How many podcasts did you listen to at the beginning of 2015? How many are you listening to now? I know for me, it’s at least doubled.

Podcasts are exploding, and for good reason. They have the ability to…

Laser target your perfect audience

Develop a relationship with them where fans feel engaged

Lead to sales and sponsorship opportunities

At the same time, they’re a lot of work. And it’s easy to feel like you’ve missed the boat – like if you didn’t start your podcast at least a year ago, it’s hopeless.

But compare that mentality to the world of blogging. Were all of the successful blogs in the world started before blogging became big and mainstream? Of course not. So don’t let that stop you if you’re interested.

Here are the top factors to consider if you think a podcast might be a great addition to your business.

Time

Podcasts are really time-intensive. Booking the guests, writing the content, editing the episodes, marketing the finished products, and on and on. If you think your blog takes up too much time, it’s small beans compared to podcasting.

Consider how many hours per week you have to devote to a podcast and if you can set aside a few weeks to work on nothing else as you launch.

Yes, you can delegate part of the work of podcasting. Just make sure you find someone with experience so you end up with a high-quality show. (Let me know if you want to talk about options for hiring out podcasting tasks.)

Goals

What is it about podcasting that interests you? Building your audience, sharing your voice, interviewing guests, marketing your services and products, or something else?

It’s key that you keep your goals in mind throughout the podcasting process because it’s easy to get caught up in all of the other factors.

Maybe how many subscribers you get is not worth stressing over because you want to use the podcast to dig deep with your current followers. On the other hand, if you want to reach new audiences, the content needs to be focused on entertainment or engagement, and less about promoting the rest of your business.

Know the ‘why’ before you jump in and as you work on the podcast.

Investment

The cost of podcasting can range from practically nothing to a hefty sum, depending on the time you’re willing to put into it, your experience, and the technology you use.

If you want to produce a great show, you’re going to need basic equipment:

A recording device (or at least a program on your computer)

A good quality microphone

A basic sound mixer

Audio cables, depending on your set up

Good headphones to wear while recording

You’ll also most likely need theme music, and if you go with something that is prerecorded, make sure you buy rights to use it commercially. You’ll need an eye-catching image for your show so it stands out in iTunes and other podcast mediums. And you’ll probably need a simple website to go with it where you can share episodes and notes and encourage opt-ins to tell your audience about new episodes.

All in all, podcasting can mean a big investment of time and money, but the returns can be huge for your business – a bigger audience, an amplified voice for your message and services, and more revenue if you are smart about it. If you’re interested, let me know and we can talk about how to turn you into a podcasting mogul!

Podcasting is similar to a regular radio show in some ways. It’s simply a digital audio recording available for download from the internet.For an online business owner, creating your own podcast is an extension of the content on your website. Podcasting makes your message more personal and tangible to your audience.

So how do you start podcasting?

Invest In Good Software

At a basic level, you can use a smartphone to record a podcast. There are applications that record audio directly from your phone. You can then upload it to the internet. But one of the key points for starting a podcast is to be aware of sound quality. There is specialist software made for podcasting that will make you and your business sound more professional.

Use The Right Microphone

Buy a microphone that has noise canceling features, and that connect via USB and not cordless, as the USB version provide better quality. You want a directional mic that catches sound in front of it and not around it.

Practice

When you first start podcasting it might take some practice. Take the time to record a few practice shows before you put your show live so that you can become relaxed about how you sound and communicate with your audience.

Keep The Room Quiet

You’ll probably start recording your podcast in your bedroom or home office. But you don’t want it to sound like you are. Do what you can to make sure the room stays quiet while you record your show and avoid interruptions from family members.

Invite Special Guests

Try to invite guests who are experts of their niche and their businesses. This will rub off onto you by association. Once you start your podcast you’ll be surprised at how many people are open to interviews. When you interview someone they’re getting publicity for their business also – so it’s a win/win situation for all involved.

