Podcast Freq

A Guest Post from Tishia Lee of Tishia Saves Time:

When I first started offering transcription services as part of my Virtual Assistant business, transcribing podcasts was not something I considered. In all honesty, I never thought about the fact that there would be a benefit to having a podcast transcribed. Once I began receiving requests on a regular basis I began to learn why people were choosing to do this.

There are some people that like to have text to read so they can follow along as they listen to audio and there are also people out there that would prefer to just read the transcript than listen to the audio. By having their podcast transcribed they were providing that option to their listeners. This is probably the most common reason why people choose to have their podcasts transcribed.

Aside from the reason listed above, there are other benefits to having a podcast transcribed. Once it has been turned into a text file you can add it to your website. This provides new content and we all know how the search engines like fresh content.

Another benefit of having your podcast transcribed is that you can use it as part of a package deal. For instance maybe you have a special report to offer to your target market and you interviewed someone really cool for your podcast that goes along with the information in your special report. You can offer the audio and the transcript as a bonus to go along with it.

You can also turn the transcript into blog posts, articles, mini ecourses, etc. These are just a couple options of how having your podcast can be beneficial to you. You can get as creative as you want and use the transcript however you see fit.

This follows up on yesterday’s post about not dabbling in podcasting but rather to make a commitment. Podcasting on a schedule is important when building a community and an audience. Don’t have unrealistic expectations that your podcast will have a large audience in the beginning - but do expect growth and do be willing to do what it takes to get it.

A friend of mine is a relatively new podcaster, Tsoniki Crazy Bull. Her podcast is CrafterCast.

Tsoniki isn’t an intentional dabbler, but she is a busy military mom who faced a big move right around the time that she was launching her new podcast. Because of this she wasn’t able to stay consistent with her publication schedule (She had intended to publish weekly but after the first handful of shows, she ended up with a rather long hiatus) and that had definitely stunted the growth of her listening audience.

If your life is in a jumble, take a tip from Tsoniki and wait to launch your new podcast when you’re better able to make a firm commitment to your budding group of listeners.

How often you decide to publish your podcast is entirely up to you but I will say that a show published more often tends to grow an audience faster. I personally enjoy a weekly schedule but I have a couple of podcasting friends I’ll introduce you to later who have embraced a bi-weekly schedule and done ok with it. Whatever you choose - stick with it

The good news for Tsoniki is that she has recently ‘re-launched’ her podcast with a fresh new website theme and renewed commitment to a steady publishing schedule. I have no doubt that she’ll regain the ground she lost during her hiatus.

If you want to get the best bang for your buck, plan on podcasting for the long haul.

Podcasters who “test” things out with one or two podcasts and then give up may think that they’ve given it a try but in truth, they’ve only dabbled.

It takes time for a podcast to build an audience and it takes a dedicated effort to promote a new podcast. I wouldn’t even try to measure whether or not a podcast is doing well until I’ve been working on it for about six months. The main think I look for is growth. Am I reaching more listeners this month than last month?

I’m a niche podcaster. I don’t reach hundreds of thousands of listeners like big dog podcaster Leo LaPorte or podcast daddy Adam Curry. I don’t even try to compare myself to high profile podcasters who reach a wide audience. It would be nuts to do so but I’m afraid that is just what many new podcasters do.

They hear about how millions of people have iPods and are hungry to feed them. (It’s true!) They think if they launch a show they’re going to quickly tap into those millions, but for the most part - unless you have a great marketing plan, you’re going to be a drop in the bucket in the podcasting directories at first and you’ll have to work to earn your audience.

Sometimes a new podcast catches a break early. Cara Mirabella of The Household Helper found her brand new podcast featured prominently in the iTunes podcast directory for several weeks and enjoyed a wonderful burst of subscriber activity, quickly reaching upwards of a thousand downloads per show.

Now when I say ‘catches a break’ I don’t want to suggest that Cara won her featured spot only by chance. No one really knows for sure how one podcast gets chosen over another but we do know that you’re more likely to be chosen when you have completed your meta deta well and have taken the time to create an attractive ‘album art’ image for your iTunes directory listing.

The good news is that you can make a very good living with a niche podcast. You don’t need a hundred thousand listeners to make money. You just need the RIGHT listeners for your content and a good marketing funnel they’ll enjoy tumbling into.

So don’t just dabble. Make up your mind that you’re doing to be in this for a full season.

Whenever I release a new episode of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio is pop the link up on my Twitter and invite my followers to come check it out. This has brought me several first time listeners which is ultra cool and my friends enjoy the ‘first notice’ alert that the show is up and ready for listening.

Do you Twitter your podcasts?

