In 2017, CMTO, in collaboration with the CBAA created a bunch of videos of the audio for the 2017 National Features and Documentary Series using the free online tool Audiogram.

You may have seen some videos floating around on our Facebook and website that look like this:

These videos are designed to be able to share on social media and to embed on your stations website. Whilst the background image and title stay unmoving, Audiogram allows you to visualise the waveform, so you can see the sound.

You can get a whole lot more out of your content if you share it further than just broadcasting it on air. The next natural step is to supply it for your audience as a podcast or a piece of downloadable audio. Audiogram allows you to do this, while adding a visual element. This is great for social media platforms like Instagram (which relies solely on videos and pictures) and Facebook (whose algorithm is fixed so that videos have far more reach than text or pictures) or the social media platform that’s most used by your audience.

Step-by-step guide on how to make an Audiogram:

To make an Audiogram first you will need to decide if you’re going to share the entire audio or just a preview where you can link to the full audio piece. Keep in mind that the video length should change depending on the platform (see our handy infographic to the left!).

Step 1. Cut your audio to the appropriate length depending on the platform you are going to share it on. We recommend making multiple versions to use on different social media platforms. Save your cuts and move on to step 2.

Step 2. Choose an image that best reflects the audio you will be sharing. You may want to take a photo of the location of the story or a picture of one of the main voices on location. Sometimes more abstract images work well too depending on the mood of the piece. Crop the image to be 640×360 to fit into a video format. Add your story title and credits using Canva – another free online graphics tool we love (we wrote an article on it too!).

Step 3. Then you will create the audiogram by heading to this website. Upload your cropped audio and image.

Step 4. Generate and download the audiogram as an mp4 and upload to social media.

Step 5. If you want to add captions to the Audiogram, head to Amara – an online captioning software which allows you to easily caption your video files. Download the captions as a VTT file. This is a great tool especially for Facebook and Instagram where people may want to watch the video with the sound off, or if you want to offer subtitles in your language to content that is in English (or vice versa).

So there you have it! Go ahead and make your own Audiograms to share on your station’s website, social media or blog!