Podcast Help Desk

This is show # 14 for April 11th, 2014… iTunes Revisited

Here we go again!

I get a TON of iTunes related questions so I’m going to revisit what iTunes is when it comes to podcasting. How to get your show listed. How to KEEP your show listed. How to make your listing say what you want it to and other issues with the #1 place people find and listen to your podcast.

Q. I uploaded my latest episode today and it’s not in iTunes.

A. The iTunes store listing and what appears in your feed are two different things. People that subscribe to your feed in iTunes will get the new episodes as you post them but the listing at iTunes can lag by a few days (or up to a week or so) behind your feed. There is no way to automatically tell iTunes that your feed is updated since they have removed their ping podcast feature. If you think there is a problem at iTunes please contact Apple Support at [email protected]

Q. How do I get my podcast to show up under XXX keyword in search on iTunes?

A. SEO on iTunes is a bit of a mystery, but, as near as I can tell, it works about the same as Google SEO but you have to wait longer for it to improve. Also, Apple gives more weight to shows that get a lot of subscribers. The best I can tell you is be patient and make your show title and description keyword rich like you would for google and bing.

Q. When I upload my episode to itunes……

A. No you didn’t! Stop it! … You do not UPLOAD to itunes. It is done by your RSS feed. You upload you show to your media host and you make a post on your website (if you do it the way I suggest) and your RSS feed, feeds iTunes and all the subscribers using iTunes.

AGAIN!!! YOU DO NOT UPLOAD ANYTHING TO ITUNES… STOP IT!!

Q. My show description / image / host name/ etc… won’t change. I changed it 2 weeks ago and it’s still the same as it was.

A. Apple takes it sweet time updating things like show information, Cover Art and Host info. Be patient. I’ve see it take up to 3 weeks to update things. On the other hand, I’ve seen it take less than 3 hours in the case of Podcast Help Desk a couple of weeks ago. As long as your feed looks right, iTunes will update. It does seem that putting out a new episode will help speed up the process. Also, the more consistent you are, the quicker it will update things like that including your next episode.

Q. Can I track how many people are subscribed in itunes?

A. No, not really. You can not really track “subscribers” to your RSS feed or in itunes. You can, however, with Blubrry and Libsyn stats, figure out a rough guess. The more important stat is downloads. I will have another show focusing on stats soon, but the answer to the question is no..

This show brought to you by Blubrry.com Media Hosting….

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That will do it for this session. The Podcast Helpdesk is now closed until next week.

If you would like me to answer your question, please email your question to [email protected] or use the speakpipe “Leave a voice comment” tab on the website. You can also tweet your question using the hashtag #podcasthelpdesk.

I’m Mike Dell. Catch me next time!

This is show # 13 for April 1st, 2014… No Joke!

This is the first “rebranded” show, now called Podcast Help Desk.

Today I’m going to tell you how I rebranded this show including the website address, RSS feed, iTunes listing and everything. Step by step.

First thing I did is get the new domain name. PodcastHelpDesk.com. I use Godaddy to get my domains and host my websites, but you can do this part using any registrar and host I’m sure. I had podcastingtechcoach.com going for a year or so and wordpress, powerpress and all my other plugins were installed and configured. Instead of starting from scratch, I decided I would just re-use the site I had and re-name it.

Once I got the domain name, I went into the hosting part of godaddy and pointed the new domain name to the same directory as PodcastingTechCoach.com. At this point you could have typed “podcastingtechcoach.com’ or “podcasthelpdesk.com” and you would get to the same place. (once the change propagates) It’s called domain forwarding in most hosting control panels.

The next step I did was to install a plugin called “Static Feed”. I configured it to take my powerpress feed (/feed/podcast/) and make it an xml file called Podcast.xml and put it in the root directory.

I then made a 301 redirect in my .htacess file. Example below:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^feed/podcast/ http://podcasthelpdesk.com/podcast.xml [L,R=301]

What this does is make sure that if anyone hits the old feed which was podcastingtechcoach.com/feed/podcast/, it forwards it to the new feed at podcast help desk. It also tells iTunes and anyone subscribed in other programs, that the feed is changed permanently and to change where they look for new episodes.

