add an introductory sentence or two, and you’re ready to send the finished product to blogs or publications that may like to publish it. Don’t forget to add a link to your tour on appropriate keywords.
1. Why did you choose this part of the world for your audio tour? What’s your connection to it?
2. What was the experience of creating an audio tour like in general?
3. As a storyteller, what do you gain by knowing exactly where your audience is at any given moment?
4. What’s your favourite story from the walk?
5. How much research did you need to do before you were ready to start writing?
6. Where is the best place to stop on the walk? Why?
7. Who is this tour for?
8. What was the most interesting thing you learnt while creating the tour?
9. Did you have to record your tour in a studio? Where did you record it?
Blogs
Whether you’ve created a Q&A, or written an article about the experience of creating your tour, tell your blog’s readers about it – they’re your most loyal fans! If you’ve already written a press release about your tour, then you could easily rework that into a blog post. Excerpts from your script, audio clips, or albums of pictures from your tour make great blog posts, too. You’ll find some great examples on Yap Audio’s website and Big Time Moscow.
If you don’t have your own blog or website, send a blog post to websites with a connection to your tour’s theme or location. Many will publish guest posts and include a link to your audio tour in a bio at the end. Connect with people in your community who are passionate about the same thing as you — they’ll help you to spread the word!
Quizzes
Some audio tours are just begging for a quiz to accompany them. Think of all those little-known facts about your city that you wove into your tour, or the myth-busting history that you cleared up once and for all. Or, even, your musings on the café or old house that people pass along the way. Together, these details could make a fun Post-Tour Quiz that your community will share and share again. And, for those who haven’t tried out your tour themselves, a quiz about its neighbourhood will put their local knowledge to the test, and hopefully entice them to do it at the first chance they get.
All kinds of blogs and websites are open to publishing quizzes these days, but if you want to take a gamble at yours going viral, creating one on Buzzfeed will increase the odds.
Audio clips
Publishing an audio clip or two on a blog or website is a perfect way to give people a taste of your tour. Soundcloud does a good job of framing audio files in a way that’s both attractive and functional, allowing people to play audio without leaving the website or blog where your Soundcloud link was posted. Be sure to introduce the audio clip with a sentence or two and a link where people can download your tour. Adding the track’s script (along with a link) to the description box within Soundcloud can also help with SEO.
Whatever content you create, make sure it gets its fair share of readers by sharing it via your preferred social media channel(s). There are plenty of other creative and time-efficient ways to promote your audio tour, too.