Podcast Freq

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I hate to do a post that starts talking about 2008 in November but I think it is wise to begin thinking about what has gone well, what you need to improve upon now so that you can start the new year with fresh goals and, of course fresh enthusiasm.

So here are some questions to start thinking about ready for a successful 2008.

1) What has gone well and how can you do more of that, next year?
2) What do you need to improve upon and what actions are you going to take?
3) How do you measure your success? If you don’t measure…do you need to and if you do measure what are the results saying to you? Then set new targets for next year.
4) One that I like to think about is “Ask not what podcasting can do for you, but what you can do for podcasting?” We, as podcasters, all have a responsibility to bring more consumers into the space, to generate a conversation about podcasting, to raise awareness of how easy listening and subscribing really is….what have you done for podcasting?
5) How do you plan to keep the show fresh, do you need to review your album art, your blog, your format?

This is not an exhaustive list and you need to think about your specific show - but the important thing is to make some time for creativity, for inspiration. Podcasting is time consuming and time is one thing that we are often short of…so invest a little before the year end to ensure 2008 starts with a bang!

podcasting, podcast, subscribing to podcasts, goals, conversation

Continuing the series on looking at podcasts and podcasters that are not part of the large corporate world and who I listen to because they either entertain, educate, inform or inspire me in life. Today I am looking at H, which is an easy call as far as I am concerned!

H= Heather Gorringe. Heather is a UK podcaster who sent in a comment to my main podcast The Engaging Brand, she said that she loved the show but suggested that I interviewed more small businesses. I invited her on the show and the rest is history as we became friends. Heather has an amazing passion for podcasting and is presently on a Nuffield Scholarship to research how social media can help farmers reconnect with their consumers. Anyone who has met her is bowled over by her enthusiasm, her honesty and her ability to connect with listeners and consumers alike.

Heather produces a wonderful show - often promoted by iTunes called Wiggly Wigglers - which manages to both entertain, educate and inform! Wiggly Wigglers looks at farming, gardening and all things to do with the natural world/environment. The key to this podcast popularity is the humour, the humour is so natural and infectious.

Heather also co hosts 2 other podcasts - Middle Age Shed which is the story of how 2 middle age women struggle to maintain their weight and also The Podcast Sisters which is a podcast which explains Web 2.0 for the non geek and how to use web 2.0 to grow your business.

Heather is one of the influential podcasters in the UK and a great speaker on how podcasting has changed her business life.

The production of podcasts can be tiring and draining mentally - they need you to invest a lot of time in research, production and also promotion of your show. Sometimes you can look at your show statistics and think is it really worth all this effort, or indeed it is worth the effort but you are totally bereft of ideas. We have all been there especially if you podcast alone. I often write about not being stale, about constantly pushing yourself to learn something new, about fighting podcaster complacency.
The easiest way that I have found to cope with this state of mind, is to realise that staleness comes from something that felt like new, now feeling old. Thus, with my very simple mind I know that I have to search for something new..to bring back the freshness. This might be

1) In myself, by attending a conference, barcamp, podcamp…anything that inspire the podcasting soul!
2) In the show, by doing something either I haven’t tried before or having a guest purely from left field that brings a different angle to the conversation.
3) Change the presenters..if you are solo..invite a co host. If you co host why not fly solo one week.

Your role is to keep that element of surprise there for the listener..that element of surprise their for you! That surprise that you learn a new skill i.e recording an interview, that you have contacted someone for the show that you never imagined that you would, that you learn something new about yourself…like how to reignite the flames of motivation.

One question I ask is ” If I wanted to surprise me, what would I do!”

When you create your podcast, it is easy to become so close that you lose objectivity on the standard of your podcast. A question to ask yourself regularly is “If you were not the producer of the show, would you listen and subscribe to the show?”

Here are some checks and balances that I would have in place…

1) Listen as a subscriber frequently…in car, on a computer, on an iPod. Does it sound OK?
2) Compile a list of subjects covered…are you repeating topics too frequently, is your content remaining fresh?
3) Listen to other shows on your subject - are you different, are you all talking about the same things…are you putting your distinctive personality on your subject area
4) Review your review in iTunes, in podcast alley, to see what people are saying?
5) Have you got a Technorati and google alert for your show, to see what people are saying about it?
6) What are your subscriber numbers doing…..increasing or decreasing?

The first 10-12 shows are about finding your voice, finding out how to express your personality through this new medium. At some stage, you find that voice and it then becomes important that you don’t become too comfortable with it…..when I say comfortable, I really mean complacent. You become that close to the product and the production becomes so much easier than before that you don’t put in the same level of effort, or give the same amount of energy to the show.

If you have honest friends that will give you objective feedback - use them as a resource, use them to act as your warning signs that you need to freshen either your approach or your content.

What other checks and balances do you have, that you want to share with other readers?

In my small way I want to promote those independent podcasters that spend time, money and effort podcasting. The reason being that it is getting harder and harder to find these independent podcasters unless you are not an iTunes user!

Today we are up to G, but if you want to check out the other recommendations based on my podcast picks then here is the link to the previous posts.

G= Geek News Central. I love this podcast, not just for the content but also for the fact it is a tech podcast that I can understand and relate to, because the host Todd Cochrane does a really great job of sharing his personality with providing news for us all.