Stitcher is a bit different. If your show is listed on stitcher, you need to go in and manually tell it about the change. Just login to your partner account and edit your listing. It’s not too hard.

Blubrry and Tech Podcast Network. Both of these will pick up the change sooner or later, but I would (and did) go in and update it manually.

In my case, it took iTunes just 1 day to pick up the change. Your mileage may vary with itunes. I’ve seen them take up to 3 weeks to pickup a 301 redirect. I suppose they are getting better.

After all that I went in and did the rest of the rebranding on the website. Changed the title, tagline graphics and colors. This would also be a good time to change the theme in wordpress if you wanted. But be careful! Some themes do not play well with podcasting so be prepared to check things out before pressing on.

Other things to think about is if your show has Twitter and facebook accounts. You will want to start new ones or rename the ones you have. Since this show isn’t really about social media, I will leave that one up to you.

This show brought to you by Blubrry.com Media Hosting….

Use the promo code nobs for a free month of podcast hosting at any level at blubrry.com

The promo code also works for blubrry premium statistics 1 month free by using the promo code nobs.

Tip of the week:

This is more for listeners than for podcast producers. I’m sure most of you are listeners as well.

Say you want to get a list of all the podcast feeds you listen to so you can subscribe on a new device or new podcast catching program. If you are using iTunes, just go to the podcasts area on your computer and right click on the title and select “Copy Podcast URL”. Then you can paste it into a doc or into your other program. If you want to get them all in an OPML format (Which most podcast catchers can use) Go to the View menu and make sure you have the sidebar on. Once it’s on, right click on the word “podcasts” in the sidebar and click export.

As I talked about in the last episode, The Pocasting Tech Coach is being rebranded. It's now the Podcast Help Desk. I'm going to focus more on answering your questions about podcasting. The whole subject of podcasting and not just the technology.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on the total rebrand. New artwork, new intros and everything!

Look for the name to be changed in Stitcher, Blubrry, Tech Podcast Network and iTunes over the next little while. I will also be doing an episode about how to change your feed address with all these places.

Until then.. Happy Podcasting!

-Mike

Today I took a road trip to demo my Mobile podcasting rig.  My rig consists of a Roland R-05 recorder, An XLR to 1/8 mini stereo cord and the ATR 2100 Mic.

I will also be "Rebranding" Podcasting Tech Coach soon.  Don't worry, if you are subscribed, you will get the new rebranded shows.

Get 30 days free when you signup for Podcast Media Hosting at Blubrry.com.  Use my promo code nobs or just click the links below.

Blubrry Podcast Hosting: http://create.blubrry.com/resources/podcast-media-hosting/?code=nobs

Blubrry Professional Statistics: http://create.blubrry.com/resources/podcast-media-download-statistics/?code=nobs

Today I covered several topics and even a rant of sorts.

- Where should I host my website / Media? - Blubrry Create Podcasting Manual Hosting

- iTunes (again) - iTunes Podcasting Specs

- Your RSS feed is the life-blood of your podcast... Own it, protect it and try not to make it so complicated.

- Buzz, Hum, Cracking and popping audio (not my voice :) )

- Be nice to your Tech Support people!  The word ASAP! should never be in your first contact with Tech support.  Also, GOOGLE is your friend!! Use it!  If you are going to podcast, you WILL have to learn something or pay someone to learn something for you.

Podcast directories / Apps

We talked about iTunes last week.  But, if you don’t know how to submit your podcast to them, just go to your iTunes app (on a computer) and then in the store, find the podcast section and click “submit a podcast”.   Give them your RSS feed and that should be about it.

Windows Phone / Zune / ?? Microsoft - Email your podcast info to Rob Greenlee at [email protected]

Blackberry Podcast App - http://rimpodcast.quickplay.ca/rimpodcasting/

Stitcher Radio - http://www.stitcher.com/content-providers

Tune-in - Submit an email to [email protected] and be sure to give them the Name of your Podcast, a description, and your show’s  RSS feed.

