Producing Your Own Podcasts
by Larry Slusser on December 14th, 2007
There are many reasons to produce your own podcast and put it on your site. First, if you are selling a product or service there is no better way to advertise than to tell people about your products or services. People respond well to voices and also will feel like they are getting to know you by listening to your voice. If you ever have a need to call them regarding anything, your voice will sound familiar. You could package it as an audio newsletter, audio product descriptions, however it would fit best with your niche.
Podcasting is a relatively new kind of technology that allows a person to download audio that can be listened to at a later time. It’s kind of like a book on tape, but you can download it straight off of the internet and listen to it when you want to, when it’s most convenient for your schedule.
How do I make and publish my first podcast?
The first step is research. Find out what other podcasts sound like and what other people are already doing in your niche. This is also a useful activity to remove any fears that all of the podcasts already produced would be of a highly professional quality – some are, but most are not!
There are many different types of software to choose from to record the content for your podcast. You can download several for free on Download.com, or find software like Propaganda 1.0. It offers a complete solution for the podcast creator. You can download the free trial to ensure it does everything you want it to, and then pay the $49.95 to activate the full version.
In terms of hardware, you just need a microphone headset like the one for Skype. They are inexpensive and the quality is acceptable.
For your content, make sure you have some music, maybe a fun sound effect or two, perhaps someone else’s voice for a sound bite or two to change up the sound a little. Talk about what you know, try to be animated, and let your expertise show off over the air waves.
Publishing Your Podcast
With the Propaganda software this is pretty easy as well. There are basically three steps to publishing your podcast.
1 – Create an MP3 file of the podcast. MP3 is the most common file format for podcasts. Propaganda will allow you to convert up to 16 tracks of audio into a single MP3 file and choose the most appropriate. Try something middle of the road and not too high in quality, or the file will be huge but too poor in quality.
2 – Save the MP3 file on your website or have your web designer handle that for you.
3 – Set up an RSS feed. Propaganda can do this for you as well with its publication feature. The RSS feed is a method that allows podcast players to find your podcast and subscribe to updates. When you produce a new podcast, it shows that you have updated this feed and the podcast players download the new podcast for the listener.
Promote Your Podcast
Get people listening! Your friends, family, colleagues, customers, get them downloading. Podcasting is growing in popularity, so it is a good time to get your own show up and running before your competition catches onto the idea.