The podcast is accompanied by both a blog and a newsletter which I subscribe to….here is the aim of the site in their words
“Geek News Central is a subsidiary of his company Podcast Connect, with this website launching in May 2002 with the goal of creating a high quality tech and informational site for people of all ages and backgrounds. In addition to Todd a small number of volunteer editors contribute content to the site. The idea of launching this site has it origins from what was in wanting to share information and opinions in a community fashion.

The goal continues to be posting quality links and information along with personal commentary on sites that interest us and hopefully those visiting the site. As you can see from our content we want you to be exposed to new ideas and technologies by publicizing new and innovative software or pieces of information that effect your daily connected lives.”

Once again if you have shows that you would like to highlight that start with the letter G then leave a comment at the end of this post - actually this was one of the hardest letters to choose from as I have 10 shows that start with the letter G!

I was interested to read on blogstring.com why he doesn’t listen to podcasts

1. Not searchable- When I’m looking for content, I can easily and visually search blogs. Finding great video content is a little bit tougher. But finding good audio content is nearly impossible for me.
2. Not “bend-over-the-page-able”- I drive a lot. I decided to try out an audiobook for the long ride each day. I quickly learned that audiobooks are not for me. With a book, I can easily return to my last attention spot. But when I listened to the audiobook, I kept drifting off and couldn’t easily find the place where I started to drift.
3. Not discoverable- It is very difficult to discover new audio content, as you have to actually listen to the content in order to gague the relevance. With a blog, it’s incredibly easy to traverse the web finding new posts by following links. If you hit a wall, you can easily recognize that the link you’ve just clicked is not for you. It’s a two second process involving nothing but a scan. Podcasts require a much more significant time expenditure.

I think this is a great summary of why podcasting has not progressed as widely as people imagined. The podcasts that I listen to are not based on specific content, they are based on personal brands…people that I have found through recommendation, accident, iTunes

So question in my head is …..do we need to promote podcasting or do we need to find a way of promoting the personal brand more? Is the podcast part of your social media strategy or part of your personal branding strategy…i.e. which is the subset ?

personal branding, podcasting, podcast, finding podcasts, podcast promotion

Today I have chosen a podcast that was one of the very first that I listened to…it was in the first 3 podcasts that I downloaded and has remained a must in my podcast feed. To look at which podcast shows I chose for A-E then hear is the link
F= For Immediate Release. For Immediate Release is produced twice a week by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, two of the kindest gentlemen on the planet. Shel and Neville discuss all matters to do with communication, pr, and technology. Although, Shel and Neville are the main presenters they have contributions from regular “correspondents” around the world. This show is much more than 2 men talking, this show is built upon a strong community who are incredibly active with their comments both audio and written. One unusual aspect to the show is that Shel is based in California and Neville is based in the South of England. I like that transatlantic feel as it allows news from both sides of the pond and also it is great to have different perspectives on global issues or world events.

As a matter of note, they have recently published a book called How to Do Everything with Podcasting which covers all aspects and is a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about the podcasting world.

podcasting book, podcast, community, podcasts to listen to, how to podcast

Continuing our series of independent podcasts that I believe are worth listening to, today we are going to look at E. But today I am writing a little tongue in cheek as I am writing about my show! But I do believe it is an excellent show - why? Because I learn a lot from producing the show.

Social media is an enormous area and podcasting as a subset of that, has to understand how to engage listeners, how to build a sense of community.
i
The Engaging Brand is all about how to motivate, inspire and ENGAGE people. Although the show is about engaging people at work, all the principles are as relevant to podcasting, and blogging. There are some great interviews on the social media sphere - Steve Rubel, Leesa Barnes, Joseph Jaffe, Jeremiah Owyang, Seth Godin, David Meerman Scott to name a few. I can honestly say that each interview I learn something new…in fact I see producing the show is part of my own development.

The full archives of the show can be found at Blubrry.

Just so that I am not totally biased ! I will also offer another E…

Every now and then I post about shows that I listen to that are not large corporate podcasts - although I have many in my iTunes feeds - but shows that are produced by ordinary people, independent podcasters without large budgets….but with large amounts of passion and imagination.

Today I look at D, for a look at the previous write up check out the A-Z Of Podcasts to Listen to

D= Dave Jackson. I love this guy! Dave Jackson is a must for people new to podcasting or podcasters that want to learn about podcasting trends, tips and also how to make podcasting easy! His School of Podcasting show is a fantastic resource and one that I always listen to…no matter how much I “think” I know about podcasting…the show always inspires me or teaches me something new.

I also like the fact that he has found ways of monetarising his work by thinking about the needs of podcasters, thinking about what his audience needs. He has some fantastic tutorials for instance that come at a premium but provide all the information that you need to get started. Here are some of the titles
How To Create a Podcast
What is Podcasting?
Sound Effects
Choosing a Microphone
Choosing a Web Host
Understand RSS
Using Wordpress
Choose Your Hardware
Interviewing Guests
Finding Podsafe Music
Podcasting Books
Promoting Your Podcast
Production Music
Voice Over Talent
Choosing Your Style
Pick the Right Software
Find a Toll Free Number
Find Voicemail
Get More Listeners
Save Production Time
Make an RSS Feed

So an excellent resource and one that I believe should be in your feed!