Small Business Owner Insights

First, a disclaimer. I am writing this as a functional guide to PodCasting with Wordpress. This is NOT the definitive, encyclopedic guide to podcasting. Rather, this is a how to for the non-technical among us. I have tried to enclose links to my sources if you wish to have more background, or as a springboard for your own research. The steps below worked for me: your mileage may vary.

If you do not use Wordpress, then shame on you, I mean, I am sorry, but the main steps are the same, and the only part of this you will have to research more will be Step #4, where we use Wordpress to distribute our file.

What is a podcast?

A podcast is simply an audio file that has been uploaded to the internet, which can then be downloaded by other people, called subscribers. For the stickler, a file is podcasted if it can be subscribed to by an RSS Feed. The term is a hybrid of Ipod, Apple’s near ubiquitous media player, and the word broadcast.

Why should I podcast?

Because you have a voice, and you deserve to be heard! The possibilities are near endless. You could:

•  Record interviews and share them with your readers
• Upload your latest motivational message
• Do a call-in internet only radio show, then let your subscribers download the show (TalkShoe lets you do just that)
• Phone people influential in your field, record the call (with their permission) and upload it
• If you do any public speaking, record and upload it
• Not just audio- you could upload a video file as well.

Again, there are near endless ways you could use this technology.

How do I podcast?

Well, that is the question. It is actually not a difficult process, but in order to do the following steps, you need these basic skills:

• FTP files to your server
• Install a Wordpress Plugin
• Unzip files
• Download and install software

As you see, nothing terribly difficult, but I wanted to warn you in advance.

Things you will need, in addition to your standard computer setup:

• A microphone of some sort. I use a $15 headset mike I use for my Skype calls (like This One).
• If you want to record telephone conversations, I highly recomend you use Skype which will let you make and receive calls to ordinary phones with your computer. (www.skype.com) and Hotrecorder, which is set up to integrate with Skype. There is a free trial, but I recommend spending the $15 for the pro version. (The free trial will only let you record 2 minutes of conversation.)

Podcasting (and distributing a podcast) consists of only a few basic steps:

1. Record the audio
2. Convert the file to mp3 format
3. Upload the file to the internet
4. Have a way to distribute it
5. Let your readers know where it is

Hmmm, sounds easy. Actually, it really is not all that hard. Lets take each step one at a time:

1. Record the audio

You can use the built in recorder in windows, or you can get as fancy as you want. I found and like Audacity, which is a free audio recorder and editor. Audacity will let you record, edit and mix audio, so you can record what you want, add bumper music, edit in sounds (such as applause) and edit out all the uhhms and uhhs. It is quite simple and almost intuitive to use, but I highly recommend this free basic tutorial, it will save you about an hour of playing around.

If you want to record both sides of a telephone conversation, I recommend you use Skype and record the conversation with hot recorder (Hotrecorder was the only money I spent on this project, and if you do not want to record telephone conversations, you will not need it).

2. Save your file as an MP3

For legal reasons I really do not understand, you are not allowed to create MP3 files with free software. However, there is a workaround. Download LAME, which is an MP3 encoder - Audacity will export the file to LAME, which will convert the file to MP3. Audacity has a built in help file, which is very useful and will tell you how to install LAME. Look in the help file under Help/Contents/MP3 Exporting for more detailed instructions..

For this example, let us call it  pod_1.mp3

Note: Hotrecorder will save the file as an MP3, saving you this step if you are using it to record Skype conversations.

3. Upload the file to the internet.

This is as simple as can be. This is how I did it:

1. Create a folder on your desktop called whatever you want; Mine is called pods.
2.  Move the MP3 file you just recorded to this folder
3. FTP the folder to your server; this will create a directory on your website labeled whatever the file’s name is, in my case, pods.
4. The file is now located wherever you put it, like www.example.com/pods/pod_1.mp3

If you are worried about storage and bandwidth on your hosting account, there are several options as to online storage; unfortunately, I have no knowledge of how reliable any of them are (a concern for me, anyway). If any of you have had experience with such places, please let us know in the comments.

OK, now your file is uploaded, the next step is to fix it so your readers can get to it.

4. Have a way to distribute it

Wordpress (after version 1.5) has  built-in podcast functionality, but it assumes you are comfortable writing things to your ht.access file and such…. I am not.  I elected to use podpress, a plugin that handles all the backend stuff, the uploading to the various podcast directories (should you wish) and so on. It even includes a built-in audio (or video) player that displays in your post (like the one in this post).

Installing podpress is quite simple, just download it and FTP it to your plugin folder; many resources to do so are here. If there is a thing I do not like about this plugin, it assumes you know a lot about podcasting and the terms and such; even so, I managed to fill out the essential stuff and get a podcast up on the internet in about 15 minutes… obviously, this will be faster as I get more used to it.

Once you have the plugin installed, you simply write a post as normal, then insert the url of the uploaded audio file (in our example, it would be www.example.com/pods/pod_1.mp3) in the field provided by podpress, hit publish like normal, and there you go. You now have a post on your blog (like this one) where your readers can download your podcast or they can listen to it in place with the built in media player.

5. Let your readers know where it is

It is a good idea to create a category on your blog entitled podcasts, or something similar, and then create a separate page for the podcast posts. Also, On the options page for podpress, you will be given a url for your podcast feed; people who subscribe to this feed can automatically receive all your future podcasts, just like those of you who subscribe to my RSS Feed automatically have my text posts delivered to your feedreader.

I wanted to know a bit more about my subscribers, so I set up another feedburner feed for my subscribers. You can subscribe to my podcasts here:
Get my podcasts

Well, there you have it: 5 Easy steps to setting up podcasts on your wordpress blog. I hope this was helpful, and if anyone has any questions please ask in the comments. I probably do not know the answer, but I will do my best to hunt it down for you, or maybe another reader knows.

Thanks again to Wendy for inspiring me to tackle this project, and for all the other participants for playing along.

For more info on podcasting:

Wikipedia on Podcasting

What is Podcasting