Having your own podcast in the iTunes store is becoming extremely popular. Not just for celebrities or big name organizations but for the small business owner or individual hobbyist.
Podcasting itself began some years ago but with the recent release of portable “streaming” devices such as the iPhone and iPad, this medium is having somewhat of a renaissance around the world.
But to anyone who thinks they can set up a podcast in 5 minutes, a word of warning. Podcasting isn’t easy. Despite a lot of information being online, the majority of this information is out of date and irrelevant. It’s difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. In my quest to become a podcaster I was taken down several rabbit holes that only added to my confusion and made the dream of having my own podcast in iTunes even more unattainable.
So please take my advice, if you want to podcast then stop searching for and consuming all the free information online. This means steering clear of video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
My main reason for warning you against this is because of the plethora of mistakes I made from listening to podcasting advice from these unregulated and unreliable sources.
On one occasion, I wasted several hundred dollars on equipment because I listened to a podcast course video on YouTube. By the time I found this information wasn’t accurate it was already too late for me to get a refund. It was a complete waste of my time and my money.
One of the best ways to navigate the often-confusing path of podcasting is by taking a podcast course. There’s only a few good quality podcast courses online.
In my experience the best thing about a reputable podcast course is that it has all the information you need to know and it’s structured and in a logical order.
Like most new media and social media endeavours, with a podcast there are certain protocol and steps you need to understand and implement before you will be up and running.
And there’s a lot to do in the initial set up. To be honest it’s this groundwork that has created a “high entry barrier” for podcasting turning off because of the initial set up.
However once your podcast is created, releasing regular episodes are no more complicated than releasing a new blog post.
One of the easiest ways to know if a podcast course is going to teach you everything you need to know is to ensure it covers the following subjects.
- What is podcasting? (a detailed explanation of the medium and iTunes)
- Equipment and set up (what hardware and software is needed to record your voice)
- Recording behind the microphone (how to integrate the recording software with your microphone)
- Creating and submitting an RSS feed into iTunes and other podcast directories (publishing your audio)
Once you’ve found a podcast course that you’re happy with, it’s time to knuckle down do the work. Once you do, you’ll be dominating the charts in iTunes in no time at all!