PODCASTS: SEND OUT YOUR MESSAGE AND REEL IN PUBLICITY

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author of A Gift from the Sea

Podcasting faces you in the direction where business is heading and it puts you with people who are forging forward, pushing the boundaries and looking for new and better ways of doing things. Launching your own podcast positions you to be noticed by your industry’s innovators.

“Podcasting is very popular with social networkers”, Denise Bach, CEO of Yaktivate, reveals, “It’s powerful because it’s easy to use and it’s very viral. People love to send interesting content to one another. So if they like your podcast, they will recommend it and send others links to it. It’s a big social activity”

What is in Podcasting?

A podcast can be a single segment or a series of segments or episodes like a radio or TV show. When people subscribe to a series, which most do, they automatically receive new segments when they are released. Podcasters’ objective is to turn subscribers into devoted listen of every episode. Like others in the new media, podcasters want to build large groups of loyal subscribers, communities that they influence.

How to find a podcast that better suits you? Podcasters submit their podcast to searchable directories that are the equivalent of the telephone yellow pages. They include iTunes, Podcast Alley, and Yahoo. If you want wide distribution, list your podcast in a number of directories so searchers are more likely to find them. For lists of directories see www.podcastingnews.com.

Podcasts can be listened to anywhere and anytime, they are more mobile than content distributed in other formats. Listeners can hear podcasts while they walk, jog, commute, or just hang out.

Podcast Yourself Some Publicity

Millions of people download and listen to podcasts on every conceivable subject and they can keep what they download for ages.

You and your product or services can be publicized on other people’s podcasts or you can create and distribute your own podcast. Either way, your goal should be to get listeners’ attention, build relationships with them, and route them to your Website where you can introduce them to or remind them about goods and services that they can obtain from you.

The media now routinely checks podcasts and blogs looking for new stories. When they find those that they consider special, they approach the individuals who created them. To enhance your written material with audio and video, and really get noticed. When the media can see and hear your message, it becomes more powerful than just text.

The publishing industry is using podcasts to publicize their books. Publishing companies have created podcasts that they post on their websites and their authors’ sites. Their podcast contain information about their authors, their authors’ books, discussions, interviews, excerpts, and reviews of their books. When publishers consider whether to publish proposed books, most now factor in whether the authors have podcasts and blogs.

How to Create a Podcast

Explaining how to create and publish a podcast makes it sound much harder than it actually is. Excellent, easy-to-use, free software is readily available and the Internet is brimming with instructions and tutorials on how to proceed. Or if you prefer, you can hire consultants to do all or parts of your setup. Consultants can produce, index, and distribute your podcasts. They can complete all the technical work so you can concentrate on the content.

How to record the content:

1. On your own computer or a recording device, at one sitting you can record all or a number of segments.
2. Record telephone calls, including conference calls, and edit them.

Then you route your recordings in files to a platform, such as iTunes, where other people can download and play them.

Steps involved in creating a podcast:

1. Come up with your idea and develop the content. If you plan to do a series, be sure that you have enough interesting content for each segment.
2. Record your content.
3. Save the recording to a file.
4. Upload your file to a Web hosting service to put it online.
5. Create a feed (a text file with a .rss extension) that lets people find your podcasts and receive it. When they subscribe to the entire series, they will automatically receive new segments and updates that contain new content. Most Software will do this for you.
6. List your podcast on directories so people can find it. Directories include Podcast Alley, iTunes and Yahoo! Podcasts. At Author Marketing Experts, Inc. (www.amarketingexpert.com), Penny C. Sansevieri publicized podcasts in two ways:

• By Syndicating the podcasts to directories such as iTunes and Podcast Alley.
• By having it transcribed and syndicating it just as you would with an article that has a link to the subscribed feed for the podcast.

You should definitely focus on how to circulate your podcast because creating one isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t reach the largest audience possible.