If in 2007 blogs were all the rage and almost anybody that was somebody online had one, today it’s podcasts. And with platforms like Anchor.fm offering free hosting and distribution, there really are no more excuses from getting on the bandwagon yourself!

A few days ago, Anchor was bought by the tech giant Spotify and with such acquisitions not happening without a really good reason, the direction of where voice communication and voice content is heading is clear.

Communication via voice is much more intuitive and much easier to consume than visual stimuli; if nothing else, you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks while driving, cycling and most other activities, but try doing the same while watching a video on YouTube and you’re most likely going to have a bad time! 

This is the main reason why I record all of my blogs and give anyone in my audience the ability to just listen to them (some people — me included — love listening and read only if no audio version is available).

So, the main point of today’s blog is how to incorporate voice into your social presence, especially if your main medium is visual.

Translating paintings into audio content isn’t really the greatest, and talking about any particular work without the listener being able to actually see the piece isn’t going to work. But what podcasts excel at is their ability to communicate one thing: our background, our story and our thoughts.

This does presuppose that we as creators know how to articulate ourselves in a way that is captivating and interesting for the listener. But the good news for anyone who isn’t really content with their ability at public speaking and verbal storytelling is, that if you’d like to grow as a creative and really make art your profession, you probably will have to master or at least get kind of good at it anyway. 

And podcasts can be an easy way of doing so, because it is more or less just you talking to your phone, and similarly when starting a YouTube channel (that would also be a great way of getting over any speaking and presentation anxiety one might have), you are in fact talking to yourself and even have the ability to replay your presentations and figure out the parts that need polishing.

Both are obviously much better alternatives to laying awake in bed the whole night after any social event and thinking about all the things we messed up or could’ve done better (we’ve all been there — it only gets better over time)!

So, podcasts. A wonderful and free medium to not only repurpose any videos you might already be doing (you really only have to export the audio track and post it!), but to spread your story to your followers and soon-to-be followers, where you could be sharing your background and why you create your art, how you came to be an artist and just what makes you tick.

Such information is incredibly valuable for your followers and collectors as this is really the core of what art is all about — story. And while posting images of our work online is still a good thing to do, to be honest everybody else is doing the same. And in a sea of millions of various art pieces — all just floating by people’s feeds — our chances of getting noticed are really slim.

But a podcast, this is where people come exclusively because of a certain type of content or a certain creator — you can’t really flick through audio and get the gist of it in the same way you can flick through images!

With the medium allowing for a more personal connection to form between the creator and the listener, it really is one of the best ways to communicate your dreams, ambitions and motivations. And to be honest, they’ll stick much better than any behind-the-scenes snap we could produce.