I mentioned having my podcast audio’s transcribed in my last post. In case you wonder - no, I do not transcribe them myself. (Shudder the thought - I did enough transcription to last a lifetime in my first office job… imagine transcribing insurance department complain letters eight hours a day… bad memories!)

I outsource all of my transcription work to my trusty Virtual Assistant, Tishia Lee of Tishia Saves Time. For some unfathomable reason, Tishia actually likes doing transcription work so I’m pleased to leave her to it.

Tishia isn’t the only VA that I outsource work to. I turn to Christina Lemmey of MultiMedia VA for the creation of simple podcast promo audios, short commercials, etc. Christina also does podcast production for a few of my clients, releasing me to focus on other projects.

Outsourcing is a powerful business building tool. Without some level of outsourcing your business is only going to be able to grow so far. Let me introduce you to a couple of outsourcing resources that could be just what the doctor ordered for your business and podcasting growth efforts.

Outsourcing Sweetie

Outsourcing Sweetie is first a resource that teaches you how to outsource effectively. If you opt for Platinum Membership you actually tap into a crack team of service providers and project management consultancy for a monthly fee. You receive a certain amount of ghostwritten content, technical script work, virtual assistance and graphic/web design work each month - plus you can strategize with the Sweetie herself, Alice Seba.

Start by becoming a Gold Member for only $10.00.

Shelancers

Shelancers is a new resource for finding online service providers. Exclusively created to showcase women providers, Shelancers is a refreshing alternative to the big freelancer directories.

I often ask people ‘Why haven’t you started your podcast yet?‘ and a common reply is ‘I don’t feel like I’m enough of an expert to cover the topic I’m interested in.’

Enough of an expert?

‘Who get’s to decide who knows enough to be an expert?‘ but a better question to ask back would be ‘Who says you have to be an expert to talk about something?‘

Hosting a podcast puts you in a position to distribute industry news and share your views, but all podcasters are not experts. They don’t pretend to be and many really don’t even want to be. They just want to share their passion with others and hopefully turn a profit in the process.

I was certainly not a work at home expert when I launched Work at Home Moms Talk Radio. I was just a work at home mom wannabe with a mouth.

Interestingly enough, somewhere along the last four and a half years that I’ve been hosting my WAHM podcast I have built a reputation as a WAHM expert. What can I say? If you devote your attention to something long enough you pick up a thing or two.

Still, I don’t represent myself to be an expert on all things to do with being a work at home mom. I draw on the expertise and skill of a wide variety of other WAH experts, bringing them on my show to fill in the gaps and give my audience access the fullest range of knowledge.

What about you? If you are an expert and don’t mind saying so - good for you! But if you’re not, don’t let a lack of expertise keep you from becoming a voice in your industry.

Building a business on the web requires that you generate a lot of content. Content on your website draws traffic both through search engines (people searching for your content) and through links from other websites that are recommending your content.

The challenge of creating more and more content is a difficult hurdle for many web business owners. If you love to write and have lots of ideas on what to write about you can churn out articles, blog posts, product descriptions, etc. But all do not love to write and most people eventually finds themselves running a bit dry on ideas for new content.

I’m a fairly prolific writer and I have lots of ideas - but don’t always have a lot of time to sort through my ideas and develop them into articles, etc.

But - ask me to talk about my ideas and I can be off and running. Writing requires focus. Talking is so easy.

This is why having a podcast has been a major boon for me in creating content for my websites, blogs, newsletters and information products.

I take the audio content generated on my own podcast and have it transcribed on a regular basis by my virtual assistant. I then take this text content and scoop out chunks that are easily molded into blog posts, newletter snippets, articles for distribution and extra content for info products.

I’ve generated over 200 episodes of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio. That’s a LOT of content available to me and I’ll admit that I have not tapped nearly as much of it as I could. But don’t worry, I intend to!

A website visitor is just a website visitor. You can’t really say that you have a relationship with someone who has only visited your website can you?

But when the web visitor subscribes to your mailing list or subscribes to your blog RSS feed or subscribes to your podcast RSS feed - you have the beginnings of a relationship.

Now, for a relationship to grow - you need to communicate. You have to send emails, blog regularly and podcast - podcasting being my personal favorite form of communicating

Podcasts provide a consistent line of communication between you and your subscribed listeners and that is a powerful benefit for being a podcaster.

It has been proven over and over that regular communication with your customers improves both your overall relationship with them and has a strong influence on buying frequency. A regular podcast strengthens your relationship with your subscribers and help to build a real sense of community.

People who feel like they have a relationship with you are more likely to spend money with you.

