SoundCloud has built a sprawling network of streaming podcasts, audiobooks and music online–an easy way for writers to share audio content on websites, Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site.
On today’s edition of the Morning Media Menu, we interviewed SoundCloud audio content manager Evan Tenenbaum and collected advice for writers looking to use the audio platform. If you want to explore the network, check out the Books section or the Audiobooks section over at SoundCloud.
We’ve embedded the complete interview below, but here’s an excerpt:
“We’ve seen a lot of publishing companies embed the audio on their site. When you are embedding audio on your own site and folks are going there specifically to find that content, I’d recommend longer pieces–maybe a chapter or even a chapter and a half, leaving it at a cliff-hanger.”
Tenenbaum continued: “When you are looking to get your content on more social media feeds, especially Facebook, our attention spans are pretty short when you are on places like Facebook. My advice would be for a writer or a producer publishing a podcast: don’t put more than two to three minutes, if you are just looking to preview something. When somebody clicks on a piece of content and they see that they’ve just committed to a 10 or 15 minute listening experience (while they have all these other distractions going on), chances are they aren’t going to make it all the way thorough.”

He concluded: “We’ve seen some super exciting examples of writers and the publishing industry creating audio content and giving either audio snippets or previews of their books on SoundCloud or short stories, poems and things like that. That’s a matter of engaging with folks on a new platform. I love audio and I love reading, and I’ve discovered new books through the listening experience. It’s exciting to be on Facebook, SoundCloud, or wherever people are embedding audio to go to a website, listen to a piece of audio and realize you can listen to the rest as an audiobook or purchase the physical copy.”
For more advice, check out the SoundCloud 101 section on the social network.