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It used to be that Snapchat was seen as a platform geared mostly toward teens and pre-teens. But over the last several years, Snapchat has added features and made changes that have helped to move it into a much broader space.

No longer is it a niche photo-messaging service — it’s become an established media platform valued at over $19 billion and with over 161 million daily users. As for the age range of its user base, eMarketer reports that 34% of all Snapchat users in the U.S. are between the ages of 18 and 24, and comScore found that 69% of U.S. smartphone users ages 13 to 24 use Snapchat.

That’s why brands from every industry and with all manner of target demographic — from Sour Patch Kids to General Electric, and even HubSpot — are using Snapchat to connect with fans and customers in a way that’s low-cost, but highly personal and engaging. You’ll notice the content these brands post on Snapchat isn’t polished: it’s raw and scrappy and fun. After all, Snapchat is all about letting your brand personality shine and relating to your target audience on a totally human level.

Before we list the best brands to follow on Snapchat, let’s be sure we all know how to follow brands on Snapchat and view content in the first place.

(Click here to skip ahead to the best brands on Snapchat.)

How to Follow Brands on Snapchat

To follow brands on Snapchat, you’ll first have to make a Snapchat account of your own. Snapchat accounts are nothing fancy: no profile picture, no bio, no URL to your website. All you really have to do is download the free Snapchat app (for iOS here or for Android here), and then create an account by entering your email, a username, and a password.

Once you’ve made an account, you’re ready to find and follow brands (and other users).

Step 1: Open the Snapchat app and swipe down on your screen. You’ll be taken to your home screen (below).

Step 2: On the home screen, add friends by clicking the “Add Friends” option.

Step 3: Time to add some friends. You can add friends in a few ways: by username, from your address book (i.e. your phone’s contacts list), by Snapcode, or from someone nearby.

To add folks by username, you’ll have to type in exact usernames to find people, as there is no account suggestion option like other social networks have. For example, Sour Patch Kids’ Snapchat username is @sourpatchsnaps, not @sourpatchkids — but you’ll have to type that.

To add a user by scanning a Snapcode, simply take a picture or screenshot of a user’s Snapcode with your mobile device. Then, find the “Add by Snapcode” option by following the steps outlined above, and choose the photo you took of the Snapcode. The app will recognize the Snapcode and add the person automatically.

(The list of brands below includes each brand’s Snapcode, so if you’re reading this post on your mobile device, you can try adding these brands on Snapchat by screenshotting the Snapcodes as you read. Then, later, open the Snapchat app and find “Add by Snapcode” — and you can add each brand one-by-one by finding the corresponding screenshot in your saved photos.)

Step 4: Once you follow the brands you want on Snapchat, you can view Snapchat content the same way you’d view your friends’ Snapchat Stories: Open the Snapchat app, and then swipe the whole screen left to get to your Stories.

Brands aren’t set apart from other users, so you’ll have to find the brands among your friends. Click on a brand’s username to view its Story.

Now that you know how to find and follow brands on Snapchat and view Stories, let’s get into the best brands to follow on Snapchat.

14 of the Best Brands on Snapchat

1) Sour Patch Kids

Username: @sourpatchsnaps

Many of the earliest adopters of Snapchat were teenagers, which gave the snack company, Modelez, an incentive to hop on the platform to promote its Sour Patch Kids candy brand.

In 2014, one of the company’s major goals was to grow awareness among its core demographic: candy-loving teenagers in the United States. Because teenagers were reportedly spending more and more time on Snapchat, the brand decided to go there to create fun content teens could share with one another.

The video below is an excerpt from one of its first campaigns back in 2014, called “Real-life Sour Patch Kid.” For the campaign, the company teamed up with Logan Paul, a social media influencer and comedian, who spent five days recording pranks around New York City via Snapchat. It was a play off the brand tagline, “First they’re sour, then they’re sweet,” as the pranks went from “sweet” at the beginning of the five days to more “sour” pranks as the week went on.

