Audio support for blog posts

Description: Here is an experiment in the implementation of audio in a professional subject blog as an exercise to boost its marketing mileage.

My Thoughts: About a week or so ago, I started thinking along the track of how other types of media can compliment the use of a blog.

It all started with me thinking that the continued explosion of the blogsphere means shorter attention span for the readers of this blog as time goes on! Although there are some great blog search tools, and aggregators out there to help you navigate through the clutter, I was wondering if alternate forms of media can make the actual blog easier to consume, or at least make it easier for the user to determine if they’d like to read your content. Therefore increasing its consumption rate?

My next challenge was the easy production of the content in a consistent manor. Sure, we can all sit there with a microphone and record a paragraph, but how many takes would it take to cut out those terrible um’s and uh’s? Not to practical if I plan to have an audio support file for every post!

Therefore I decided to quickly and easily apply a standard ‘text to speech’ program to create audio entries to compliment the postings of the blog. The computer voice provided a very consistent tone to all the entries, while being very quick and easy for me to update along with each blog entry. I also created a simple flash based .mp3 reader to embed in my standard, free, Blogger account to make the publishing process as painless as possible. (note: If youre interested, I can part with this system for a small fee!)

The marketing angle behind all this is, if my blog is easier to digest, then it will be read more, and go a long way to promote my for-hire thinking.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this experiment and my approach to its implementation, so please free to send me [ zmv@zarinmedia.com ]
a quick email giving me your feedback.