PocketCast - Submit an email to [email protected] and be sure to give them the Name of your Podcast, a description, and your show’s  RSS feed.

Doubletwist - Submit an email to [email protected] and be sure to give them the Name of your Podcast, a description, and your show’s  RSS feed.

Blubrry.com - http://www.blubrry.com  Roku, Boxee, GoogleTV, Samsung and other set top boxes.

TechPodcasts.com - http://www.techpodcasts.com (Tech related shows only and you have to be approved before your listing will show.)  Also, they have a TOS agreement.

Miro -  http://www.miroguide.com/accounts/login/

http://mixlr.com/  Also MAYBE, you can get your show in the I Heart Radio app.

Propodder top 50 podcast directories - http://propodder.com/2011/10/top-50-podcast-directories/

Rob Welch’s Directory of Direcories - http://podcast411.com/page2.html

Podcasts about Podcasting from Dave Jackson at School of Podcasting - http://podcastsaboutpodcasting.com/

Welcome to the REBOOT of the Podcasting TechCoach show.  I’m Mike Dell.  I’ve been podcasting since the beginning of time…. Well, since early 2005 really…

Today I’m  going to talk about what iTunes is and how it works.  More importantly, what it is not.   But first the news…

Garage Band 10 looses it’s enhanced podcast features http://www.macworld.com/article/2060742/garageband-10-review-logic-light-is-a-great-tool-for-musicians-sorry-podcasters-.html

Most people do not use the enhanced podcast features.  What that is, is chapter markers and images that show up on an iPad, iPhone or ipod (and some web players) during an audio podcast.  I never thought that enhanced podcasts were worth the trouble. I think that Apple came to the same conclusion.  This doesn’t mean that you can not use Garage band to make normal MP3 podcasts.  I’m sure it’s just fine for recording as it always was.

Will Frank Zappa Save Podcasting?

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Column/T.0/Will-Frank-Zappa-Save-Podcasting-92954.htm

Looks like Frank Zappa might have come up with “podcasting” before the Patent Trolls at Personal Audio.  According to Marc Maron, who interviewed Moon Zappa (You know, the Valley Girl from Frank’s Valley Girls song and Franks Daughter) says a fan, reading Franks Autobiography, found where Frank figured out a way to distribute content via phone lines.  Hopefully, this will be just another example of prior art that can be used by podcasters to defend against these lawsuits.

Podcast Awards Voting ends today (November 15th)

The 9th annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards voting ends today at 9pm eastern time.  I guess

this isn’t ‘in time” news, but I’m just re-starting this show.   Anyway, congrats to those shows nominated and I will be watching the awards presentation at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas on Sunday Jan 5, 2014.  To check out who was nominated, go to podcastawards.com

Now for the meat of this episode……..

What is itunes really?   iTunes is an application that people have on their Macintosh and Windows PC. It is also a store from Apple to sell you Music, Movies, TV shows, Apps for your iThingys. For our purposes, it’s one of the main ways people still use to find and listen to podcasts.  It’s not the

only way and it’s not even the most used way anymore. Other apps have come along (including Apple’s own podcast app).  The good news for us is that if you get your podcast listed in iTunes, it’s also listed in the Apple Podcasts App and some other apps for both iOS and Android that use Apple’s directory API’s for their list.  So, in a nutshell, it’s important.

It’s not a place to “Upload my podcast”.  It’s not a feed and it doesn’t generate a feed.  THERE IS

NO SUCH THING AS AN ITUNES FEED!   I repeat,  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ITUNES FEED!.  The only thing called a feed in podcasting is your RSS feed.  We will be talking about feeds a lot in the future, but when it comes to itunes, just don’t forget that iTunes is not a feed or even a type of feed.

