How Podcasting Works
It has been said that in October of 2004 a Google search returned less than 6,000 results for the term "podcasting". Today, a similar search yields more than 857,000 results. Like the blogging phenomenon, podcasting has come out of nowhere and attracted an enthusiastic following.
While some traditional radio talk shows have begun providing podcasts of their regularly-scheduled broadcasts, the bulk of the podcasts that have cropped up tend to be independent broadcasters who have a fascination with technology. As a result, some podcasts are a little rough around the edges. Nonetheless, it is clear that the technology provides a significant opportunity and potential. Even nay-sayers believe that podcasting is more than a passing fad.
Podcasting is RSS that is used to syndicate and distribute audio files. Podcasting contains an audio file in the RSS feed's enclosure tag. An enclosure tag is used in RSS feeds to include certain types of files. The file contained in an enclosure tag can be: an image, a data file, a video file, or an audio file. Podcasting specifically refers to RSS feeds that contain audio files in their enclosure tag. The RSS version that currently supports enclosure tags is RSS version 2.0. All podcasts are currently created using this specification.
The benefit to podcasting is the fact that users can sync content with their media player and listen at a time and a place of their choosing: radio on demand. And while this technology is not limited to music, it seems to be the area that has received the most attention.
Podcasting is generally inexpensive to implement. Investment in a good quality microphone will ensure that the recording is audible. Depending on knowledge and experience, some podcasters invest in audio conversion, compression and audio editing software applications. Also, web space bandwith and software to create the feed for the podcast is needed. All in all, the initial expense is relatively small.
Publishing Podcasts
In three simple steps, independent broadcasters can have their voice heard:
- Publishers create audio content, posting it on a website for listeners.
- Create or edit an existing RSS feed including a link to the audio file in the "enclosure" field of an RSS 2.0 feed, uploading it to a website.
- Tell the world that a podcast is available.
Listen to Podcasts:
In three simple steps web surfers can listen to podcasts:
- Download a news aggregator or RSS reader that supports podcasting or sync a wireless device like an iPod with your computer.
- Enter the URL of the podcast feed into the news aggregator or podcast management software.
- As new items appear in the aggregator, review the podcast's description and listen to those that are of interest.
As popularity increases it is likely many voices will be drowned out, but for now, an independent broadcaster with a microphone and unlimited bandwith can make a name, create an image and change the world.
Useful Tools for Podcasting:
Create podcast feed - http://www.feedforall.com
News aggregator supporting podcasts - http://www.feeddemon.com or http://www.primetimepodcast.com
See also Podcasting Tools - http://www.small-business-software.net/podcasting-tools.htm
About The Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company. |
Podcasters could triple their listenership in 1 month if they took these few steps!
Recentely, we have been doing a lot of research into the Podcast culture online.
We use the information to help us tweak our Podcast directory, and help our clients (Almost ALL Podcast Creators) get better rankings for their websites, blogs, and of course, more listeners for their Podcast Shows. (if you would like to enquire about our marketing services please send us an email to
PodcastEmpire@gmail.com and we would be happy to send you a quote!)
Today, I was looking up British Podcast stats for one of our UK friends, and thought that some of you may be interested in seeing what we have found:
Top 3 Sites for keyword -
podcast ukwww.smallbizpod.co.uk/www.podcastuk.blogspot.com/www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/podcasts/So what do you see in this list?
- Two smaller operations beat out Virgin! Hurrah for the little guy!
- The first two sites are both blogs, while Virgin is not. Hurrah for the power of Blogs and fresh dynamic content.
- In Google and there were no ads... Podcasting is huge in the UK and there is not one single Google ad for the term. There is a lot of oportunity here for someone who knows how to monotize a Podcast Product.
- None of these pages have a very good Alexa Ranking, although their Google Page Ranks are okay. That tells me that it is unlikely either of the first two are using the full power of their Blogs by "Pinging" after each post.
The list goes on but this has to be a quick post unfortunately (I have an Impending Teleconference).
I am trying to make two points here for those who haven't read between the lines yet:
1. For a keyword that is already popular, and will only become more popular in the future, it would be remarkably easy for the right person to make this keyword their own and take over the number one position in the natural rankings.
2. If people are not maximizing popular keywords like this, what are the chances that the more uncommon (but no less important) keywords in this area are being optimized? Probably not good, but I can't tell you everything :)
I have to run, but we will chat more on this later.
Until then,
Michael Valiant
Podcast Marketing @
http://www.PodcastEmpire.com
RSS Button Creator
Well it's good to be back!
The Christmas holiday's kept us away from a computer for a couple of weeks, and I apologize to everyone who thought we may have skipped town... You can stop sending me email now :)
Here is our first post of the new year... Hurray 2006!
