Podcasts: How to Write a Podcast, How it Works, and Then What?

Start with a plan. Use the best equipment you can afford. Take time to edit. Publish.

Then market your podcast to everyone everywhere! Capture feedback. This is your audience -- your listeners. React positively to their feedback and your viral marketing begins.

Plans don't need full line by line scripts. If you are scripting a short marketing message, such as recording your telephone voice message, writing out your message will simplify the recording. Otherwise, create a template: a segmented format you use over and over. Consistency wins listeners.

Possible segments are;

• Open/welcome
• Tips or announcements
• Reviews or News
• In depth discussions/Interviews
• Audience Feedback
• Wrap up and promotion of the next podcast

Summarize your podcast with notes on your web site for those who have not listened yet. Notes drive search engine traffic and turn visitors to your site into listeners and subscribers.

Five Ways to Kill Your Podcast is good example of writing a summary.

Who is the person you want to listen to your podcast?
Pretty self-explanatory. If you are targeting seniors, the length of your podcast and your language, as well as graphics and background music (if used), will differ greatly from a target audience of young professionals.

What is the action you want your target audience to take after they listen to your podcast? Make sure your message is clear and, if this is your goal, asks your listener to take an action:

• "Buy this book."
• "Sign up for my newsletter."
• "Download my software for a free trial."

Never assume your call to action is understood. Ask. Ask for feedback also.

The more valuable the information, the more viral marketing will occur. And the more you share your knowledge, the more acknowledged you become as an expert in your field.

Tell me where your podcast is available - and make it accessible to anyone regardless of their preferred method of delivery.

It's the belts and suspenders method of communication.

• Some wear belts.
• Some wear suspenders.
• Some wear both.
• Some wear neither.

Make sure your audience can reach you regardless of how they choose to do so (handheld devices, desktop computers, varying operating systems and applications).

Put your podcast on your web site, make it available through an RSS feed, offer it through iTunes-type stores, make it bookmark-able, put it on a CD and hand it out as a business card, put the URL on your telephone voice message. Let me know where to tune in.

Pick a regular time and place. As in traditional media (radio and television), make it easy for listeners to tune in.

In this day of Web 2.0, push technology is gone. It is all pull now: the listener decides what to listen to and when. Your message needs to be relevant and available when the listener is ready to hear it.

And I need to know about you, else why should I listen? Who are you anyway? What is your credibility as the speaker? Tell me what I need to know about your expertise. How long have you been in business? Are you published? Do you have testimonials, awards, experience? How many people have heard your podcast?

Listener feedback (email) and web logs are traditional online measurement tools. Newer tools include downloads, subscribers and blog comments. Results, in the online world, are user-driven. Pay attention to what your listening audience is saying and adjust accordingly.

Traditionally, setting goals depends on defining success, both quality of life and financial. A basic formula is

"I will (goal + performance measure) BY (specific actions)."

Define your success. Then set your goals. Then measure. Your measurements will vary from mine. If, like me, you are a consultant, your metric might be the number of times you are quoted as an expert or asked to speak.

TIP: Use directed links or email addresses to measure inqjuiries.

Measurement is another lens in itself so I share this excellent article:
All Business

Write for the ear, not the eye. People listen to a podcast. It is an audio file. Use short sentences, little bytes and chunks of information. Add a bit of a cliffhanger.

TIP: Listen to old time radio shows to improve your command of your recorded message.

Your content is ready. What platform or application should you use to record and edit? It really doesn't matter. Audacity is a free, open source recording and software program (Macintosh, Windows, Linux). Other popular applications are Adobe Audition and Sony Sound Forge. If you are an Apple/Macintosh user, GarageBand is all you need for recording, mixing and editing.

The Microphone is the most important equipment expenditure you will make (starts about $100). As with automobiles and sports teams, no one ever agree which microphone is best. We do agree that studio recording and field work require 2 different microphone types.

For studio work, get a directional (cardiod) condenser microphone with the largest diaphragm you can afford. Do not get an omnidirectional microphone. Large diaphragm means a larger surface to pick up the natural variations in your voice.

Field microphones are rugged, having top-notch noise rejection. Accompany your field microphone with a portable rig.

Condenser microphones need power. Some use a battery. Most get power from a 3-pin XLR cable which hooks into a pre-amp. Use a portable mixer (or USB pre-amp box) that powers the microphone and digitizes the signal.

For greater in-depth on the intricacies of sound and microphones, this is good reading:

Lots more detail in this moderately long article

Once recorded and saved (most likely as a .wav or .aiff, the best quality files), convert these large files to MP3 for distributing on the web.

Before compressing, do a bit of editing to refine the broadcast. This might include removing the (natural) breath intakes you'll hear. Some extraneous noise can also be removed. Use Audacity or GarageBand, as mentioned above, for editing.

TIP: have the speaker as close to the microphone as possible and practicable.

There is no mystery to RSS publication, although some would make you think so. An RSS (real simple syndication) file is a simple text file that links to your MP3 file.

Upload the MP3 audio files to a folder on your web site or blog and validate using an online RSS validator such as FEED Validator.

Most web sites provide the tools to easily create your RSS feed. Feeds describe your podcast using meta information about the URL, making it easy for search engines to index your podcast feed.

RSS feeds are a huge topic and there are lots of tutorials on this (here is

Press releases
Email marketing
Search engines
Promotions
URLs on your business card and voice messages
Syndication

You'll also need a way to feed (RSS) your broadcasts and a way to publish your files (FTP program). Podcasting Scout is one good site about this, with lots of links to more resources.

Your content is created, uploaded and ready for viewing. Spread your knowledge through syndication: making your content available for others to use across multiple web mediums (web sites, feeds, e-zines, PDAs and web applications are a few).

Weblogs.com, Syndic8, and blo.gs are good sites to ping (let them know when you add content and they push the information to their subscribers).

http://www.weblogs.com/
http://www.syndic8.com/
http://blo.gs/

How do you plan to keep the show fresh, do you need to review your album art, your blog, your format?

Take time to review your template, adjusting based on valuable listener feedback. The once a year spring cleaning or when making new year resolutions is a good time for a tune-up.