Each month, new Stories were released showing the “Real Sour Patch Kids” acting like regular teenagers. Below is an example of them showcasing their “favorite Halloween costumes”:

Source: Shorty Awards

More recently, Sour Patch Kids started experimenting with Snapchat Spectacles to film a Tasty on BuzzFeed-style “recipe” video — although it’s not quite the same. The Snapchat Story purports to show viewers how to bake cookies with Sour Patch Kids in them, but the baker is as mischievous as the candy Kids. This silly snap showcases the fun and prankster spirit the brand is known for while also demonstrating the neat circular video filmed using Spectacles.

Source: Ad Age

2) Everlane

Username: @EVERLANE

The retail company Everlane was another early Snapchat adopter, but with an even more daring approach to the then-new social platform. In November 2015, it wrote this on its official blog: “We’re here to make a bold claim. Snapchat is going to become the de-facto social channel for Everlane. Over the past month, we’ve been testing it in small batches and we’re in love.”

Why did Everlane love it so much? Because it found it was an even better way to showcase its radical approach to transparency than other social networks like Facebook.

“Facebook is a spot for updating our community and having one on one conversations,” read the post. “But Snapchat is completely different. Snapchat gives us the chance to explore transparency in a completely new way. No fancy cameras. No editing. Just raw, live, footage. It’s beautiful, and it’s the platform for the modern generation.”

Almost two years later, Everlane hasn’t turned back. The folks at Everlane use Snapchat as kind of a backstage pass into its ecommerce business, events, and culture. It uses the Snapchat Story feature to create narratives around giving tours of Everlane spaces, interviewing customers in brick-and-mortar stores, and previewing new products. As Everlane’s social media lead told Business Insider,

We’re trying to find little bits of what’s going on here daily at headquarters to share with our consumers. I think it’s a rare opportunity for them to see how a brand is being built day in and day out. A lot of bigger companies have already established their brand, so what they’re seeing is something that’s a finished product, whereas we have such a long way to go.”

On #TransparencyTuesday, for example, Everlane uses Snapchat to record a walkthrough of its business or factories — every single one of which team members personally visit.

Source: Tech Insider

The social team also personally answers questions sent via Snapchat:

Source: Tech Insider

3) Cisco

Username: @wearecisco

Let’s face it, networking and telecommunications technology aren’t the most engaging topics on social media. (To be honest, I’m not totally sure what those mean.)  So instead of trying to explain or show highly technical devices on its Snapchat channel, Cisco showcases the other side of its organization: the humans who work there.

In Cisco’s “Day in the Life of an Account Manager” Snapchat series, it chronicles the workday of an account manager as he or she visits different cities and plans on behalf of Cisco. Using emojis, jokes, and lenses, the star of the Story gives the brand a more human side.

Cisco’s Snapchat is a great lesson for B2B marketers who want to engage on social media but aren’t certain of the subject matter. If you don’t think your product or service is that exciting, focus on other aspects of your organization, such as the company culture or lives of employees. Things like events, parties, and behind-the-scenes tours will give your brand personality and will give you more ideas for content to feature.

4) General Electric

Username: @generalelectric

Would you ever have guessed that General Electric, a multinational conglomerate corporation, would have an active and effective presence on Snapchat?

The brand has actually done an awesome job of using its platform to showcase its geeky personality and to encourage interest in science — something GE has done well on other social media networks like Instagram and YouTube.

One of the best ways GE uses the platform is in a series in which it answers users’ questions by explaining scientific concepts in a concise and fun way. For example, it recently shared some of its findings from its emoji science curriculum, which GE established along with the National Science Foundation.

.@WhiteHouse In honor of the #WHScienceFair we’re doing some #EmojiScience on our Snapchat. Check it out! cc: @POTUS http://pic.twitter.com/WWjeIWicbp

— General Electric (@generalelectric)
April 13, 2016

In addition to sharing emoji science findings, GE also encourages Snapchat followers to interact directly. “Just add ‘generalelectric’ on Snapchat, send us an emoji, and we’ll send you some science,” GE wrote on its Tumblr. Here’s an example of the “science” followers might get in return:

GE’s global director of innovation Sam Olstein said about Snapchat, “The disappearing nature of its content encourages repeat usage and provides us with a unique way to celebrate invention with an expanding community of young fans.”