I see this in my podcast. Some relationships warm up quickly but others develop over a period of years. Many of them eventually pay off in some form of purchase whether it is for coaching, an info product or taking my advice on an affiliate product.

By the way, don’t just stop at Podcasting.

Thinking outside of the box of podcasting, simply adding audio or video of you to your website and email messages, enables customers and prospects to access information from you in a more personal way. You can add video or audio testimonials from customers and invite others to0 share quick “how to” segments. This all helps to entice new visitors into a new relationship with you.

When you consider how many millions of people are walking around with iPods and other Mp3 players you have to wonder, wouldn’t it be awesome if they came looking for you?

Well they do.

Ipod owners and others log onto iTunes every day. They are looking for something interesting to listen to. They actually search for, subscribe to and download podcasts on topics that they’re interested in.

Do you realize how awesome this is?

People who may never find you any other way, could end up finding you via your podcast.

That is increased market exposure.

I know for a fact that this happens. It happens for me all the time.

A man wrote me an email a couple of years ago telling me that he accidentally downloaded my podcast and put it in his iPod because he had been looking for affiliate marketing information and grabbed my show along with some others on that topic. He’s not my target market, but after listening to one of my shows he became excited about the prospect of his wife starting a work at home business. He subscribed to the podcast feed and asked his wife to listen to the shows. She has become one of my most active fans today - and yes, one of my customers.

Now he would never have searched for me, but he found me.

Another story, a gal gets an ipod for Christmas and her teenage daughter hooks her up to iTunes and teaches her how to search for content in the music store. She searches for mom topics and stumbles on Work at Home Moms Talk Radio. It had never occurred to her that such a thing existed (a podcast about WAHMs) so she subscribed out of curiosity. A month later she has registered a domain name, signed up for hosting (with my hosting company) and bought one of my information products to learn how to do article marketing to promote her new site.

Would I have perhaps connected with her some other way? Possibly. But how awesome that she found me while looking for something to fill her iPod with.

If you’re not podcasting, you’re not putting yourself in the path of your potential customers.

I embarked on a fun little project this winter in which I have been working my way through the alphabet, looking for words for each letter that I could apply to the subject of podcasting.

I’ve been both slow and sometimes nearly stumped but have enjoyed the challenge so far. I’d love to hear what alphabet words you’d add to the list

Read what has been done so far here.

I’m listening to the current episode of Podcasting Underground and Jason is talking about the importance of building a sense of community around your podcast.

I absolutely agree.

I launched my first podcast with the sponsorship and support of a well established content website on the same topic (working at home). My sponsor gave me a dedicated area on her forum for discussion related to my show from week to week. We continued this forum section until just recently - finally letting it go because it had grown so quiet.

I believe the forum discussions died away because most of the conversation and comments take place between my audience and I on my blog and Twitter.

I didn’t mind letting the forum go. When something isn’t needed anymore it’s a waste of time and effort to try to keep it active by force of will. Better to let your listeners interact with you in the ways they want to.

If you are launching or have launched a podcast and you don’t have a great existing community to tap into, how to start building on on your own? Jason shared good tips and ideas on this, which a strong emphasis on having a blog for your podcast.

I liked his suggestion about using a plugin that lets your blog commenters subscribe to receive email alerts when anyone else comments on the same post. What a great way to keep the conversation going.

I’m thinking right now about the times that I’ve had a greater response as far as comments and questions from listeners and for me it’s usually in response to an email that I sent in regards to a recent show. It’s so easy to hit reply and send me a quick thought - and it feels more personal.

I really like that sort of feedback - and it is a good sign that I’m engaging my listeners, but it doesn’t take place in a public way like blog comments do so sometimes I write my subscriber to ask for permission to reprint her comments on my blog. (They usually say yes.)

How do you build community? Listen to Jason’s podcast for some ideas and be sure to share your own creative ideas with us.

One of the most common questions people ask about getting started in podcasting is ‘How do you record a telephone call?’

Back in my early years as an internet radio show host, I tried every cheap-o solution that I could find. Remember that in the summer of 2003 we didn’t have hundreds of podcaster enthusiasts sharing their ‘how to’s’ for free on blogs and forums. Finding information was hard and I felt like most of the time I didn’t even know the right questions to ask.

To start with I bought a little Radio Shack part for $15 and it certainly captured the phone conversation, but it also captured the loudest phone line humm I’d ever heard.

I went back to the store and bought another part of $25, thinking maybe spending ten dollars more would solve my issue. Nope, no difference.

So I went to the internet and searched for phone recording tools. Mostly I found more little doohickies like the Radio Shack parts I already tried. I bought one for $60 and another for $200 but my results didn’t vary much and I sent them back.