Be Consistent

Recording your own podcast on a regularly basis. It’s important that your audience become reliant on hearing your podcast on a specific date and time. It sometimes takes a while for a good audience to catch on, and if you aren’t podcasting on a regular basis you’ll never catch on.

Stay on Niche

This can be tough when you’re recording a podcast because of having to continuously come up with topics for shows. But, you want anyone who listens to understand who you’re speaking to and not to end up uninterested due to aiming for the wrong audience.

Podcasts are an extremely powerful tool for marketing and establishing a reputation. However, they have one weakness. They aren’t interactive.

Getting your audience truly involved in your podcast requires some element of interactivity. They need to be part of the podcast to have a stake in it. But podcasts are pre-recorded so how can you involve your audience?

In this article I’m going to show you how to make a podcast interactive. While you can’t make a podcast interactive directly — that would involve a live podcast — you can make it appear interactive. Since a live podcast is a contradiction in terms, the trick is to include delayed live interactions. Here are four examples:

1. Always ask for emails comments and questions.

No matter what you teach it’s always a good idea to ask for questions. After all, no one is going to completely understand what you have taught during a podcast. If they do then you probably shouldn’t have made the podcast so comprehensive in the first place. Questions not only help you increase the interactivity of your podcast but they’re also a great source of topics and market research. The best place to discover new topics and related products is to ask your customer base. In the case of a podcast, that means your audience.

2. Have an “Our listeners ask” column.

This is the other side of the question and emails. If you have a column format podcast you should always — maybe even must — have an “Our listeners ask” column. This column will allow you to answer questions your audience has asked — or should have asked. Even if you to make them up yourself!

3. Have a recorded Q & A session.

While the podcast itself can’t actually be live and still be a podcast, there’s no reason it can’t be recorded live. One of the techniques you can use to increase interactivity is to record a live question and answer session. This is a teleseminar in which your audience and customers can call in and ask questions. In return you’ll do your best to answer those questions. A coaching call is a great source for this as your coaching clients are already primed to ask questions.

4. Have a listener interview the host.

One of the great techniques for creating a podcast is to interview an expert. But what happens if you turn that around. What if you are being interviewed? The temporary host will be perceived as someone who is on the same level as your audience. It will be as if they were interviewing you. The result will be an interactive recording. Quickly and easy!

A podcast connects with your audience more than text. People who take the time to listen to your podcast are much more involved emotionally when they hear your voice, rather than reading that exact same information in a blog post.

When you hear someone saying things you agree with, or talking about how they have encountered the same problems you have, you begin to like and trust that person.

But when creating a podcast, the most difficult thing for most people is coming up with good podcast content on a regular basis. You may have a great voice, lots of followers and listeners and loads of confidence, but without the content to go along with it, your podcasts will fail.

Here are 6 ideas for coming up with things to talk about in your podcast.

1. Personalize It

Speak about a personal story or experience. If you're creating a video podcast, do something adventurous such as a bungee jump or skydive and record the entire experience.

2. Current Affairs

Go through the news and generate podcast content about subjects that are applicable to you and your audience. Give your own thoughts and opinions on these subjects. Keep in mind that a podcast is similar to having your own radio show, but to a specific target audience who are interested in what you have to say.

3. Conduct Interviews

Reach out to the people who have related podcast content to you. You can both work together marketing each other's podcast. You can interview them for your podcast and they can interview you for theirs. That way, you both get direct exposure to new audiences.

4. How To Guides

Create some useful how-to guides on topics and tasks which people usually find challenging or difficult. You can also produce useful checklists or cheatsheets that can go along with the podcast. These can be uploaded into the podcast notes and emailed to people who request them. It's also an excellent way to develop your email list!

5. Daily Life

Did something funny or unusual happen to you recently that you can speak about? Can you connect something that happened back to the niche of your podcast?

6. Check With Your Audience

As your audience grows, don't be scared to ask them what they would like you to talk about in your future podcast episodes. This gives you issues that are relevant to your audience, can help you come up with new ideas. It also demonstrates to your audience that you really care what they think and feel and that you're there to help them.