This is a post we came across recently on
www.TopRankBlog.com:
According to a
white paper on RSS (PDF) sponsored by Yahoo and Ipsos Insight, providing easy ways for users to subscribe to RSS feeds using their favorite feed reader or aggregator can improve distribution of that feed.
Sounds good? So how do you get your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds? Make it easy for them of course... and how much easier can it get than having them click a button!? That's it!
This site has created a tool that spits out the code you need to offer a variety of popular RSS reader/aggregator buttons.
Just go to the site, fill in your Blog
Title, URL and
Feed URL and choose which buttons you would like for your site, and this tool will reply with code for subscription buttons to: Rojo, My Yahoo, Bloglines, newsgator, My MSN, Pluck, NewsBurst, searchfox, Google Reader, My AOL, del.icio.us, Feedster, Furl and Yahoo My web; and much more!!!
Our Take:
This is a great tool that really makes it easy for you to offer this functionality to your clients; in turn, making it easy for them to be evangelists of your own site.
We are going to be moving over to a new Blog format shortly here at
www.PodcastEmpire.com and will be adding some of these buttons to our sidebar when we do!
Changing our Format!?!?! It's okay... Don't panic... We did not sell out or mess things up :) We have decided to move from using Blogger as our Blog tool of choice to start using WordPress. This decision comes following the advice of one J.P. Micek who coaches businesses on Better Blog etiquette.
I met J.P. at a recent Steven Pierce conference and he was gracious enough to offer some helpful advice for our main Blog... If you want some great information on Blogging, check out one of his sites at
www.MarketingWithBusinessBlogs.comSo check out J.P.'s site, go make some great buttons at TwisterMC.com and stay tuned for our big update!
Until Then,
Michael Valiant
Technorati Tags:
Podcast;
Podcasts;
Podcasting;
Podcasting News;
RSS;
Marketing
Your Website May Have A Duplicate Content Problem Right Now!!!
www.PodcastEmpire.com has been having some problems with PR (Google Page Rank) over the past few months; since the last Google Dance at any rate. We have become the Castor and Pollux of Google carrying two different PR's for the same site.
Let me explain. You can't see this anymore because we have made some changes that I will tell you about a little lower, but before we made these changes, if you were to type in our URL with the www. in the front, you would have seen a different PR than if you had typed in our URL without the www.
Here is what you would have seen:
www.podcastempire.com = PR 3
podcastempire.com = PR 4
First, most people automatically put in the www, so that is the one you generally want to be higher. And second, this problem can happen VERY EASILY! In fact, it may be happening to you... RIGHT NOW!
I checked out a number of sites and found two others where this is occuring. You should check your own domains as soon as possible!
So I have been doing some research into this problem and have discovered that, apparently, Google and Yahoo (and likely MSN) have occasional canonical problems with the sites they index. This problem is likely exacerbated if there are enough incoming links for both versions of your URL.
While this is probably not a big deal in Yahoo/MSN, and in fact may be just extra exposure, it does cause problems with Google; and it will only be a matter of time before Yahoo/MSN catch up to Google's problems :)
First, there is the PR discrepancy. It would be nice to have one consistent PR for your site regarldess of what people are typing in to reach you!
Second is that, since Google seems to think they are two separate sites, it is thought that they may be applying duplicate content penalties. Really not good! Google may actually be penalizing sites because of a problem with their indexing!
But there is a fix!
It requires a 301 redirect from one version of your URL to the other! This tells the Search Engines that the redirected URL will never exist, and that they should ignore it from now on.
To accomplish this redirect, open your .htaccess file and add this code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Just change "yoursite" to your actual domain name (obviously)! :)
We have already made this change to
www.PodcastEmpire.com and you can test it to see how it works.
It may take Google a week or two to straighten everything out in their database and you can bet we will be watching our logs closely to see the effect of this change. I will write an update in the New Year and give you my findings!
I will tell you one thing though... I am going to be adding this to ALL of my domains!
Michael Valiant.
Sha^meless Plug:
If you are running your own Blog, you should be pinging after each post.
If your Blog Software doesn't do this for you automatically, check out our FREE Ping Service at:
http://www.PingtheEmpire.comWe even offer a version of the Ping Service that you can place right on your own site!
Add Value for your site visitors today!
iPod Accessory Market Ramping Up
So you've got your blog. You've got your podcast. You've got listeners and web traffic. So now what?
Well if you've checked off number 1, 2, and 3, then you are further ahead than a lot of podcasters who are just starting out. The next step is what is more difficult. Or maybe it's not.
