Podcasting for Beginners

Podcasting has moved into the mainstream - statistics fom emarketer show an incredible 18.5 million people in the US downloaded a podcast in 2007 and the BBC’s World Service's Global news has over 1 million monthly downloads.

The huge surge in people listening to podcasts is largely a result of the global success of ipods and itunes and the fact that large broadcasters like the BBC and NPR have embraced the technology. Most large radio stations and many newspapers now produce high quality podcasts most of which are free to download. For any one thinking of producing a podcast it is a good idea to checkout the competition - Podcast Alley and itunes are probably the best place to start.

Last week we discussed how to produce your own mp3 files using a USB microphone and Audacity. The next step is, of course, to make it available in a form that allows people to subscribe using programmes like iTunes and Juice.

All you really need, to turn you mp3 file into a podcast, is a link known as an RSS feed . This will allow people to subscribe to your podcasts so that they will receive all future episodes direct to their desktop or mp3 player. Creating your podcasting feed is the subject of today’s how to.

How to podcast

1. Upload your mp3 to your website – if you don’t have a website don’t worry just sign yourself up to a service like yahoo geocities or 0catch which will allow you to upload some mp3 files. It is important to note that free web hosting accounts like this will have limits the amount of storage space eg the amount of mp3 files you can upload.
   
2. Find out the web address for your uploaded mp3 usually the address of your website followed by the name of your mp3 file eg www.podtastic.com/pod1.mp3
3. Open an account in blogger and create a blog - each new entry should correspond to a podcast.
4. Write a blog entry that describes the audio file followed by a link to the podcast.
5. Post your blog entry.
6. Register for an free account in feedburner this will allow you to create a podcast friendly feed and get statistics about who is subscribing to your feed
7. Create a podcasting feed. All you need to do is paste the web address of your blog into the "start feedburning now" box. Remember to tick the “I am a podcaster “ box
8. You will have to select one of two feeds to burn – select the one that ends in rss.
9. Edit your feed title and web address and activate your feed.
10. To find out what clicking on your podcast feed looks like - click on the rss symbol next to the title of your feed and you will see how easy it is for people to sign up to your feed using a range of different application including itunes.
11. Submit your feed to itunes and podcast alley.