Active Listener: Putting Podcasts To Work, Planning and Pre-ProductionOct 9

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Active Listener: Putting Podcasts To Work, Show 2

In this show, we discuss the pre-production and planning issue with starting a podcast.

Introduction

We start with mention of Jake Ludington, who does a lot of podcasting and has written about the basics of getting a show started. Discussion centers on hosting, blog platforms and RSS.

• Hosting: Space and bandwidth issues. John Hartman talks about the nightmare that can happen if your show gets very popular and you are charged for exceeding your bandwidth limit
• Resources: Todd Cochrane, author of Podcasting, the DIY Guide, does an excellent job of explaining what to look for in a hosting provider.

Interview with Chris MacDonald

• Chris MacDonald started podcasting in 2004 with the launch of indiefeed, which features tracks from indie musicians. Today, indiefeed has 750,000 downloads per month. He is currently vice president of business development at Libsyn, a podcast hosting company that recently launched Libsyn Pro, a service designed for corporate applications.
  

We talked with Chris about the issues to consider when hosting your podcast. Here are some of the interview highlights:

• Hosting has to be easy. It should be simple to get your show online. Anything that is less than easy should be questioned
• Hosting provider should make it easy for you to distribute to the right people
• Look for a provider with an advanced statistics platform who has the ability, for instance, to track RSS susbcribers, unique downloads and partial downloads. A note: If your host does not provide this data, you can use Feedburner. They will host your feeds and provide measurement data
• Knowing from the onset what the costs will be if the show scales
• Case study: Chris talks about Libsyn's experiences with National Geographic and why companies will be sucesful if they choose a platform complimentary to their IT structure

More Hosting Considerations

• For larger corporations, we discuss the values of a service like Akamai, which provides the ability to handle large volumes of traffic. Note: We are working in conjunction with Akamai for this podcast series

Why is a blog platform best for publishing a podcast?

RSS is baked into blog platforms, meaning the distribution through RSS is automatically handled.

Value of a blog:

• Easy to publish. Blogs are as simle as word processor tools
• Helps develop a subscriber base
• Feedback and conversational elements of a blog
• Importance of a flash player that can easily be integrated into a blog platform. Services like Hipcast make it easy to embed a flash player

Corporate issues:

• Security, authentication

Planning:

• Who is the show reaching?
• What elements do you place in your show?

Interview with CC Chapman

• CC Chapman is a pioneer in the world of podcasting. He played a large role in developing Podshow's Podsafe Music Network. His shows include Accident Hash, U Turn Cafe and Managing the Grey, which looks at the new world of social media. CC interview highlights:

• Music. Think about music that will last a while. You need to consider the legalities. If you don't have all the permissions from the rights holders, you can't use it
• Resources for music that you can legally insert into your show: Creative Commons music, IODA, Podsafe Music Network

Companies may also use services like the Music Licensing Store from Rumblefish, which we have been using for this series of shows.

Other issues to consider:

• The script. To write one or not?
• Think about a script differently than if you are writing a blog or a text document. Podcasts are recorded. You need to think about talking to your listeners. How long does it take to say your intro? How much time are you going to take to do your interviews?

Here is one example of how a show can be structured:

5-10 second: Introduce show name with music overlay

5-10 seconds: Host introduction

5-10 seconds: Name the sponsor if it applies

30-60 seconds: Provide overview of the show, what will be discussed

5-15 minutes: Discussion

1 to 2 minutes: Show summary

30-60 seconds: Name of show, name of host. Good bye.

That's it. Thanks to Attensa and Akamai for working with us on this show.