(To learn more about GE’s creative content, check out this episode of The Growth Show.)

5) Gatorade

Gatorade doesn’t have a Snapchat account of its own, but thanks to its epic sponsored lens Snapchat at the Super Bowl last year, we think it deserves a place on this list. (Note: A Snapchat lens is essentially a creative filter for your selfies. It’s what you see when your friends send Snapchats of them puking rainbows. Learn how to use Snapchat lenses here.)

Here’s what Gatorade did: When a football team wins a game, it’s customary that the team dumps whatever sports drink is in the team cooler onto their coach’s head. During the Super Bowl football game in 2016, the folks at PepsiCo-owned Gatorade released a genius Super Bowl Snapchat lens that let anyone give themselves a Gatorade bath, too.

Image Credit: Adweek

To create the ad, the folks at Gatorade partnered with Snapchat to purchase a sponsored lens, which costs around $450,000 per sponsored lens on normal days, and up to $750,000 on “peak days” like holidays and the Super Bowl.

Then, Gatorade had professional tennis player Serena Williams — whom Gatorade sponsors — star in the ad above. The ad shows her getting virtually “dumped on” by a cooler of orange Gatorade, thanks to the lens. The company tweeted out a GIF of the Snapchat to get the momentum going, and by the end of the day, the sponsored lens had reportedly been viewed over 100 million times.

6) Warby Parker

Username: @warbyparker

At Warby Parker, Snapchat is used for a variety of topics: everything from showcasing products (“Today on Snapchat, we try on our favorite Crystal frames in 15 seconds”) to giving users a chance to hear from the company’s co-founder Neil Blumenthal (“Our co-founder Neil Blumenthal is inside the secret room today. Tune in on Snapchat as he answers your questions!”).

Warby Parker has several Snapchat series, including one called “Desk Job.” In one recent Snapchat Story, Warby Parker featured one of its brand creative managers for his five desk essentials. Once a Snapchat Story is up, the brand promotes them on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. (I noticed it didn’t promote them on Facebook, which is probably a good thing: On Facebook, it’s important not be selective about what you publish and focus on quality, rather than quantity, of posts.)

Tune into Snapchat for Desk Job—today, Brand Creative Manager Matt discusses his five desk essentials! http://pic.twitter.com/QblOWLOv2x

— Warby Parker (@WarbyParker)
April 19, 2016

7) GrubHub

Username: @grubhub

GrubHub, also an early Snapchat adopter, has been putting out content on about a weekly basis since late 2013. But Grubhub uses Snapchat a little differently than many of the folks on this list. Rather than producing one-way content, GrubHub focuses on building out an active community by sending out Snapchat messages that require responses, like exclusive coupons, contests, giveaways, and promotional codes.

The screenshots below are from a story it released where followers could send back a Snapchat of a “food doodle” for a chance to win a prize. (You can watch the Story in its entirety here.)

Image Credit: Fast Company

During the 2016 holiday season, GrubHub set out to “deliver joy” by posting Snapchat Stories filmed from the perspective of a delivery person wearing Snapchat Spectacles. Snapchat is all about authentic, behind-the-scenes looks at a brand, and most people don’t think of the point-of-view of a delivery person when they think GrubHub. This campaign gave the brand a more personable, human side while showcasing some cool new tech.

8) The New York Times

Username: @thenytimes

The writers, editors, and other folks at The New York Times use Snapchat a little differently — sometimes poking fun at their misunderstanding of it, other times using it as a storytelling platform (and then analyzing it in writing later).

For example, check out the Snapchat Story below from Nick Bilton, one of The Times’ writers. The Story is very meta: It shows his friend teaching him how to use Snapchat so he can write a story for The Times about how to write Snapchat Stories.

