Podcasting isn’t just about radio shows any more – audio and video podcasts are also a great marketing tool for business. Podcasts provide a low cost way of targeting a specific audience with content that’s relevant, and accessible at a time to suit. However, creating podcasts and getting users to subscribe isn’t simple. Our 2-day Podcasting training course provides a comprehensive coverage of both the technical and creative aspects of Podcasting. Google also loves video content, so Podcasting is great for SEO.

Here’s our comprehensive top 10 tips for Podcasting success!

1. Know Your Audience

Whilst it’s valuable from an SEO perspective to have a video & audio presence online, as with all web content remember that people are going to be viewing/listening to your Podcasts. If the content isn’t useful to them, they’ll quickly lose interest.

As a general rule, how-tos, product demonstrations, advice and tips are most popular, rather than just information or waffle about your company. A little free advice goes a long way! Find out what your customers want – ask them! Blog about it and invite comments, or run a poll on your site.

2. Know Your Competition

Before you start, take a look at what your main competitors are doing. If they don’t have any audio or video content online – great! you’ll be a step ahead. If they do, try not to replicate their stuff, but come up with something original or better. If the content already exists from another source people are less likely to subscribe to your Podcast for more of the same.

Advice on planning effective content is covered in our Podcasting training course.

3. Keep Your Podcast Episodes Bite Sized

Don’t make your Podcast episodes any longer than 10 minutes, or 15 at a push. Whilst it’s perfectly acceptable for a radio show to go on for an hour, business podcasts need to be bite-sized. Think of where/how your audience will be accessing them. At work? On their iPod on the train? They’ll switch off anything long-winded.

4. Plan your Content Before you Start

True Podcasting is more than just uploading audio and video to the web. The best Podcasts are those that your audience can subscribe to over multiple episodes. If you’re starting a series of podcasts, make sure you have enough good content to fill them all, and that you’ve planned all of the episodes before you start.

Stay a couple of episodes ahead of yourself as you publish to make sure that they’re all released on time – don’t leave your audience waiting. Preview what’s in the next episode at the end of the last one, so your audience will be looking forward to it!

5. Quality!

Whilst YouTube is full of popular videos that have been shot on cheap camcorders and mobile phones, your business Podcast needs to look and sound professional. If you’ve never presented video or audio content before, consider attending presentation skills training or voice coaching training.

If you have the budget, using a professional video or audio production company will deliver great results. If you choose to record in-house, make sure you have the right kit…

6. Pick the Right Hardware / Software

There are thousands upon thousands of options when it comes to cameras, mics, and video and audio editing software and the market is constantly changing, so this won’t be an exhaustive guide looking at lots of specific models.

The main point to note is that it’s worth investing in decent quality equipment and software. If you use rubbish, you’ll end up with rubbish!

Cameras:
Most HD cameras will provide good video quality, but don’t forget about audio! The best audio is achieved via an XLR audio input, so choose a camera that has this. If you don’t have the budget – as a minimum use a camera with a shotgun mounted mic.

Update – 14/12/09 – Nathan Rae has kindly commented on this post with a link to his Small Camera Kit recommendation

Microphones:
If you’re recording audio podcasts DO NOT use your computer’s internal mic!! Buy a good quality studio mic – as a rough guide, anything under about £60-£70 isn’t going to be great. There are a lot of different types of mic and this can be confusing. For Podcasting, a good option is a large-diaphragm, cardioid condenser microphone. “Condenser” mics provide good sound clarity, and “Cardoid” mics are directional, so they record what’s in front of them (as opposed to “Omnidirectional” mics that record everything around, and are more liable to pick up background noise).

The hardware you use is the most important consideration in terms of quality – but you’ll need some software too.

Video Editing Software:
iMovie is a good budget option. Window’s Movie Maker is free but functionality is limited.

For all the bells and whistles Adobe Premiere is extremely versatile and will allow you to add professional stanard effects & titles, and the budget version Premiere Elements is also very good.

We also offer Adobe Premiere training which will help you make the most of this professional tool.

Audio Editing Software:
Apple’s Garageband is a good budget tool for this job – alternatively Goldwave (cheap) and Audacity (free) are good options for those on a shoe-string.

More professional options with more functionality include Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) and Adobe Soundbooth which is less expensive.

7. Use Suitable Encoding

There’s no point in recording great quality content if you then use the wrong sort of encoding. Badly compressed video or audio can look or sound awful.

Encoding is covered in more detail on our Podcasting training course, however these links will help:

For Audio – MP3 is the standard and the obvious choice, however a summary of the formats you will work with on podcasts (and some other useful podcasting tips) can be found here

For Vide0 – there are more options available, but a useful guide can be found here

Once you’ve created your Podcast you’ll need to sort out hosting, upload it and create an RSS feed – this contains more detail than we have room for here, but is all covered on our Podcasting training course

8. Market your Podcast Using Relevant Listings & Directories

Once you’ve published, there are hundreds of directories and specialist search engines for Podcasts. Find those that are most relevant to your industry and list your podcast in as many of them as possible. There are too many to fit in to this blog post, but a here’s a great list of Podcast search engines and directories.

9. Use relevant tags

Tags are a great way to index your Podcast so that they’ll be found by search engines. Your tags are included in the XML of the RSS feed for your podcast, and should include all of the keywords relevant to your product or business – just as with regular Search Engine Optimisation.

10. Link to your Podcast

If people don’t know it’s there, no-ones going to subscribe, so don’t just rely on your Podcast being found in the search engines. Link to it from your website, your blog, your e-mail signature. Find other blogs, forums etc… where your subject matter is being discussed and comment with a link to your podcast. You can learn more about which social networks your customers are using our our Social Media training course.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but will hopefully provide you with a good starting point. For more detailed information or to arrange Podcasting training, call us on 01273 622272 or e-mail info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

Similar posts you may like

1. No video content? You need Podcasting Training!
2. How to write a great blog post – 10 Top Tips
3. Create an Effective LinkedIn Profile – 10 Top Tips
4. Prepare for the Google – Twitter search deal – 6 Top Tips
5. Blog Post Ideas – 10 Top Tips for Blog Inspiration

Tags

Audio Editing Software, Cameras, course, Guide to Podcasting, Microphones, podcasting course, Podcasting for Business, Podcasting Tips, Podcasting Training, social media course, social media for business, social media marketing, Social Media Training, training, Video Editing Software

Share This Post