These days, audio seems to be the norm for consuming information online. The number of people listening to Podcasts and audiobooks has been increasing exponentially.

According to Edison Research, the audience for podcasting grew significantly in the past year. Today, 51% of Americans have ever listened to a podcast, with 32% having listened in the past month, and 22% in the past week!

In addition, podcasting’s Share of Ear has more than doubled in five years, increasing 122% since 2014!

The increase in the usage of audio is for good reasons. Unlike reading that demands complete attention and focus, audio can be consumed passively. People can listen to audio content while taking a walk, commuting to work or exercising in the gym.

This behavior where people go about doing other things while listening to content is a powerful one and one that is increasingly becoming the norm.

How can you as a writer, take advantage of people’s listening behavior to engage, educate or inform them with your written content?

Enter Play.ht — A simple tool for converting articles to audio narrations using state-of-the-art artificial voices.

Here’s a simple step by step guide for creating audio versions of your Medium stories and making them available as podcasts to your audience using Play.ht.

Step 1: Download & Install the free Play.ht Chrome Extension

The first thing you need is the Play.ht Chrome Extension. You can download it from here — Play.ht Chrome Extension

Click on the ‘Add to Chrome for free’ button to download the extension from the Chrome store.

Click on ‘Add to Chrome’ button in the Chrome Web Store.

A Chrome Extension is a plugin for the Chrome web browser that adds custom functionality to your browser. The Play.ht Chrome Extension works inside Medium.com to make it easy for you to create and add audio in your Medium stories.

If you don’t use Chrome, follow this tutorial — Creating and embedding audio in your Medium stories from Play.ht dashboard.

If you have a blog on Wordpress, the Play.ht Wordpress Plugin will help you create audio versions of your blog posts.

Step 2: Create a free account

After completing the installation of the Play.ht Chrome Extension, you will be redirected to a Sign up page.

Create a free account by signing up with any of the options shown.

Why do you need to sign up? An account is needed to associate any audio you create, to you.

Step 3: Add Audio Narrations to Your Medium Stories

There are two ways of adding audio to your Medium story —

1. Adding audio to your already published stories