Like other brands, it’s very much a raw, behind-the-scenes look into the life of the writer. “I’m not actually writing right now. I’m just kind of pretending,” says Bilton at one point during the Story.

Here’s another example of a Snapchat Story from The Times that’s a little more serious. This one was part of an analysis of what makes an objectively good Snapchat Story, which later culminated in this piece by Talya Minsberg. For the piece, she recruited journalists at The Times to participate in a mobile challenge to create an objectively good Snapchat Story.

So, what makes an objective good Snapchat Story? Minsberg says it’s nearly impossible to define, but “the best Snapchat stories generally are ones that tell a narrative in a personal, visual way that pulls in and keeps the viewer.”

Another important takeaway from her piece is this: “Even Snapchat stories must uphold the same standards as anything else published by The Times. There are just more doodles and emojis in a Snapchat story than you would see in print!”

9) DJ Khaled

Username: @djkhaled305

DJ Khaled may not be your typical brand, but he has single-handedly redefined the celebrity presence on Snapchat — and there’s a lot brands can learn from him. In March 2016, less than a year after DJ Khaled had even heard of the app, it was reported that his Snapchats were attracting around 3 million to 4 million viewers each.

What’s his secret? First, his style of shooting videos is really effective. He likes to pair mundane daily routines — like putting on deodorant and watering his plants — with funny commentary and one-liners.

He has some mantras he repeats like “another one” and “bless up,” which he’s parlayed into some really expensive merchandise. He also likes to share “keys to wisdom,” and even got his own geofilter on a road trip to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve (which anyone can do, by the way).

The combination of backstage pass-like topics, hilarious one-liners, and fun use of emojis makes Khaled’s account very shareable and followable.

10) Domino’s Pizza UK

Username: @DOMINOS_UK

The folks at Domino’s Pizza have never been afraid to experiment with new social media channels. It was the first brand to use Tinder as part of a 2015 Valentine’s Day campaign, and its “Tweet to Eat” campaign let fans order pizza via Twitter by sending a pizza emoji.

As for its global presence, Dominos’ social media teams around the world have adopted the platform at different times. For example, Domino’s Australia started using Snapchat as early as 2013, sending out Snapchat Stories (like the one screenshot below) that aligned with campaigns the brand was doing elsewhere on social media.

Image Credit: brandchannel

The U.K. team at Domino’s Pizza didn’t get on Snapchat until January 2016, but it started out with a pretty cool experiment that led to a lift in orders. On January 20, 2016, Domino’s U.K. turned its Snapchat Story into a short film, titled “Dough to Door.”

The film follows the journey of a Domino’s delivery driver who hits a few obstacles on his way to deliver a pizza to a customer — including an alien invasion. According to The Drum, it also showed a sequence of random letters throughout the film that amount to an exclusive discount code customers could then use online.

The folks at Domino’s found that the low-budget effort led to an increase in orders. “The film drove a lot more orders then we would’ve expected even though it wasn’t really a massive driver for us,” Nick Dutch, Dominos’ head of digital strategy, told Business Insider.

Because Snapchat doesn’t offer much in the way of analytics (unless you are using Snapchat for paid advertising), the only way Dutch’s team was able to attribute that increase in orders to Snapchat was because of the unique discount code — so keep that in mind when you’re creating Stories of your own.

11) The Washington Post

Username: @washingtonpost

The Washington Post uses Snapchat to cover breaking news stories. In fact, starting this year, the newspaper will begin covering breaking news for Snapchat. The Washington Post covers each and every breaking political and news story out there, and by sharing Snapchat coverage, the paper can provide its followers with a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going on in Washington much faster than if reporters had to write up and publish an article.

Here’s a Snapchat Story The Post recently published about the President’s joint address to Congress. The story features narration and captions to explain what’s going on, behind-the-scenes details, and includes short video hot-takes with members of Congress that viewers wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Check it out below:

In just a few minutes, The Washington Post used Snapchat to cover a story that might require a lot more time to read or watch on the news. If you create content for a blog or publication that covers breaking news, experimenting with Snapchat might be an easy way to get stories out faster.

