A lot of people have traditionally said that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, just as pics have surrendered to video as the Internet has gotten faster, simple pics have also been supplanted with sounds. Podcasting is the fine art of creating an audio file with which you can advertise yourself, explain what your business does, or even narrate a book you’ve written so people can listen in the car. However, there are some rules you should follow if you want to go beyond “what everybody’s doing” and create a truly special audio clip.

Script – or at Least Outline

A lot of people think that if they have a script, they’ll lose their “mojo” and create nothing more than another boring, corporate dissertation that sounds like the speeches politicians give after they’ve been caught committing their latest crime. In some cases, a word-by-word script is fine, while in others a mere outline is more appropriate. Either way, if your podcast is completely formless, it will tend to sound like just a rambling rant. You might be able to pull that off, but most people can’t. More →

There is no doubt that iTunes is currently the best way to distribute your podcasts. After all, almost everybody downloads podcasts via this very popular Apple service. This only means that by distributing your podcast via iTunes, you are already covering the needs of the majority of your would-be (or current) listeners. However, there are still some people who actually get their podcasts through other podcast distribution sites.

What other podcast distribution sites???

Yes, contrary to what most people know, there are actually quite a good number of other podcast distribution sites out there. I personally only use Stitcher (aside from iTunes of course), because I like the fact that I don’t need to manually refresh anything to get the latest segments of podcasts I am subscribed to. I also used to use Odeo a few years back, but they have sadly gone the way most podcast distribution sites go – in another direction.

To make sure you don’t alienate the minority of your listeners who would like to get your podcast through other distribution sites, what I suggest is that you just use a podcast distribution service. There are lots of companies that offer such services for a reasonable price. However, if you do opt to go this route, make sure you at least have an idea of what distribution sites they will be submitting your podcasts to. Do not get all excited just because they tell you that they have hundreds of distribution sites lined up for you, but instead ask them for the package that will just submit your podcast to select popular and quality podcast distribution sites.

One type of podcast to consider is the educational podcast. This sort of podcast is usually spoken and may consist either solely of audio or of both audio and video. Though any podcast can be considered informative in some sense, educational podcasts have education as a more or less exclusive focus. These podcasts may even begin as recordings that are made in actual classrooms. The following are some ideas and tips for creating an educational podcast:

Classroom Lectures

One way of going about creating an educational podcast is simply to record classroom lectures. This must, of course, be done with the permission of your instructor. Bring along some kind of digital recorder to class and set up to record your professor as he or she lectures. Be sure and test out the microphone beforehand with your teacher walking around the room to make sure that it adequately records him or her. Then simply record lectures and make them available online sequentially as weekly podcasts. You will, of course, only want to record the lectures of teachers whose lectures you find particularly stimulating. More →

Producing a podcast is more than just about quality audio and interesting content, it’s also making sure that your content is searchable or accessible so that your audience can easily find your content. In making your podcasts available, it is also important to label or tag them properly so that users can tell right away what to expect of the podcast. The less information people can garner about the podcast at a glance, the less the likelihood of them giving it a chance since the last thing people want is to waste their time listening to some podcast that in the end they will find uninteresting.

To let people know what your podcast is all about without them having to listen to a sample, all you need to do is embed your feed with relevant metadata. At the very least, you should include the following information and embed them as metadata in your file:

• Track number: the episode number of your podcast
• Title: the title of the episode
• Album: the name of your podcast
• Artist/Author: your name
• Genre: set it to Podcast

It is also a good idea to include a summary or short description of the podcast’s content, thus providing more information to your potential listeners that will be useful in helping them decide whether they really want to listen to that podcast episode or not.

Embedding keyword tags and category tags is also advantageous, not only to your listeners as they scan podcast listings, but also for your search engine optimization efforts, providing search engines with information as to the content of your podcasts to help them determine its relevancy in relation to the users’ search terms.

To learn how to add meta tags to your podcasts, click here to learn more about the ID3 audio file tagging format and click here for a list of iTunes meta tags.

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