Finally I stumbled on the JK Audio website and found the Inline Patch.

With the Inline Patch I was able to capture voices and minimize humm as well as compensate for differences in volume between my show guest and myself.

I’ve used the patch faithfully until just this year when SkypeOut won my heart away from my land line.

I signed up for my own SkypeIn phone number for my business and started using Skype almost exclusively. I remembered receiving a free license for Pamela a couple of years back so I downloaded that and dug the license number out of an old email.

Pamela allows you to record your Skype calls beautifully and for now my Inline Patch is gathering dust on my desk.

There’s a well tended list of free podcast directories kept here, but I have to disagree with his note at the top.

“Note: Never pay to have your podcast listed in a directory - it is not worth it and you will not get any Return on your Investment.”

I would pay to be included in a good podcast directory if it gave me a non-redirected, non-no-follow link to my site along with a reasonable text description and graphic to represent my show.

If the directory was well organized, kept up to date and the owner worked to build traffic to it, I’d be very pleased to pay for the privilege of appearing in it.

If the directory is niched specifically to my target market, I’d be asking the owner to let me pay for a listing!

Free podcast directories are great, but as we see from the above listing, a lot of them have died off. Probably because the owners realized that taking care of a directory takes time and doing it for free is foolish. Some of those directories that have gone the way of the wind were great little sites and I’m sorry to see them go.

Would they have stuck with it if podcasters had been willing to fork over $10 or $20 to have their listing added and another $10 or $20 to update it annually?

As the owner of a niche podcast network that charges for membership, I can vouch that podcasters are willing to pay to be included on websites that provide them exposure and good links back to their site.

So if you have a podcast directory and you’re getting weary of taking care of it for free, consider a new strategy.

You can start charging for all new listings and charge to edit any current listings. You can offer premium exposure on your main page for a monthly fee. I’m won’t suggest that you can get rich from a directory, but you can at least get paid for the time you give it.

I had been hosting my own internet radio show for about a year when I read a blog post about ‘podcasting’. I wish I could remember who it was that wrote that post as I surely owe him or her a box of chocolates!

I ran (in a virtual sense) over to my techie friend Lynette Chandler of Tech Based Marketing to ask her how to get an RSS feed set up for my show. She had an RSS feed generated for me within a few hours.

I publicized the RSS feed on my site which meant I needed to educate my listeners on how to use it. I submitted it to iTunes soon after and that brought an immediate gush of new downloads, doubling my numbers within a few weeks, tripling it within months.

I often wonder, if podcasting had never been heard of, how different would my business be right now? If I were still relying on drawing visitors to my website to listen to the show each week, would I have been able to grow the respectable niche audience that I have today? I really don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be somewhere on the path to where I wanted to be - just farther back.

What if I hadn’t had a techilicious friend to turn to for help with learning about RSS? I may have been super intimidated by the whole thing and failed to act.

I’m certainly glad that wasn’t the case

Today I help others get started in their own podcast, giving them a boost in conquring their intimidation.

So let me ask you - what if anything is keeping you from giving podcasting a go?

When I spotted that 451Press was looking for a podcasting blogger I said ‘Hmmmm, could this be another way to ‘go wide’ with my message and reach more eyeballs?’

I decided to check things out and apply.

When I received the official go message from the powers that be I was startled to discover that I would be taking over an existing 451Press blog. I was even more surprised to find out that the blog I would be taking over had been written by well known podcasting expert, Anna Farmery.

I don’t have any personal relationship with Anna, though I have been a long time sometimes listener of The Podcast Sisters podcast. For just a moment I thought, do I really want to do this? I mean, if Anna left the blog behind - could that be a sign that it’s not a worthwhile project to pursue?

I took a few days to ruminate on it and obviously in the end I decided to go ahead and run with it.

Taking over an existing blog with a lot of great content, inbound links and a pagerank of 4 is better than a starting one from scratch any day.

So what can you look forward to reading here on the Podcast Freq (read: freak!) blog?

Up to date, real life news and stories about podcasting and podcasters.

Who am I?

I am Kelly McCausey. Single mom, podcaster, internet based home business coach, blogger, teacher, opinionated stinker.

I live in Portland, Michigan which is about half way between the capitol city of Lansing and Grand Rapids. I’m a recent transplant from beautiful Gaylord, Michigan which is about an hour south of the Mackinaw Bridge. I tell you this much about my locale to illustrate that I don’t live particularly close to anything or anywhere.

Yet, on a daily basis I am connected to a huge world. I’ve been able to grow a powerful niche audience and leverage that into a full time income - largely because of podcasting.

And that is why I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences, expertise and friends with you.