12) NASA

Username: @nasa

NASA publishes fantastic explainer video series on its Snapchat, and it makes them entertaining and easy to follow whether you’re a space nerd or a casual visitor. It uses Snapchat to cover breaking news stories about space, to explain complicated concepts, and to interview people.

In the Snapchat Story below, NASA reviews the return of Astronaut Scott Kelly a year after the end of his yearlong space mission. It also hypes a new study NASA is running based on DNA samples from Kelly and his twin brother to investigate the viability of long-term human missions to Mars.

This story is undeniably cool — who isn’t curious about what’s on Mars? It’s also a well-constructed Snapchat Story that uses narration, images, text, and emojis to tell a story quickly and effectively.

13) Bustle

Username: @bustledotcom

Bustle uses its Snapchat channel to produce original or repurposed content in the same style as content on its website: listicles. Bustle produces a ton of entertaining and informative list-style content, and it features instructional videos and lists in step-by-step format on Snapchat.

In this Snapchat Story, Bustle provides DIY beauty instructions in a fun, easily replicable way. The useful and affordable beauty hack caters to its target audience of real women.

In another Story, Bustle creates a Snapchat version of a Black History Month booklist. It echoes the structure of a lot of its list-style blog posts. The summaries are a nice touch to pique viewer interest, too.

Marketers can easily create original or repurposed content in this Snapchat format. Break down a recent blog post, give followers advice, or simply record a behind-the-scenes look at how your organization does a common process. It’s unique, engaging, and doesn’t require a ton of creative lift behind it.

14) HubSpot

Username: @hubspotinc

While there are a lot of B2C brands doing cool things with Snapchat, there are far fewer B2B companies that have successfully built a following. This is a challenge we wanted to take on here at HubSpot, which is why we launched our Snapchat channel in March 2016.

To make our Snapchat channel valuable, we’re using it to serve as both a marketing and a recruiting channel — a place where we can showcase our unique culture and perks, our awesome employees, and the inbound philosophy.

On the marketing side, we like to give followers a good look inside the company and showcase our culture. The goal here is to be educational, informative, and lovable, which are very familiar goals on our marketing team.

For example, when MTV News Editor Rachel Zarrell (formerly of BuzzFeed News) came to HubSpot to speak about viral content, we showcased some of her talk — and what employees thought about it afterward — on Snapchat.

On the culture side, we want to position HubSpot as a destination — and hopefully spur viewers to check out our other online offers like our blog, website, careers page, and so on. The key for us is using a human voice that fits in the Snapchat world, rather than a voice that’s stuffy or ultra-professional.

We’re also committed to community service and involvement, so we like to feature that aspect of our culture on Snapchat, too. Here are our chronicles of a recent bone marrow registry drive we hosted for HubSpot employees:

What are your favorite brands to follow on Snapchat? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

When you’re trying to get somewhere — by foot, train, bus, or car — how do you pass the time?

I’m one of those people who always has to be listening to something. Whether it’s a new Spotify playlist or the latest episode of a podcast, I use pretty much every opportunity to consume audible content.

I’m hardly the only one who’s partial to audio in this way. According to the 2016 Edison Research Infinite Dial report, despite our content consumption becoming increasingly digital, we still love sound and sound alone. Online radio listenership, for example, has increased by 35% since 2005. But what does that have to do with us? 

We believe that this listening behavior creates a tremendous opportunity for marketers — especially those in the B2B sector — to create branded, audible content. Audio is often associated with consumer marketing, but those kind of assumptions create a missed opportunity for B2B brands. After all, here at HubSpot, we create content for marketing and sales professionals in a variety of formats, and if you read our blog, it’s no secret that we’re constantly nagging you to do the same — even with audio. So let’s explore the ways that can be done, starting with a look at the science behind the act of listening.

The Listening Process

Before you start creating audio content, it might be helpful to understand how and why people listen. The act of listening, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to hear what someone has said and understand that it is serious, important, or true.”

