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August, 2009 Effective Websites NewsletterHi, I took July off from the newsletter but I'm back this month with an article about how to use a podcast to stay top-of-mind with your customers. Dave Salahi Connecting with Your Audience through a PodcastA podcast can provide your website with another channel to stay in touch with your customers and prospects. As such, it provides a way for you to remain in the awareness of your target audience — important for anyone marketing their goods and services. And, if you provide information that is useful to your customers this builds your authority and your brand. It can also increase your customers' loyalty. Your website visitors can download your podcasts to a portable MP3 player, like an iPod, and listen to them while commuting, working out at the gym, or going for a walk, etc. By subscribing to your podcast your listeners automatically get your latest episodes as they become available. A podcast, as you probably know, is like a radio program that you provide on your website. A podcast can be produced cheaply requiring little more than a microphone and some free software. Your major investment will be in the time to write your script, produce the audio and post your audio files on your website. The technical work can, of course, be outsourced. You can produce episodes of your podcast on any schedule that you choose. You might choose to do podcasts weekly, monthly or at some other interval. Whatever interval you choose, it's a good idea to keep it regular so your subscribers know when to expect new episodes. After you've chosen a topic or theme for your podcast, you'll probably want to write a script so that you can deliver your program smoothly. It's hard for most people to talk extemporaneously for more than a minute or two in a focused manner. You don't want to risk boring your audience, repeating yourself, or fumbling for words. At the very least, you want to have some notes to help you stay focused. A format that works well for podcasts is an interview in which a friend or colleague asks you questions or carries on a discussion with you. To create a podcast you first need a way to record your voice. You can buy an inexpensive microphone which can be plugged into your computer and you can record your conversation directly to your PC. You can download software to record your voice if you don't already have that. Audacity is a popular free program available for both Windows and the Mac. After making your recording you'll want to edit it to remove silent gaps, "ums" and "errs" and any other verbal blunders. At that point, you'll have an MP3 file that you can upload to your website. Before uploading, you'll want to tag the file with your name, the program topic, the date, etc. By doing so, people who download your podcasts can easily see this information on their computer or MP3 player. You'll need another software program for tagging MP3 files. I use Tag & Rename, which is a commercial product, but numerous free programs are available. Search the web for "mp3 tag editor freeware" and you'll get lots of choices. Once you've uploaded your MP3 file to your website you need to create a podcast feed. Your RSS podcast feed is a small file that your subscribers download from your website to learn about the podcast episodes you have made available. Each time you create a new episode you update your RSS feed with information about your new podcast. Then, the next time your subscribers refresh their software, such as iTunes, they can download your new podcast. You can create and edit your RSS file with any text editor, such as Windows Notepad, but you'll find it easier to do with software created for the purpose; e.g., Feed for All. This has been a quick overview of the process of creating a podcast but there's lots more information about podcasting available on the web. A good place to start is Podcast Free America. Another good introduction to podcasting is this webinar, hosted by Adobe, on podcasting. The people doing the presentation produce a podcast for software developers which they discuss a bit but you can ignore this part of it and just focus on the information about recording, editing and uploading your podcast. If you'd like assistance with any of the technical details of producing your podcast, please contact me at dave@artistic-webdesign.com or 949-362-0842. What Are Your Questions?What are your burning questions about internet marketing? Call me at 949-362-0842 or email me at dave@artistic-webdesign.com with your questions. Or fill out a one-minute survey on our website. Then watch for the answers in an upcoming issue of this newsletter.
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