Thursday, April 27, 2006

Do you talk better than you write but you still want the power of a blog on your side?

Consider podcasting!
Podcasting comes from the now very famous Apple Computers product called the iPod and the word broadcasting.  Essentially, podcasting is putting an audio file you created up on a web site and marrying it with a feed that talks about all of your episodes so that people can read about them like they can read the articles of a blog in their own reader. Except, with podcasting they can read about them in an audio player like iTunes from Apple and listen to the audio right there.  You can burn these feeds with www.feedburner.com just like you can burn blog feeds.  Here is a very simple example of my podcast feed from feedburner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/crusaderxpod .

"But, Whoa Eric!", you say.  "I don't get blogs yet and now you are telling me to pod-what?!???", you say.

The reason I bring this up is because like blogging it has become super easy to do or even more easy than blogging depending on what you like to do.

Imagine, that last episode in my podcast that you can listen to at http://feeds.feedburner.com/crusaderxpod or from this blog via the flash player on the right sidebar was done through a free service called gcast from garageband.  What is gcast you say?  It is the ability to call a number, enter a pin code, and then record your episode from any phone in the world.  You should setup a podcast and call in at least one episode for posterity's sake so that your grand children and your great grandchildren can hear your voice and know a little about you.

But, I digress.  To setup a podcast, you need to understand that honest passion about a subject is what listeners are tuning in for just like blog readers are looking for something with honest passion to read about.  So, don't think you have to do this, and don't think you have to do it perfect like a radio DJ.

Before you get started, you will want to listen to podcasts from many different formats from the perfect DJ to the lone ranger on a phone to the simple group of friends jabbering about what they want for a 30 minute or longer show.

I recommend the computer security podcast Security Now! with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson for starters as listening to it will help you keep your computer and home network safe and you will hear one very popular format for podcasts: http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm .

Then when you are ready to dip your foot into the waters of podcasting, you can go to www.garageband.com and sign-up for a podcaster account.  Don't worry, would I recommend it unless the free account was worth using? <grin> <wink>

There is already an article in the archives of this blog on how to get that setup, but I will probably create a new how-to on this in the near future.

Let me hear from you if you have any questions you want answered or if you have any topics you'd like me to look into or to share what I think about.  Click on the comments link at the bottom of the article you want to comment about and write a comment for all to see.  I will get notified of that comment and respond asap.

BTW, yes the flash player on my blog is free from the garageband.com account I have and I can call into the gcast number and enter my pin and record a podcast at any time and it will show up in that player soon after I post it.  You too can do that if you'd like.

So, the question is, "Do you want to type articles for a blog, or do you want to speak episodes for a podcast and write simple teasers for the episodes in a blog so that people will know what you are podcasting about, or do you want to do both?"

Another place that uses podcasting and blogging in unison very well is www.taxmamma.com .  You should check it out once just to see what I am talking about.

Be blessed and To your success!!!

--
Eric Standlee
www.businessconferences.info/pocontactus.htm
Prospered not to increase my Standard of Living,
but to increase my Standard of Giving

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChristianBusinessDevotion
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LegitimateHomeBusiness

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