Attracting attention on social media is increasingly challenging with the increased noise caused by so many businesses using the platforms and the decline in organic click-through resulting from changes in the algorithms used. If you want to succeed, you need to take advantage of ways to grab the attention of users quickly. You don’t want to put a ton of work into your content and not get lost in the shuffle of social media, do you? Enter social media sound bytes.
The communication landscape is dominated by social media these days, and people’s attention span has shrunk because of the influx of information we all share. This requires ways to appeal to an audience in quicker, snappier ways that are easy to deliver and remember. Sound bytes themselves are the most effective way to do this.
Social media sound bytes are short messages or quotes pulled from a piece of content and are a great way to help boost the awareness of your social media and engagement with your audience. You might use short segments from a video or audio podcast that are attention-grabbing, with a hook for the audience you can share repeatedly. Without using sound bytes, you risk falling by the wayside and missing out on a great way to grow your audience.
Have you thought about using sound bytes on social media to grow your presence? Continue reading to find out what they are, how you use them effectively, and all the benefits they offer to help you reach your business goals!
Building a strategy for social media sound bytes
A sound bite is a short message, often no longer than 10 words, that describes the main idea of your content or sales message. It’s easy-to-remember, easy-to-quote, and often get shared by bloggers and by journalists. [source]
We’re all familiar with sound bytes, called sound bites in the 1970s, which involved pulling snippets from a longer interview to provide the essence of the longer content. Of course, the downside of these snippets is that, taken out of context, the sound bite may change the entire meaning of the original content. If you want to see some sound bytes in action, view any of the online newspapers to see how they pull out certain words or phrases from a story to draw in readers. Not only does this tactic encourage readers but it encourages them to read more of the content beyond the headline or first paragraph. Hence, a sound byte on social media encourages users to stop scrolling, read more of the post, and, at it’s best, encourage them to click back to your website where they might take actions like subscribing to your newsletter or buying a product.
Read on to learn how to build a strategy for these sound bytes.
Benefits of sound bytes
What are some of the benefits of using sound bytes that make everyone want to use them so much?
- Condensing content to motivate readers to action. For example, when promoting a new podcast, a great sound byte can spotlight a great moment and showcase all the best aspects of the content. When you only have a few short moments to give someone an idea of what something is all about, all that information needs to be condensed into that small clip.
- The other benefit of sound bytes is that you can share them on different platforms in various ways that are unique to the platform. Audiograms are great ways for podcast shows to give a visual element to their content that can grab attention on places like Twitter, where keywords and phrases can get highlighted.
- Some people like seeing a soundwave or a montage of images on display as the audio of the content is playing. Facebook sound bytes are also effective in the same way, but with a focus on a different ecosystem of social media.
- Sound bytes drive emotions and enhance mood.
- They’re a great tool to enhance engagement among users.
- A sound byte creates more brand awareness and helps you build stronger relationships with users.
How to make social media sound bytes
The most effective sound bytes are short, sweet, and to the point. They encourage others to share the content. Whether from a longer video or audio file, pulling sound bytes from your existing content is pretty simple.
First, create content using programs like Zoom, Audacity, Canva, Adobe, or anything similar. Then, you pull out good sound bytes to share on social media. You can even take out different clips and portions of the content to construct unique posts on platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and more. Remember, you always want to share unique content on different platforms to conform with the portion of your target market that uses that platform, platform norms and standards, and so users who follow you on multiple platforms don’t lose interest because you post the same thing across platforms.
A good sound byte should also reflect something worthy of sharing by your followers to generate another form of engagement among them. Engagement is the name of the game in social media to support your goals through amplification to new users and through improved SEO for your content marketing efforts.
The makeup of great sound bytes
Social media sound bytes that are popular often contain quotes that are very easy to remember, stoke users’ curiosity, and challenge preconceived notions about how things work. For instance, consider contrasting two points of view to emphasize a more important idea that is easy to understand. Most great speeches and quotes do this often because they are remembered very easily.
There are other ways to spot good sound bytes from content. These include:
- Moments where something is said in three portions. Our brains can only remember three items at a time, which makes quotes with three statements very effective. An example is an often-used phrase, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
- Subverting expectations. Subverting expectations is a more challenging way of making an excellent quote or pulling a sound byte. It requires focusing on something many find accurate and then countering it by showing how it isn’t accurate. This can mean saying something is a new norm or a better version of what came beforehand. It’s harder to accomplish this kind of sound byte, but it is highly effective in grabbing the attention of an audience when done right.
- Pulling a particularly impactful sentence or a few words from a testimonial has the impact you want from the entire testimonial without burdening readers to consume the entire piece of content, which means more people are influenced by the testimonial.
Tools for making sound bytes
Some social platforms have their own tools you can use for putting together sound bytes. But you can also create sound bytes from content using various other tools and methods to clip out segments to share on any platform.
Programs like Zoom, Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud apps, and others are great for capturing and editing content. But you can also combine content clops with other programs like Wavve and Temi to put together audiograms or transcribe content into text that you can re-share on social media platforms. While some programs require payment to use their services, many more are free and, while they may lack all the bells and whistles, they may do the job you need without the cost. So you might just have to be flexible in the number of programs you use rather than choosing an all-in-one service.
Using sound bytes to grow your business
Now that you read this succinct overview on using sound bytes on social media, you should better understand why they are so effective and an excellent solution for growth on any platform. With so much content oversaturating the internet nowadays, it’s become harder to stand out and increase one’s presence online. However, by using sound bytes to garner the attention of the audience you want to reach, you’ll be a step ahead of everyone else in the fast-moving world of social media.
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