Umano now lets you narrate your blog posts and written articles

The next big opportunity for written content might actually be audio broadcasts, if audio publishing service Umano has anything to say about it.

Today the company announced that it’s rolling out a new Umano for Writers feature that will allow authors to narrate their written content to increase the number of people consuming it — or at the very least, give them an option to read or listen. The service is free and acts as an extension of the text-to-audio service Umano already provides by hiring voice actors to read content. [Disclosure: Umano has a partnership with VentureBeat.]

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The company said authors can turn a 2,000-word article into an audio story in about 10 minutes, and those that use the service will also have access to analytics to help track and grow their audience. Those who would like to listen to an article rather than read it only need to press a button located on the article page (usually located near the social sharing buttons).

I can see Umano for Writers becoming very useful with the increase of connected cars thanks to Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Drive operating systems, which optimize mobile applications for automobiles. Anyone who wants to keep up with the news while exercising may also find it handy.

Umano was launched out of San Francisco, Calif.-based startup SoThree, which has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to date from Digital Garage and Birchmere Ventures.