SEO Gold: Podcasts

Marvel in awe at the power of  the pod cast! A podcast is a tool that can keep people coming back as well as acting as something that brings in traffic as people tell their friends about it and send them to your website. People love podcasts and when people love something, they love to share it.

You can get a podcast online in as little as 5 – 10 minutes, and it can go to work instantly,  increasing the audience for your business which is always a good thing. Podcasting is becoming more popular among both bloggers and webmasters who are turning to the inexpensive and flexible medium of internet radio shows to get their message out. It’s quck, durable  and catchy – all factors that are a bonus for you.

To get started, you have to decide on the content for your podcast. What is the message you want to deliver to your  audience? Just as you would do before starting any project, create an outline, and organize the subject matter you want to discuss. You will need a computer, microphone, webcam (for video pod casts), audio software and hosting for your pod casts. You don’t need to go super fancy or high-tech, just cover the basics.

Record the audio for your pod cast. Make sure the audio is of good quality so it can be heard clearly – use a decent microphone for best results. Speak slowly and clearly. Use your natural inflection. Some background music can add style and interest, but make sure you have the rights to it! If you don’t have the rights to use the song, then you can be sued by individual artists and that can be messy and expensive.

Once created, save the audio file (in MP3 format) to your computer desktop. Next, open it in your sound editor and edit out any extra background noise that you can detect so the copy sounds clean. You can also add intro/outro music if desired. Boring, run-on pod casts will lose you subscribers, so make sure each one is informative and entertaining. Keep it short and neat – there is no reason to go on for more than 10 minutes at the maximum. Five to seven minutes should be as long as you go.

With that completed, create your RSS podcast feed. The feed must meet all industry standards to be of any real value. The easiest way to do this is to use a blog to post your pod cast. You want your RSS podcast feed on the Internet, so follow these simple directions: Go to Feedburner, type in the URL of your blog and click “I am a podcaster!”. The next screen lets you configure the elements for your podcast. It really is that easy!

Upload your mp3 file to a free media outlet for easy access, and copy the link. Make sure your audio is saved in mp3 format, since some systems don’t support other audio formats. (You can also use the del.icio.us to create and manage the RSS feed for your podcast once you have your mp3 files hosted somewhere on the internet. Just create a bookmark for each one on del.icio.us with a unique tag for your podcast.)

To finish things off, make the post on your blog/website. The title you use for the post  should match the title of that episode of the pod cast to do away with any confusion. The content will be the “Description” you create for the podcast. This should be a short blurb about your pod cast. At the end of the post is the link directly to the media file.

Feedburner will automatically add the post to your feed… and your episode is then live! You can submit it to podcast directories to help get it shared around with a larger potential audience. Ping appropriate podcast directories when a new show is updated to help facilitate this. Keep in mind  that bandwidth consumption can be high, and use a server that can handle periodic spikes if you expect a lot of traffic.