photo by penmachine

I was in Miami for the Future of Web Apps conference in February of 2008 (dating myself in this social media realm) and I was introduced to hard core Podcasting. This was my first foray into audio that wasn’t music or radio based.

There was a session presented by some locals who were talking about Podcasting with a mic in the center of the room. This was right up my alley but I didn’t really get it.

Ok, some background, according to the web’s be all source for information, Podcasting is defined as:

a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication.

Oh man, you lost me already. When you boil it down a podcast is just a show, attached to an RSS feed that people on the web can subscribe to. Most pure Podcasters use the audio format and syndicate through Podcast players and even have “free” distribution into the iTunes store.

Oh yea, iTunes has a place where you can distribute your Podcasts for free. The same store that charges you $.99 for a song will host and get your little PodCast in front of its millions of users.

Your Business Podcasting 101:

Today I was working with a client that wanted to get started in spreading awareness about their business. I asked her what the best way to get the message out about her business was. She replied by sying that when she gets to talk to people they respond really well. Much better than an email or a blog post. I mentioned Podcasting to her and immediately I could see the wheels start to turn.

This morning we set up a time to do a joint Podcast for her business. We laid out a very laid-back outline and had some pointers we wanted to hit. The goal was to be conversational and have a good time delivering value to both her B2B side and her B2C side.

To start we setup a free conference call with FreeConferenceCall.com. This service allow you to have multiple parties on the phone and record the conversation you are having. We both have a nice comfort level on the phone so this was a great medium to have our conversation. Using freeconferencecall.com is really easy and efficient. You dial into the number, the admin hits the record button and off you go.

We started the call with introductions and went right into the material. The call lasted just over 10 minutes, was very upbeat and was pretty valuable for her audience.

After the call I downloaded the .wav file and loaded it into Audacity, a free audio editing software. No need to get crazy here, all I did was add a quick intro instrumental (not necessary) and trimmed the start and beginning of the call for noises and any unnecessary information.

Now I had my file and I was ready to get it online.

We chose to go with PodBean, however there are plenty of others that will aloow you to upoad your audio. Your goal here is to create a station, upload your audio and grab the Podcast RSS feed. Total time = 10 minutes.

The last step was to grab the RSS feed and head into iTunes and submit a PodCast feed. iTunes makes this beyond easy and really only asks for the feed URL. From there you check to make sure your details are correct and submit away.

iTunes likes to ensure the quality of their Podcast stations so now we are waiting for their approval.

All in all, the process was very easy and the time it took to plan, record, edit and upload the 10 minute clip was about an hour. Now we can show customers the iTunes feed and have a cool download for sales reps to use, job seekers to listen to and people of the Internets to find!

And for those wondering, here is the finished product:

The PodCast was for HealthCareerWeb, a health care job board and professional network.

Greg Rollett is a Rock Star Internet Marketer from Orlando, FL. He blogs about Lifestyle Design and Online Marketing.

Tags: itunes, podcasting, Social Media