Podcasting

In the previous article of this three part series on adding audio to your blog we explored Talkr.com as a solution for offering text to speech audio publishing on your blog. In this article we’re going to cover the fundamentals of what it takes to include a podcast in your blog posts. Podcasting is very popular and a natural extension of blogging.

But, before we get into the how of podcasting, let’s take a quick look at why you might want to add podcast audio to your blog in the first place.

To start, podcasting is the “in demand” thing. It offers portable content to busy people who are on the move. Today’s mobile lifestyle is all about doing things when you want and not when “the schedule” says it can be done. In this way podcasting has transformed the way people take in information online. They download it and stick it on their MP3 players. They listen to it in their cars and at their desks, while they exercise and while they clean the house. If you want your audience to take your content with them wherever they go, then podcasting can help you do that.

Podcasting also lets your audience listen to your content over and over again. When something is valuable to them they may listen to it several times before they delete it. If it’s particularly valuable to the people they know they might share it with their friends. If you want your content listened to again and again, and possibly distributed for you for free, then podcasting can help you do that.

Podcasting adds a level of value to your content that isn’t available otherwise. This value is offered to your audience in the form of portable content and to you as rich reusable content. Valuable audio content on a particular topic can be bundled with printed materials, video content, software, or other audio to create a custom package that people will pay for. The ability to re-purpose audio content is a great way to leverage your past efforts and increase value to your audience. If you want to increase the value of your content, then podcasting can help you do that too.

How Do I Add Podcasts To My Blog Posts?

So what is podcasting and how do I add it to my blog posts? Simply put podcasting is nothing more than “attaching” an MP3 file to an existing RSS feed. The MP3 file is attached to the RSS feed by adding a special tag called an Enclosure tag to the RSS feed. The Enclosure tag tells blog aggregators and podcatchers that there is an MP3 associated with your blog post and it provides the download location of the file. The aggregator or podcatcher can then download that MP3 to the listener’s computer. From there the listeners can put the file on their iPod or MP3 player of choice.

We won’t examine how to create the enclosure tag in this article, but if you are using Wordpress as your blogging platform, then you already have support for enclosures built in. Wordpress looks for links in your blog post that point to MP3 files. If it finds one when you publish your post, then it will automatically creates the enclosure tag for you. This means all you have to do is create your MP3, upload it to your public download space, and link to it in your blog post. Wordpress will do the rest of the work for you.

How Do I Create MP3 Files?

So now that we know what a podcast is, how it benefits us, and how we can attach it to our blog posts, now we need to talk about how to create an MP3 file for uploading to our download site.

A free and simple solution that I recommend to everyone is Audacity. Audacity is open source audio recording software that lets you easily record audio using your computer and an attached microphone. The software is easy to operate and has very few buttons. The look and feel is very similar to a CD player or tape deck so you will immediately know what to do. This means the learning curve to operate the software is almost non-existent. This is good news for anyone who just wants to record audio but doesn’t want to become a sound engineer.

Audacity will let you save your audio in several different formats. For the purpose of podcasting you should save your finished audio in MP3 format. This is the most popular format due its small file size.

What Kind Of Microphone Do I Need?

You can pick up a decent headset microphone from your local office supply house, or major retailer. Don’t get the cheap hand held stick microphone. The sound quality is poor on these and you will end up with rustling and hand noise when you use it to record. A headset microphone works the best and it will leave your hands free to do other things. The average cost of a headset microphone is only $15 USD and it is worth it. You don’t have to get fancy or spend a lot of money to create a podcast.

Where Should I Store My Podcast Files?

There are three main factors to consider when choosing a storage solution for your podcast files. Those three factors are storage space, bandwidth, and download speed. These days it’s easy to find solutions that cover the first two, storage space and bandwidth, but finding a provider that offers fast download speeds is the trick.

Storage space refers to the amount of space that you get to store your files. An MP3 file can vary in size from an average of 3MB to 20MB or more. You need enough space to store your files so you won’t be limited in what you can upload. These days 2GB to 5GB of space is a comfortable size. Remember, video is right around the corner so you might as well get an account that can handle your needs now.

Bandwidth refers to the total amount of file transfer that you are allowed each month without being charged extra for usage. In terms of bandwidth, the same criteria applies. You want to have enough available bandwidth that you are not constricted. These days a minimum of 5GB of transfer a month is a good place to start. Depending on your traffic, your topic, and your audience, 5GB might be enough, or you might want to look for more robust solutions. Remember, each time someone downloads your podcast, the size of that file is deducted from your alloted bandwidth for the month. How much you can get out of this will be determined by the size of your files and the number of times they are downloaded.

Storage space and bandwidth are two very important factors, but file transfer speed is probably the most important factor of them all and here is why. How fast your files can be downloaded translates into the listener’s total overall experience. If it takes an hour for a 10MB file to download on the readers DSL or Cable connection, then they are going to have a poor experience at your site. On the other hand, if it takes 60 seconds, then the listener will have a much better experience. You want to make the process of getting your content as easy as possible. Removing any friction from the process will encourage participation which will increase usage.

Here are a few of the solutions that I have tried and currently use for my own podcasts sites. These solutions provide ample storage space, bandwidth, and download speed. I had to do a lot of trial and error research before I came to these solutions so hopefully they will save you some of the pain and cost of searching out a proven solution on your own.

The first solutions is Box.net. Box is strictly an online storage service so they are very good at what they do.

