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Audacity Updated
5/09/2008
The very popular among podcasters audio recording application, Audacity has received an update. Podcasting News has a full rundown of the changes, including many bug fixes. It is nice to see some interface fixes, too, as I’ve felt Audacity has always suffered on the UI side.
Got a Podcaster Birthday Coming Up?
2/14/2008
Don’t forget that I’ve put together the finest collection of gifts for your favorite podcasting friend, family member, neighbor, or stranger! This isn’t just a list for holiday gifts, but great to find something to buy for a birthday gift or something for yourself, too. Filled with books, hardware and more, the store is broken out into … Continue reading »
Greg Cangialosi on B2B Podcasting
2/13/2008
While on business and conference-going on the west coast, my co-author of The Business Podcasting Book Greg Cangialosi was interviewed today for the City Biz List about B2B podcasting. After a short introduction Greg gets right to the point about why podcasting matters to business:
Simply put, podcasting presents yet another opportunity for an … Continue reading »
Hardware Recommendations
- Kustom KM4 Mic with Cable
- Behringer XM8500 Microphone
- Shure SM58 Mic
- MXL MXL V63MBP Computer Desktop Recording Kit
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Ryan Irelan, Editor - listen@podcastfreeamerica.com
How to Promote Your Podcast
The essentials for promoting your podcasting and getting the word out.
P is for Promotion
Thanks to Ryan Irelan for asking me to contribute to Podcast Free America. I look forward to sharing my knowledge of the podcasting space with you the reader, and welcome any questions or comments you may have. So, lets jump right to it, continuing on the “ABC of Podcasting” series, my first post is P is for Promotion:
Are you ready to roll your podcast out to the world? If so, then you’ve already starting thinking about ways to promote yourself and your show. There are many ways to quickly kick off a promotional strategy, so assuming that you want to get the word out about your podcast, lets start of with some of the essentials:
Feed Management:
Get a Feedburner account. Feedburner is one of the most user friendly tools around to manage your podcast feed, the file that tells the world who you are and what your podcast is all about. It handles all of the necessary coding to make sure your MP3 files go along with your feed (enclosures), and it formats your feed for every browser, directory and reader around. One of the key directories is iTunes, which Feedburner also handles with ease. Submit your feed link to iTunes and Feedburner takes care of the rest. You can customize your feed, add a photo, and insert other metadata that goes along with your feed as its syndicated throughout the web. This information serves as your “face†in the podosphere. Feedburner also includes a suite of tools that you can use to publicize your podcasts feed. For example it gives you a slice of HTML that you can put on other websites that will syndicate your latest posts/ episodes, a badge that rotates your latest headlines or show titles, etc and lots of other useful things. So, to make things easy on yourself, before you start spreading the word, link yourself up with a Feedburner account to make life simpler, the best part about it is that its free. Once you have your feed in place, make it as easy as possible to subscribe to. Keep track of your subscribers closely (Feedburner provides a simple way to do this), as long as your subscriptions are going up then you know your doing the right things.
Gain Exposure:
Submit your podcast to various directories. Directories are a great promotional tool, because a lot of people search through them looking for podcasts on various niche topics. People generally can search terms or tags (keywords) that will link directly to your show information. Submit your feed and show information to as many of these as you can. Directories are free, so take advantage of these podcast portals.
Here are a few of the essentials that you need to be in:
- Odeo (create your own Odeo channel)
Write your posts with the search engines in mind. When I say that I mean to carefully consider your choice of words when you title your posts and write the copy that you describe your podcast with. Don’t over think it, but do give it some consideration. Google and the other search engines soak up website and blog posts relative results based on key word density and relevancy. Its amazing how many people find my blog and podcast via Google, simply based on the content I write to describe different things. Write well and write relevant and you will be surprised how many people find your blog/ podcast via the search engines.
Engage in the dialogue. Get the word out about your podcast by talking with other podcasters, comment on other podcaster sites, attend podcasting events, in short, get involved. This is one of the most effective ways to get your name out there. The more you dialogue with others, the more people get to know you. Word of mouth is absolutely the best form of promotion around, so talk to people about what your doing, ask them to tell a friend, exchange links, etc. If people dig what you’re doing podcast wise they will tell others, they will post and link to you, the more the merrier.
Become your own public relations machine. Depending on how much of a promotional push you want to give your podcast you may want to consider a true PR approach. If you’re a business, then you definitely want to get the word our from a public relations standpoint. The best way to do this is to craft a press release about your podcast. Explain your podcast, its subject matter, why it’s different, what its frequency will be and most importantly where it’s located. When you have completed the release and it is in its final format, then send it out via a news service, most notably PRNewsWire. This is a great tactic as the newswire feeds shoot directly into the major search engines, Yahoo, Google, etc. creating an almost instant set of inbound links to your blog / podcast and press release. Once again, keep in mind your writing and relevancy of keywords when writing your press release for the benefit of the search engines.
Measure:
Good analytics are key. This is an essential part of your promotional strategy for a few reasons. Most importantly to see how much traffic your generating and most importantly where its coming from. This allows you to further gage what’s working and what’s not. Google Analytics or SiteMeter are free services that are easy to implement. Some of the key metrics to be looking at are unique and aggregate hits to your podcasts blog / website, and the referring URL’s, in other words, where people are finding your site, ex. search engines, most importantly what search term was used to find your listing. Was it a link from another blog, a comment you left on someone else’s blog, etc.. These types of analytics are a very resourceful tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your promotional strategy.
I hope this information helps you get the word out about your podcast, feel free to comment or ask me any questions you may have via email, I am at gcangialosi at gmail dot com.
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