Recording a podcast will connect you in a new way with your audience. They’ll really get to know you and start to look forward to your shows. It’s an effective way to create content in a new way that will get interest from your current audience and new members alike as you add value to their lives.

Come Up with a Theme and Main Purpose

When you decide to start a podcast, you want to come up with a theme for your podcast plus understand what the main purpose is for your podcast. Try to write down as many show ideas as possible.

Get the Right Equipment

You don’t have to buy the top of the line equipment, but you do want to ensure that you sound good. You’ll need a good quality microphone, your computer (a laptop or PC is fine), and some editing software like Audacity that will allow you to perfect your show. Plus, you’ll need to be able to ensure that your show is encoded properly in the right format. Finally, you’ll need a place to host your podcast like Amazon S3 servers, or you can use a service like BlogTalkRadio.com.

Plan Out Your Shows

You’ll want to write an outline for your shows. The best shows keep a similar format for every show. Plus, if you have segments on your show, it’s easier to plan the content. For example, you may have time set aside for opening monologue, music, various topics, commercial breaks, closing remarks, and your outro.

Set Up Your Shows for the Next Quarter at a Minimum

You’ll want to schedule your show themes in advance so that you can invite the right guests on the show. Plus, knowing what the show is about in advance helps you develop the right content, find sponsors, and know what products you want to promote.

Market Your Show

Once you have everything set up and know your launch date, work on getting at least three shows completed for marketing purposes. Start marketing at least six weeks before your launch date so that you can get a good audience for the first three shows. This is going to ensure that your show gets started with good fans.

Have Fun

An important thing to remember about doing a podcast is that your happiness (or not) shows through in your voice. To help, try looking in a mirror when you talk so that you can keep your voice and personality light when appropriate. Have show notes in front of you so you don’t have to memorize anything, and just talk and be yourself.

Podcasting is great way to get information to your audience. It’s very similar to a traditional radio show in some ways. Your audience can download your podcast onto their smartphone and listen to it when they’re traveling to and from work, in the car while driving, or they can simply listen on their laptop or computer while at home.

The vast majority of your competition most probably don’t have a podcast and most likely have no clue how to produce one. Recording your own podcast gives you a fantastic opportunity to be one step in front.

What Equipment Do I Need?

At a simple level, you can use your smartphone to record it on. Apps like Pocket Casts, Ipadio and AudioBoom record audio straight from your phone. You then simply upload it to the internet.

Going Forward

Once you have recorded a few podcasts and feel more confident, it’s time to start making your podcast a little more professional. This way you can give the best possible experience to your customers.

First, get a microphone. You can quickly find on Amazon.com or at your local computer store. You’ll also need some kind of digital recording tools. Check out services like Audacity or Audio Acrobat. This software enables you to record your podcast and you remove specific parts of the podcast or modify it a little until you’re happy with the end result.

How Long Should Your Podcast Be?

If you’re offering a how-to podcast it needs to be as long as it needs to be for you to show people how to do something. The length of your podcast will depend on if you’re doing one-person style podcast where you do all the talking or if you’re interviewing someone.

The length should also be relevant to your topic or market.

Use your common sense as to how long it should be, but do understand that people’s attention span online is quite short. It’s not easy for the majority of people to sit through a long podcast unless they are extremely interested in the topic.

Where Is The Best Place To Record Your Podcast?

You don’t need to record your podcast in a recording studio. Many online entrepreneurs record their podcasts in their spare room or home office. The main issue is to do what you can to make sure the room stays quiet while you record your podcast so that there is little, or none, background noise.

Almost as soon as the original Apple iPod was introduced, people in the marketing profession began to realize the medium’s potential to carry brand and product messaging. Today, podcasting is popular method for communicating corporate information that enables businesses to deliver valuable content to listeners. Because the sound of the human voice carries emotion, the medium can deliver content more effectively than text. In fact, some marketing experts believe that podcasting is more powerful than other marketing media such as direct mail advertising. By developing and incorporating a podcast into their marketing programs, companies can, for example, educate listeners about new and upcoming technologies in their industry, inform customers about soon to be released products, and promote new services. Use the following guidelines for developing your podcast.