The Box Individual plan offers 5GB of storage space and unlimited file transfer. Their Business plan offers 15GB of storage space and unlimited file transfer. Their service is exceptionally fast and it’s easy to use. They also offer password protected download solutions so you can offer access to protected download, but that’s another article all together.

The other solution I often recommend is HostMonster.com because of it’s low cost, large storage space, large bandwidth (allowed file transfer), and fast download speeds. This option definitely nails all three requirements.

HostMonster offers full website hosting services where Box.net only focuses on file storage. However, you can choose to ignore the website hosting portions of the service and just use them as a file storage service.

Just as a side note I recommend all their website hosting services because they are fast, affordable, reliable, and they have a control panel that lets you have complete control of your hosting without having to be a server administrator.

HostMonster offers a whopping 300GB of storage space and 3,000 GB of file transfer. As with Box.net, HostMonster’s service is extremely fast so large file downloads are not a problem. Both Box and HostMonster have download reporting so that you can see how many times your files have been downloaded. These two services are the absolute best services that I have found in terms of prices, performance, and ease of use.

How Can I Get Exposure For My Podcast?

Once you have audio creation, blog attachment, and online storage covered you will want to focus on how to promote your podcast. There are several ways to do this using your blogs, podcast directories, and iTunes. To start off you will want to advertise the fact that you have a podcast on your own blog. You can do this by including text in your blog posts, next to your RSS subscription link, or with a separate graphic that links to your existing RSS feed. Letting your audience know that you have added audio to your blog posts is a great way to tap into an existing user base.

Podcast directories are also a way to distribute your content and add RSS subscribers. People who like to listen to podcasts visit podcast directories to try and find new content. It’s a good idea to get listed with as many podcast directories as possible. That will get you as much exposure as possible.

One of the most popular podcast directories of course is iTunes. iTunes allows podcasters to publish their podcasts through their iTunes store. iTunes has millions of users and they are always looking for something new to listen to. Adding your podcast to iTunes can mean a lot exposure for your blog.

There is one special note about iTunes though. Unlike the other podcast directories, iTunes requires proprietary tags within your RSS feed to be fully compliant with their service. These additional tags are for things like album art, podcast summary, and keywords for searching, just to name a few. By default your RSS feed will probably not have these additional tags. So, to accommodate iTunes and not have to modify your existing blog feed you will want to use a service like FeedBurner.com to enhance your feed and make it iTunes compliant.

The FeedBurner service basically reads in your existing RSS feed, adds the iTunes tags to the feed, and republishes a feed that is iTunes friendly. You can control the values of the tags from within your FeedBurner account. This gives you full control over your podcast listing in iTunes without having to reprogram your RSS feed. In addition FeedBurner offers reporting on how many subscribers you have to your FeedBurner feed, but we will have to discuss that in another article.

Once you have an iTunes friendly RSS feed you can submit it to the iTunes service for review. According to the iTunes website, it can take up to five days for your podcast feed to be approved. My experience has been that it usually takes about 24 hours if you submit it on a week day. But, your experience may vary depending on what type of load the reviewers are under.

Listening To Audio From Your Blog?

If you want readers to be able to listen to your audio right from your blog, then there is a Wordpress Audio Player Plugin to help you with that. The plugin adds a convenient Flash player at the bottom of each post when it sees that you have linked to an audio file in your blog post. The player streams the audio through the browser and the reader does not have to wait for anything to download. The plugin even allows you to control the color and size of the player so you can seamlessly integrate it into your blog.

This approach to content delivery is very similar to the Talkr.com text to speech solution except that in this case you will be publishing audio content with a real human voice and you can include any mixture of audio content you need to increase value to your audience and make the audio rich with content. As discussed in the last article you can easily include advertising in your podcast as a way to monetize your blog content. We will reserve this discussion for another article where we can fully explore the available opportunities for making money from a podcast. If you are interested in monetizing a podcast then take a look at my podcasting eBook on this topic. You can also signup for seven free lessons on podcasting that go more in-depth into the recording and setup process of recording a podcast.

One Last Note

One important note in all of this talk about podcasting is that how you publish your audio is totally up to you and your intended purpose for creating the audio. If you simply want to publish audio on your blog for one or more articles, then the podcast option might be a little over kill. In that case you can just make use of the Wordpress Audio Player Plugin to publish audio on your individual posts. In fact it is best not to advertise you have a podcast if you don’t intend to publish an audio file on a regular basis. Podcast listeners tend to stay subscribed to podcasts that put out content on a regular basis. If you are putting out at least one file every couple of days then it would be a benefit to announce that you have a podcast. If you are only putting out one or two files a month, then it would be better to offer the audio download as an added value to your blog, but don’t promote it as a full podcast.

So there you have it. Adding audio to your blog is as simple as adding a picture to your posts. Once you have been through the process a few times you will be completely comfortable with the concept. Adding audio to your blog post, either using a streamed player or as a full podcast can add great value to your blog and give readers a new way to take your content with them. Remember to focus on providing real value for your audience and they will gladly share your materials with friends. Ultimately this is the balance we should all be shooting for and your readers will love you for it.

In the next article we will discuss how to use the telephone to record and publish audio on your blog. Until then, be sure to check out the first article in this series, How To Create Text To Speech Blog Posts.

Keep reaching for success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Resources:

HostMonster.com
Box.net
iTunes Podcasting Specification
FeedBurner.com
Wordpress Audio Player Plugin
Podcast Pickle
Podcast Alley