How To Grow Your Audio Room Audience

As social media platforms gained momentum, the saga of ‘audio rooms’ began. 

Audio rooms are identical to discussion groups on Facebook, WhatsApp. 

The only difference is that people can chat with each other through live audio, instead of text and stickers.

Audio rooms are a new opportunity for businesses to enter the audio content field. As of now, audio-only platforms are gaining momentum and are not yet crowded. So, now is the best time to dominate. 

So, if you are new to audio rooms or if you are struggling to get people in your audio, you are at the right place. 

In this guide, we have explained how you can grow your audio room audience. So let’s get started. 

Remember, Audio Rooms Are About Connections, Not Room Size And Followers 

The core concept of audio social media is to grow quality networks. Although you might think that more people in audio rooms can be exciting, what matters, in the end, is the engagement.  Having a large number of people in your audio room does not guarantee an authentic connection and vice versa. 

Two Pillars of Audio Rooms

1. Value First Through High-Quality Content 

The core motive of any product should be to add value to a customer’s life. If the product fails to add value, it will perish sooner or later. Hence, marketing a low-quality product is just a waste of time and resources. No amount of money, magic, creative angles will grow and a stale audio room. 

So before you even try to crack a code on how to market your audio and attract people, first make sure it’s up to mark. 

But, what really makes a good audio room? A gold audio room has three distinct qualities: 

• Valuable: Listeners need to gain something from every conversation that happens in the audio room. They either learned a  new trick, skills, were very entertained or were satisfied. 
• Unique: This is self-explanatory. If you cannot even tell how your audio room stands apart from other audio rooms, you need to seriously reconsider your topics. Create a Venn diagram against others in your niche. If too much data seems common, focus on how you can refine your USP. 
• Sticky: What’s the point of creating an audio room, if people forget what they discussed. Your audio room needs to sustain audience interest and attention. If your current audio room audience is leaving room in between, consider how you can add more value and any they left. 

2. Time. Do You Have Enough Patience?

Time is another factor you need to consider. Rome wasn’t built in a day. So you audience will also take some time. 

Many audio room hosts consistently put and promote their content for 5 or 6 months before seeing upticks in their listenership. 

So, even if you have minimal to no audience, you need to be consistent when attracting people for audio rooms. Don’t get discouraged. It’s a long road to travel. 

Top Tips To Grow Your Audio Rooms While Keeping The Quality 

1. Decide How You Did Like To Run Room And Make Rules Clear 

As an audio room owner, you hold the power to create an environment you want. Yet get to set the stage, the tone and the speed of your audio room.

But, when you create an audio room, it’s important to have the rules clear. You don’t want random people talking about random topics. 

Have people follow the rules, so others who joined the room to find the value. Audio rooma can get messy faster, and the only way to control them is by setting up clear rules. 

Here’s the list of essential rules every audio room must have: 

• Set the agenda: What will people discuss in the room? Try not to steer away from the agenda. 
• How can people get on stage? Through raising hands, messages etc. 
• What topics are not allowed to discuss?
• What happens with users who break the room rules? Blocked, removed, report? Make it clear. 

You can set up any rule you want to ensure the quality of your audio room conversation stays intact. 

2.Use Audio Room Topics That Draw Users But Isn’t Too Niche To Get Boring 

If your audio room topic itself does not resonate with the audience, then they will hardly join your room. To make it resonate, you get topics that people genuinely have interest in. 

For example, Sales topic was the most popular theme on social audio by mentions and unique authors. According to Statista, it was mentioned over 20,000 times between January to February 2021. Topics like social media, deep tech, startups and business also gained momentum over the past year. 

Here’s how to select the topics of your audio rooms properly:

1. Does the topic interest you? You are the owner of the audio room. If you yourself do not enjoy the topic, do not have the passion to talk about it, forget growing your audience. 
2. Is the topic relevant? Is the audience room related to your business objectives? 

3. Be A Guest

Before you even ask people to join your room, contribute! Pitching yourself as a guest contributor in another audio room is a great way to introduce your content to a highly aligned and qualified audience. 

Focus on working with audio rooms that are in your niche and have a complementary audience.

You don’t need to be a special guest to contribute to other rooms. Audio Rooms on platforms like Breakout have a section where users can raise their hands to contribute on stage. 

If you are able to demonstrate your expertise on particular topics, chances are people will follow you and check out your profile. 