The next step is to use the relationship and trust that you have built with your listeners and convert that into cash to fund your radio show. Whether it be a comedy podcast or a political podcast, one thing is always the same, one thing is always in common, they are all listening to you on an iPod or other digital media player.
With the iPod accessory market blasting past $300 million in sales, this may be the key to keeping your site running over the long-term. There are a lot of independent affiliate programs available to you, with accessory retailers or manufacturers, many offering as much as 20%-30% per sale. Granted, you may not become rich with these programs, but your main focus for this initial drive should be to increase revenue to properly promote your business. By gaining this additional revenue you can invest it back into marketing for your podcast, buying up ad words related to your podcast topic, or maybe just keeping your site afloat.
However, just as with any partnership there is some inherent risk involved. You give your traffic to them, you promote them to your users, and you might even view it as transferring a bit of your reputation to that merchant, so be selective and ask questions where necessary. Another option is to enroll with someone like
ClixGalore. ClixGalore provides a wide range of affiliate programs for you to participate and take action to ensure that the merchants they associate with are on the level. You might not always get as attractive a commission rate with them, but the risk is severely decreased, meaning you only increase the likelihood of getting paid!
Run Your Own Blog & Ping Service For Free!
Here is a quick but important announcement!
If you are using blogs to promote your site and podcast show, and you should be, then you will also know that you should be pinging your blog articles once they are published.
Well we have some good news.
You No Longer have to go to another site to Ping your Blog!!! You can Ping directly from your own site... or your own blog, making the Blog and Ping process faster and easier for you!
But you can also take this one step further! Why not make your site a destination location by promoting the fact that you offer a ping service on your website!
I know you can see the long term Search Engine benifits of taking advantage of this free service without me having to flog all the possible ranking benifits!!!
Click Here To Get Your Very Own Free Ping Service!!!
6 Ways to Improve Your Traffic With Blogs
Want to increase your daily traffic? How about convincing Google to visit your site more? There are plenty of ways you can do both, but one of the quickest, simplest, and most cost-effective step you can take is to start your own Blog.
I am not saying maintaining a Blog is a no-brainer, it takes thought and hard-work just like anything else, but the pay-offs are enormous.
Blogs have quickly become one of the most widely used marketing tools on the internet today for one simple reason... They Work! They give the search engines exactly what they are looking for, and help built your very own following. It just doesn't get any better than that.
So start a Blog, install it on your own server, relax, and write. There are great tools freely available on the internet that can supply you with an endless stream of great information to write about, so don't worry about running out of things to say. While this article is not focused on those tools, if you need some direction we would be happy to help, just send us an email at
podcastempire@gmail.com.
No, this article is focused on Promoting your Blog Properly to ensure The MOST TRAFFIC POSSIBLE! And so, on with the show:
1. Every time you write a new blog entry, PING IT!!! Blog & Ping, Blog & Ping, Blog & Ping... That is how it works, every Ping can be directly translated into hits on your web pages, so BLOG & PING!!! Pinging is simply notifying all the various major Blog Directories on the Internet that you have a new post; every time you Ping, those directories will come and take a look at what you had to say... So how and where do you Ping? There are a few paid services and only a couple of decent free ones available. We use the Ping Service at
www.PingTheEmpire.com and have had nothing but success in growing our various Blogs!
2. Read other peoples Blogs, leave meaningful comments, and leave your Blog URL with your name!
3. Submit your Blog URL Directly to the Search Engines. You can submit your URL directly to most major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN all offer submit pages, but we recommend a tool that will submit your URL to MANY engines in one go. There are a couple of free solutions available, but if you are serious about increasing your traffic, you should definately look into a paid service. This doesn't mean you have to pay alot... there are paid services like Submit Fire which are very economical (less than $10 per month) and give you tracking tools too!
4. Create an XML sitemap and list all of your sites webpages (including those on your Blog). Then submit your sitemap to
Google here.
5. Post often and (did we mention Ping? Oh Yeah, we did back in step 1... Maybe there is a reason Pinging is listed first?) use trackbacks if your Blog software provides the functionality.
6. Post at the right time of day. Experiment with this a little. Certainly your traffic will depend on the topic you Blog on, but the time of day you Blog is also critical. We have found that a Blog just before lunch (East Coast hours!) and another around 4 or 5 will drastically increase our daily traffic. Even if you write your Blog while you are up watching Letterman, save it and don't post it (or make it live to the public) right away.
Those are the big 6!! There are more, and we will share them all in upcoming Blog posts! In the mean time, if you have any questions, comments, or would like some free helpful information, look through our site
www.podcastempire.com or send us an email at
podcastempire@gmail.com.
Oh Yeah... And did I mention
Pinging your new Blog entries?