It also helps satisfy different physiological goals. We listen to alter our moods, stay alert, and figure stuff out. In humans, that’s been the case for pretty much as long as we’ve been in existence. The process starts when we receive auditory stimuli, which our brains then have to interpret. That’s aided by other senses — like sight — and helps us better figure out what we’re hearing.

Once our brains have interpreted these auditory signals, we follow a series of steps that consist of recalling, evaluating, and responding to the information we consume:

Source: Matthew Edward Dyson

It’s that third step in the process — recalling — that might be the most important one for marketers. Numerous studies have discovered how listening triggers a widespread network of activity throughout the brain. That activity is what links auditory stimuli so strongly to memory.

That might be why we love to talk about things we’ve heard, like a great song, for example. We’re actually sharing a story about our memory of what we heard. And that comes back around to what we do as marketers. We share the stories of and about our brands in a way that will get people to pay attention and listen to us.

So, let’s get started, and begin creating content that people will listen.

4 Ways to Use Audio in B2B Marketing

1) Podcasts

Branded Podcasts

According to Edison Research, podcast listenership has been on a steady rise since 2006 — in fact, it’s grown by 25 percentage points. 

Source: Edison Research

People often make the mistake of thinking that podcasts are largely consumer-facing. We think of those that are aired on public radio or hosted by celebrities for the masses of bored commuters trying to pass the time. But in reality, there are a number of B2B podcasts out there, like Duct Tape Marketing, ZenDesk’s Relate, and HubSpot’s The Growth Show.

But when it comes to creating branded podcasts, many B2B marketers make similar objections that we used to hear about blogging — such as, “I don’t have time,” or, “I don’t have anything to say.” Podcasts, like blogs, follow the pillars of inbound marketing, in that you’re creating valuable, educational content for people who are searching for information on what your business does best. That’s one way The Growth Show works, for example. Because HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and CRM software comprise a growth stack, we use our podcast to discuss related topics with business leaders who have accomplished notable growth, and who have good stories.

“Companies — especially B2B companies — have such a hard time telling their organization’s story,” says Kierran Petersen, The Growth Show’s associate producer. “Creating a branded podcast is the perfect opportunity to do that. It’s such a personal way to give people insight into what you do, by showing your audience who you actually are.”

That’s where the answer to the second objection — “I don’t have anything to say” — comes in. When people tell us that’s why they can’t invest time in blogging, we usually say, “Write what you know.” The same thing goes for podcasting, but instead of writing, you’re speaking about what you know. And for some, that might even come easier than writing.

Of course, creating a branded podcast isn’t as simple as recording 30 minutes of stream-of-thought remarks on your business. It helps to approach this content creation the same way you would for a blog, and create an editorial calendar to plan and outline different topics, as well as people who you’d like to interview. You should also consider how you’re going to distribute that content and the different platforms that your audience can use to consume the podcast. For beginners, we recommend free tools like SoundCloud, or experimenting with different ways to share the audio across social media.

Repurposing Blogs as Podcasts

If you’re still feeling a bit uncertain about creating an original podcast, you can start on a smaller scale by repurposing your existing content. On some blogs, you may have come across the option to listen to an audio version of the post. That’s one fairly easy way for businesses to create original audible content — take what you’ve already written, and turn it into a spoken-word version.

There are several ways to pull that off. Some brands turn their blog posts into full-blown podcasts of varying length, complete with an introduction, music, quotes, and sound effects. That’s what National Public Radio — better known as NPR — often does with its various news stories. Notice how this piece, for example, has both full text and audio, the latter of which can be heard below.

But others, like The Atlantic, take a different approach, and dictate the full text of articles, treating it like an audiobook. Check it out:

There’s no “right” way to repurpose existing content for audio this way — that largely depends on the length of the piece, or if you want to abridge the writing for the spoken word. The important thing to remember is that it’s not impossible, and with a bit of creativity, there are numerous ways for B2B marketers to create audible content of this kind.