Breakout also allows you to find audio rooms in your niche. Simply use the search option and choose the active rooms to contribute. 

4. Invite Audio Influencers And Prominent Industry Leaders

Welcome a guest. These guests can be an audio influencer, industry expert or even your friend with valuable insights to share. 

Make it easy for them to promote your audio room. It has become industry standard to request guests to share your audio room, brand assets etc. 

Give them heads up before the audio room gets live. You can send a personalized email and include links, assets you want them to share with others. 

Finally, think about how you can be valuable to your guests. Ask them if they have an upcoming product or show to promote? Coordinate with them during live audio room discussions to maximize their exposure. 

5. Run Giveaways 

Who doesn’t like a free gift? Everybody does. The allure of free stuff and discounts is powerful motivation for many people to join your audience rooms. And once they get a taste of your content, who knows if they will become long term listeners. 

You can ask for reviews to help grow brand trusts for participating in your giveaway. Here are some cool ideas to run a giveaway for promoting your audio rooms. 

• Find a social media where most of your target audience hangs. For example, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube. 
• Post about giveaway. 
• Mention the rules. Eg To participate in the giveaway, please leave a review etc. 
• Announce the winners from the participants. 

Now, you have money, you can give cool things like your brand’s water bottle, T-shirt, shoes etc. 

Or if you lack money, you can mention them in your audio room, give them a shoutout or invite them as a guest. 

6. Start A NewsLetter

People are addicted to checking their emails. 1 in 5 people check their emails as soon as they get up in the morning. Which means, you have the opportunity to grab their attention before anyone else. 

But, remember these audio room subscribers will be different from your general marketing audience. So, it’s critical to differentiate your emails and be hyper focused on your content. 

Here are some examples of email you can send to your subscribers 

• New announcements
• Guest Contributors
• Behind the scenes
• Short snippets from the conversations 
• If you have set product, then product updates 

Don’t forget to add a CTA and link to your audio room in your email signature. Afterall it would be a shame to miss out on growing your room audience from these new contacts. 

7. Add Links On Your Social Media 

Alright, you have got plenty of choices when it comes to social media. But which one is perfect for you? 

The answer is, the social media that your audience uses the most. Before you launch the podcast, or if you have just launched the podcast, consider where your audience might hang. If you have a small community, ask your audience directly. 

Here’s how you can use social media to grow your audio rooms:

• Choose social media based on your niche : For more professional topics like marketing, sales, Linkedin might be the best suitable platform to share your audio rooms links for others to join. Instagram, Facebook on the other hand is a good platform if your niche are fashion, creativity, expression etc. 
• Leverage power of influencer marketing: What’s better than influencers to grow your audio rooms. Influencers have established an audience. When you partner with influencers, you gain access to this strong community. Partner with top influencers in your niche, ask them to promote your audio rooms. Don’t forget to check their conversion rates beforehand. Since, they can have over a million followers but can hardly get 1% engagement. 
• Create sound bites: Even seen the audio bite while scrolling through Instagram and Linkedin? As an audio room owner, you have plenty of audio content to share with your followers. Create shorts, punchy sound bites and share them on social media to help boost visibility. 

8. Build Team Of Moderators To Help You Grow And Network

Last but not least, content moderation is extremely important to keep the quality of your conversations intact. 

Moderation can be pretty complex on audio social media as compared to text. Though, audio-only apps like Breakout, have deep AI technology to search for audio content. 

Searchable texts and auto moderators have had some success, but human moderators have shown a high level of success to block people who don’t abide by community rules. 

Now, who is moderator exactly? Moderator is the host of the room and are responsible for maintaining a safe environment within audio rooms. A moderator has the authority to let people join the room and invite them to the stage. 

Ensure the moderator is trustworthy. Remember, they have the same power as you. They can allow people to join the conversation.

Going Forward

The Power of audio social platforms like Breakout lies in their ability to create deeper relationships that you might not be able to foster on other platforms. 

When people feel they know you more than anyone else they know in their circle, they get attached automatically.

Learning how to promote your audio rooms will need trial and error. Finding the right audio room marketing strategies will require testing a few different strategies before you find the one that suits you. Remember quality of the content is essense of your audio room. No amount of money, time will drive an audience if you share subpar content. 

In the end, audio rooms are all about making authentic connections. Yes you are sharing expertise and building a following, but they will only stay if they are able to connect with you.