Plan Your Attack

Before you even begin to record a podcast, you need to decide what you want to say, what your target market is, and what your call to action will be. At the end of your podcast you may want to point listeners to a specific web URL that will drive sales and measure how many people heard your podcast. You should also develop a script that tells the person doing the voice over exactly what to say. And due to people’s generally short attention span, you should avoid creating a podcast that is longer than 20 to 30 minutes.

Get the Right Tools

To create your podcast you will need a PC and a microphone. Many computers already have microphones built in. But you might want to purchase an echo canceling variety to ensure the highest audio quality of your production. Headphones also are a good idea if you want to hear your recordings played back without hearing extra noise from your surroundings.

You’ll also need software for recording voice such as one of the basic or preloaded programs that came with your PC’s operating system. Or you can purchase a more sophisticated solution that enables you to edit the audio file such as ePodcast Creator or the simple to use and Windows and Mac compatible program Audacity. Audacity is available for free download at audacity.sourceforge.net.

Start Recording

Go the file menu of your program and select New. Test your microphone’s input level and then just click on the record button and begin. If you’re using Audacity, the software saves the recording automatically as an .aup file. However, some programs cannot open this format so you should export your podcast as an .mp3 file after recording.

Upload Your File

After you’re finished with production, you’re ready to upload the .mp3 file to your website or publish it to a blogging service such as Podcasting.com or Apple’s iTunes Podcast Directory. If you want to publish on a regular basis, you’ll need to create an RSS feed. You can do this with an easy to use program such as FeedForAll.

Publicize Your Podcast

To ensure you get a large audience, you should e-mail contacts in your company’s database that your program is available. Include some basic details that will attract their attention. And be sure to include a URL where they can download the podcast. You can also maximize your audience by ensuring your podcast is listed with web search engines such as Google and Yahoo and by using RSS search engines, including Google Blog Search, Bloglines, Feedster, and Technorati.

Podcasting is a medium that, while it has been around for years, is finally starting to grow in popularity. Thanks to the explosion of smartphones has allowed this awesome technology to reach millions of people around the world. If you are a business owner, artist, or just someone with something to say, podcasting is for you.

The question that many new podcasters ask is, “How long should my podcast be?” The answer to this question depends on a number of factors. I will try to list them for you in this article, and hopefully they will help you decide what length is right for you.

• How much time would you spend listening to a podcast on the topic you have chosen. A good way to determine this would be to listen to other podcasts on your topic (chances are good that there is one out there) and determine what length you have the patience to listen to.
• What time limit can you record consistently. One of the biggest keys to podcasting success is consistency. Your listeners will want to know what they can expect from each episode, including the time frame of each episode. If you are comfortable talking for ten minutes at a time, them make each episode that long. If you can talk for an hour, then go for that. Remember, consistency is the key.
• How often will you be releasing new episodes? If your plan is to release only one episode each month, you may want to consider a podcast of 30 minutes to an hour in length. Your subscribers are not going to want to wait 30 days for a ten minute episode. They will look elsewhere for the content they want. On the other hand, if you are planning on releasing a new episode on a bi-weekly basis you will want to make them shorter, not only because of their frequency, but also because of the length of time it takes to record and produce a quality podcast.
• What is the purpose of your podcast? Is it news or entertainment? Is is personal or business? The answer to this question may also help you to decide the length of your podcast.

Hopefully these questions will help you in determining how long your new podcast will be. Don’t be afraid to adjust as you go along. Feedback from your audience is also a great way to know whether you should go longer or shorter. No matter what you decide, make sure you have fun. Unless you do that, you won’t stay with it for very long.