2) Audiograms

Snippets

In February, you may have noticed that HubSpot’s co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, penned a special post on the Marketing Blog dedicated to the 2016 year in review. But it didn’t end there. Across our online presence, HubSpot distributed year-in-review messages in various formats, including nifty little audiograms.

“But what’s an audiogram, Amanda?”

I thought you might ask that. Well, an audiogram is a snippet of — imagine that — audio that overlays a still image. We curated a collection of these on our website, and posted some on Facebook, like this quote from Bertie Ocampo, Hubspot’s APAC event & field marketing manager.

Audiograms can be shared on Instagram, too, which is “mobile first, so odds are good that folks will have their headphones in,” says Marissa Emanuele, HubSpot’s social media manager. But she encourages providing context — don’t just post a snippet over a picture and expect people to understand its purpose. “Audiograms are always better,” she explains, “if they incorporate text or captioning of some kind.”

… Or Longer

This strategy can also work with longer audio files, says Chelsea Hunersen, a social media manager at HubSpot. “We’ve shared some videos,” she says, for example, “that play an episode of The Growth Show, with an image that says, ‘this is audio’.”

That means you can use this same technique with audio samples that are “longer than 30 seconds,” says Hunersen. So when you’re thinking about ways to distribute your podcasts, here’s one — consider turning them into audiograms, or pairing them with these images-as-video.

3) Facebook Audio

Source: Facebook

In December 2016, Facebook announced its latest live content feature: Live Audio. “Sometimes,” read the official announcement, “publishers want to tell a story on Facebook with words and not video.” That’s usually due to two reasons:

1. Audio is often a bit lower-maintenance than video, in that it requires less hardware — like cameras — and lower connectivity.
2. It’s also a bit easier on the listener. “Audio is a really low commitment way to consume content,” explains Hunersen. “I can have the audio open in my browser and listen to something like I would a podcast, even if I don’t watch it at the same time on Facebook.”

Facebook Live Audio has flown a bit under the radar since this announcement, and it’s unclear whether or not it’s actually available to marketers yet — so far, we haven’t seen it used. Plus, Hunersen explains, “It’s supposedly only available on Android” devices.

But it does present another audio content distribution option for marketers, however: To double a podcast recording as a Facebook Live broadcast.

How does that work, exactly? Well, perhaps you’ve seen videos of radio hosts broadcasting live videos of themselves in the recording studio, and sharing a visual version of the interviews they’re conducting, for example. Here’s one example of a German radio station that created this kind of content with independent musician Astronautalis:

While that example might fall into the B2C realm, it can easily be adapted by B2B organizations. It also shows how a Facebook Live stream of your podcast recording or interview can be repurposed as pre-recorded video later on. Film a brief intro from your guest, and follow it with a clip of one of the most interesting moments from the conversation. It also brings up a great way to keep the audience engaged — ask them for questions they’d like to ask your guest in real-time.

4) Other Spoken Content

When marketers set out to create content, accessibility isn’t always something that’s top of mind. For individuals with visual impairment, for example, something like an infographic or a flowchart isn’t the most consumable piece of content.

That’s just one reason why adapting your visual and written content into audio versions can be so valuable. Not only does it create a way to consume what you’ve created in a portable way, but also, you’re making it available to a broader audience.

It’s like creating audible versions of books, for example — that allows people to enjoy or consume novels or nonfiction when reading isn’t an option, like while driving. B2B marketers can do the same thing with their ebooks and whitepapers. But be certain that it’s still interesting to the listener. There’s nothing less engaging, for example, than a computerized dictation of written content. When you record the spoken versions of this content, make sure it’s read aloud by someone who can bring energy to the words, instead of just reciting them in a monotone fashion.

Start Talking

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited. I feel a newfound motivation to get out there and create something for people to listen to, and I hope you do, too.

As these examples show, using audio in B2B marketing doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking — it can be as simple or as large-scale as you want, depending on your resources. You can create something completely new, or repurpose what you’ve already got.

Just remember: Always keep it engaging. And whatever you create, we can’t wait to hear it — we’ll be here, listening.

How have you used audio in your marketing? Let us know in the comments.