How iTunes works…  For podcasting, iTunes has 2 parts.  The first part is your show’s listing.  This is kind of like a webpage inside of the iTunes store.  In fact they do have a webpage for every show listed on top of your listing page inside the store. This is good for SEO.  The listing webpage for your show looks just like the listing page inside the store so they are really the same thing.  You show will be listed in iTunes after you have submitted your RSS feed to iTunes and they have approved it.  To get to this point you have to have at least one episode in your feed already and when you submit it, you must have your media hosted on a server that will deliver your media properly.  I could go into the geeky bits about how the server is configured. What this really means is you have to have a real media hosting ac...

I have been missing in action. There will be new episodes starting in the first part of April. If you would like me to cover a topic, drop me a line by either recording by clicking the speakpipe wiget at the left side of the site, or by emailing me [email protected]

Talk to you soon!

-Mike

aka Your Podcasting Tech Coach

Today I play an excerpt of Todd Cochrane's Podcasting Awards announcement (found here if you would like to see the whole video).

Todd went though the stats on the shows that were reviewed for this year's Podcast Awards. There were some very interesting stats about how people setup their website.

You will also find some familier advice (Did i say that before?) :)

Anyway, catch you next week!

-Mike

Before I go into feedburner, a bit of news about it. Google Announced a year ago, that the Feedburner API was going away next month. (Oct 2012). Does this mean feedburner is going away? Maybe and maybe not. Just something to think about.

Feedburner started in 2004 as a feed management service. Back in the day it was the easy way to add all the tags that iTunes needed for podcasting (after itunes started doing podcasts in their iTunes store). It was started by Dick Costolo who is now the CEO of Twitter.

In 2007 it was acquired by Google for $100 Million. Google quickly made the stats and “my brand” service free.

What does feedburner do?

Feedburner basically takes an RSS feed and “burns it” What that means is it adds all kinds of things to the feed to make it compatible with feed readers and other services. It also redirects your feed from an unformatted XML file to a Web-friendly page with subscription buttons at the top of the page. So if someone goes to your feed with a web browser, it doesn’t look like Gibberish.

What about podcasting?

Back in 2005, when podcasting started, there wasn’t an easy way to edit your RSS feed (XML file) so you either had to write your own using a text editor and hope you got all the tags just right, or you could just write a simple feed and let feedburner do the tags for you. This is now known as “Smartcast”. This allows you to have a very simple feed that you redirect though feedburner and then feedburner formats it for podcasting in iTunes and other services.

Reasons NOT to use feedburner....

1. Feedburner is a 3rd party service. Yes, it’s owned by Google, but, it can (and will sooner or later) shut down.

2. You do not OWN your feed if it’s on feedburner. It’s owned by feedburner / Google. Now, most of the time, Google will allow you to redirect or download any content you might have on a service they have shut down (such as WAVE and BUZZ). and WHEN (Not if) they shut down feedburner, they will likely to do the same. There is a redirect option now that I’ve been testing and so far it’s working on a couple of feeds I had there from way back. I will let you know how long that works and if I had any trouble.

3. Branding. You want all your URL’s to be your brand. You paid for your domain name, you might as well use it. Instead of feeds.feedburner.com/mypodcast/ You can have MyPodcast.com/feed/podcast/. Much better to have your own domain. You can setup feedburner to use your domain, but it’s cumbersome and of little use if the service goes away.

4. Feedburner basically hasn’t updated anything in at least 4 years and maybe longer. It doesn’t take into account, changes in the RSS2 specs, and more importantly for podcasters, itunes changed podcast specs.

5. Their stats service is of little or no use. All they track is hits on your rss feed. One week they will show that you have 1000 subscribers and the next 200. Trust me, neither one of those numbers is close. What you want to track is downloads of your podcast files.

Reasons to USE feedburner?

Only one I can think of. IF, as we discussed last week, you HAVE to use a free or cheap podcasting service, you should use feedburner to make sure you own (at least a little bit) of your feed. But as I said before, this is only if feedburner stays around.

There is an email subscription service attached to feedburner that is kind of cool, but with all the disadvantages that feedburner has, I would use something like MailChimp or Awebber. There are lots of mailing list services out there.

Question of the week:

Q. I am using blubrry powerpress on my wordpress blog for podcasting. My blog’s name is not the same as my podcast show name but my Podcast only feed does have the same name.