RSS feeds are used today to deliver a wide array of content options. The origin of the RSS feed came from blogging programs when the author wanted to share their posts with others around the world. The technology today has grown immensely in that just about every webmaster is taking advantage of this wonderful technology as it provides real time news, events, and information including podcasts. The application allows the information as well as the download on a simple format, which is easy to receive and download right on their desktop instead of searching online for the information.

Today, instead of just receiving information, Podcast RSS feeds are becoming even more popular. Now, instead of having those interested in your podcast having to visit your website frequently to enjoy your content they can easily download it via the feed and watch when they desire. This way they do not have to rush to your website to view your podcast but can have it right on their desktop to view.

These types of feed allow webmasters to send out a variety of podcast feeds. This means that business bloggers to film producers can use the same technology to send out their work and have it viewed by the world. A few entrepreneurs have even created their own radio stations using podcasts, which allows them to start without all the high costs of starting up a traditional radio station.

Podcasting is changing the media, as it is low cost and easy to implement, therefore media is always changing. Today, just about anyone can create their own podcast and send it out across the net. This means whether you want to submit information to your business partners or to your fans, a podcast is a very easy tool to use.

With Podcast RSS feeds, publishing was never easier or quicker. The feeds are sent out where those interested in the subject matter can subscribe. This means the information is sent out as soon as published so the feed will be seen quickly by those looking for information on the subject.

No matter if, you wish to use a podcast to introduce your new song, your business plan, or to save animals, RSS feeds will help with your efforts. Of course, you will still need to market your Podcast feed but once you get the word out, everyone interested in your topic will soon be subscribing and you will be receiving targeted traffic in no time.

Despite the increase in video streaming, podcasts remain a popular medium. This means that you should consider using podcasts in your online marketing strategy. You can use them to repurpose old blog articles or to build relationships with influencers in your industry.

The use of podcasts helps with brand exposure and is a highly cost-effective way to increase your overall marketing strategy. Find out how to incorporate podcasts into your existing marketing efforts.

Invite Guests to Discuss Relevant Topics

The first example of using podcasts for marketing is to invite guests to talk about a topic relevant to your industry. This method is most effective when your guest is an influencer. This is someone that has a good reputation in your industry and a lot of followers.

By using podcasts to interview a guest, you can attract their audience to learn more about your brand. This also helps you build relationships with people that matter in your field. You’ve taken the first step toward building a relationship that could lead to further cross-marketing opportunities.

How do you record the interview? Typically, all you need to do is record a phone conversation. It’s just that simple. This is part of the reason that podcasts are so beneficial. They’re quick, easy, and affordable.

Repurpose Your Existing Blog Content

Another option is to repurpose your existing blog content. If you’ve got old posts that don’t attract any more visitors, you can convert the post into a podcast.

Use the blog article as the topic for your podcast. Don’t simply read the article word for word. Use it as a guide. This makes it easy to find topics for your podcasts and continue to release new podcasts on a regular basis.

Create Informative Content and Tutorials

You can also use podcasts to provide your audience with informative content. Podcasts should generally be kept to 15 minutes or less. This gives you plenty of time to offer tips and suggestions on a particular topic. This is the same as generating blog articles for your target audience.

You can even perform the reverse of the previous tip. You can easily convert your old podcasts into original blog articles. Transcribe your podcast and then edit it into an article for posting on your blog.

Continue to Release New Podcasts

As with any marketing strategy, consistency is key. You’ll want to create a schedule for releasing new podcasts. This helps you gain a loyal following. During your first couple of months of posting podcasts, you should try to publish new podcasts several times per week.

The podcast also requires many of the same SEO strategies as other content. This includes catchy titles and descriptions. This is how you get people to discover your podcasts on podcast directories.

You can also share your podcasts on social media and promote them to your email subscribers. Basically, it’s one more marketing channel for you to use to gain new followers.

Podcasts shouldn’t be overlooked as a marketing channel. One recent survey found that over 46 million Americans listen to podcasts each month. Don’t miss out on this chance to gain new followers or potential customers.

Incorporate podcasts into your existing marketing strategy. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing solutions, along with a method for generating conversion-ready internet marketing prospects,