by Stephen Schleicher

With 30-plus shows under our belts, we are far from being the defacto experts on podcasting, but we’ve learned a lot since last year, and by combining our expertise in video and audio production, we’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. So we thought, why not share our advice and knowledge on podcasting with you? We’re wrapping up our discussion of podcasting this week by talking about post production, distribution, and promotions.

Once you've recorded your show you should spend some time post producing.

Yes edit your show if it needs. If you make a mistake take it out. I you've got general noise clean it up. All of the software applications that we've mentioned give you the ability to edit your audio file.

But beyond editing your audio you can enhance your audio to sound like a pro.

First compress your audio track. For a voice a 2:1 or 3:1 compression works best. Most of these applications will have a preset for this if you don't know how to do it yourself.

After you compress your audio you should equalize the track rolling off the low end or increasing the high end to sweeten the sound.

The final effect to apply is a limiter. A limiter prevents your audio from going over a certain level and clipping or distorting. This is very handy and a combination of all three of these will ensure that your sound is great.

Just a word on music. Unless you have a BMI or ASCAP License the recording industry will come after you and come after you hard. You are allowed to use up to 30 seconds of audio but you need to be very careful with this. For the Coolness Roundup all the music that we use are royalty-free tracks that we have purchased a license to, or music that comes from the podshow podsafe music network.

Finally it's time to export your file as the MP3. Many people just starting out as podcasters simply export their file as an MP3 and send it to their web site. Unfortunately without file compression you could force your listener to download a very large file.

If you are using iTunes you can take your file and compress it using the convert to MP3 command and under the advanced settings change to a proper compression format that sounds good for you.
MP3
60-80Kbps
Sample size 16
Sample Rate of 22000

Our shows run between 7 MB for our shortest show all the way up to 45 MB for a one hour and one half show. If you don't use compression that 45 MB file could very easily turn into a 100 MB show.

Remember podcasting favors broadband if you're using podcasting to connect your listeners or to students across the world pay special attention to those who are on dial-up. A 45 MB show will take an incredibly long time to download.

One of the final things that you need to add to your MP3 file is the ID tags and again these can be done in iTunes. This is where you enter all of your information about the current episode, you add images and put in the description author title and so on. This only takes a few moments but it is something that will be embedded in the file when you post it. Once you've entered the information drag the file from your iTunes library to your desktop and you're done.

In order to distribute your file easily you need to create an RSS feed. This is what makes your file a podcast instead of a download. The RSS reader routinely access your feed and when it notices a change it can automatically download the file.

iTunes is one form of reader, feed Demon is another type of reader. There are all sorts of RSS readers out there that not only read podcasts but read text information from other sites.

The RSS feed is written the XML language and this is what it looks like.

At first glance it looks like a bunch gibberish and it is one of those things that can scare people off from creating a podcast. However there are many many applications out there that will generate the XML feed for you. In fact, podcast AV and Podcast Maker will both generate the feed that you need to include with your file.

Once you created your first RSS feed and understand the concepts it’s a breeze to update by hand.

I have an article that I have written that you can access that explains everything you need to know about creating an RSS feed for your podcast by hand.

Once you have a valid working XML feed you can begin submitting to the podcast directories like iTunes and Podcast Alley. There are so many podcast directories springing up, that I’ve lost track of how many our show is listed on. Of course as long as they are reading your RSS feed it doesn’t matter.

Congratulations! You've created a podcast. Now for the bad news. You need to create more shows. Your show is not going to be taken seriously until you make it past the 10th episode milestone. Consider this your freshman year. Once you've gone past 10 regular shows, you've shown a commitment to continued casts and you will begin to draw more subscribers.

The biggest curse for any podcast is the phenomenon of pod fading. This is where podcasters run out of things to say and simply fade away. There are literally hundreds of podcasts that have stopped being updated or have not been updated in three or four months.

Here are some tips to keep your show live

Tease tease tease promote promote promote. You constantly have to bang the drum about your show you have to go to podcast directories in future self listed you have to join discussion forums and message boards to promote your show

you can even create commercials for your show and share them with other podcasters.

Tell people what your next show is going to be about or give them something to look forward to and a reason to tune in the next week. Because we created a proposal for a show we know a year in advance what topics we want to cover each week. And we can let our audience know that

For the coolness Roundup we created two press releases that went out to appropriate web sites around the world. The first one went out after our tenth show and we noticed a significant jump in listeners. Two weeks ago we sent out another press release and in one week we doubled the number of listeners to our show.

You should also develop a web site to go with your podcast. This web site can host show notes, original articles, a link to yourself, or whatever.

You can also offer listener incentives. In our show we have a feature called the e-mail of the week. The best e-mail that we receive gets a verbatim store and go 1 GB jump drive with USB 2.0 technology that works in both the Mac and PC. This is a product that's valued around a hundred dollars. The incentive is for the listener to write in with their question about technology and if they get selected as the best one they get a prize.

E-mail is also a very popular way of keeping your audience. Respond to e-mails both on and off the air.

One other thing that we've initiated recently is phone messages. We have a Skype line that you can call and leave a two to three minute message. We also have a regular phone line that listeners can call. While this hasn't been used to a great extent right now it is something that we will see growth of in the future. In the month that we've had our comment line we've had roughly 1 call a week. And that’s not bad.

That wraps up our discussion on podcasting the coolness Roundup. So let’s review,

Create a show proposal
Decide what type of podcast you are going to produce
Obtain the hardware and software
Record your show
Edit your show
Compress your show
Create the RSS Feed
Promote your show

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