Easy Podcasting for Bloggers with a Mac

If you haven’t bought a Mac yet just because you’re not quite convinced as to how all the features of a Mac can help you achieve your internet goals, then let me bring you one step closer by showing you how easy it is to create a great marketing tool called podcasts. For those of you who don’t know, podcasting is much like a RSS feed except that instead of syndicating text throughout the internet, you are syndicating an audio file to your users who have subscribed to your feed.

Personally, I subscribe to a handful of podcasts such as Nightly News with Brian Williams to catch up on world affairs and This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte to listen to the grumpy tech humor we know as Devorak. Much like my RSS Feeds, the latest episodes of all my shows are uploaded and synced automatically to my iPhone, so that I can listen to these shows when I want and where I want like when I used to ride the train or when I commute. I’ve always tried to maximize every minute of my day by educating myself when I can and this is a great way to fill in the usual empty pockets of time that we some times can have.

So, what’s this have to do with you? And how will it make me any kind of money? Basically, podcasts are great marketing tools. They can help compliment the content you already have on your blogs by offering a personal touch to your commentary and giving your readers another way to carry your content with them during their daily routines.

Creating a Podcast

Required for these instructions to work:

  • Apple Computer – preferably a iMac or Macbook that has a built in mic.
  • iLife 08 specifically the Garageband program
  • WordPress Blog
  1. Open the Garageband program and you will be prompted with this window:
  2. Select “Create a New Podcast Episode”
  3. Save as “My First Podcast’ – The Garageband interface should now pop up for you to start using.
  4. Get your show notes ready and press the record button to start saving your show. When finished, press the record button again to stop recording.
  5. Edit your recording with Garageband effects
    • Add Photos
    • Segment your show into Chapters
    • Add Intro and Ending Music
  6. Save as an mp3 file on your computer.
  7. Publishing – Using wordpress to generate the XML Feed
    • Create a New Category in your blog called “Podcasts”
    • Create a Post with the appropriate title
    • Upload your podcast mp3 file and create a link within your post.
    • Your XML feed for your podcast is now – “http://www.yourdomain.com/category/podcast/feed
  8. Now that you have your feed nice and ready, you will want to start telling everyone about your new podcast. Here are some tips:
    • Submit your Feed URL to all the major Podcast directories, such as PodcastPickle.com and of course iTunes.
    • You also will want to create a link to your iTunes podcast so people can easily subscribe to it by copy and pasting the url iTunes has generated for you in iTunes.