Podcasting: Where to host your RSS feed

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: Where to host your RSS feed

This is actually a long running debate between the two oldest podcast media hosts. On one side, Blubrry says that you should retain control of your RSS feed. On the other, Libsyn says, too much can go wrong to risk self-hosting it. Who’s right? It depends.

Should you host your RSS feed on your website or with your media host? It depends:Click To Tweet

Your RSS feed is arguably one of the most important things in your podcast. If it goes horribly wrong, your show is dead. So, depending on an expert to generate and host it is a good thing, but if the host makes it hard to leave, that’s a bad thing.

Libsyn has a track record of over a decade of allowing you to move your feed anytime, for any reason, so that’s less of a concern. For people like me, though, the problem lies in the fact that they only host one feed and I upload audio for four shows a week.

That brings me to the Blubrry powerpress plug-in for wordpress. It allows me all the control I could ever want to generate multiple feeds and host them on my site. There is a problem, though.

Just like hosting media on your site is a bad idea because it’s betting against your own success. It’s hoping that too many people don’t download your file because if they do, the best thing that can happen is that your web host will shut you down. The worst is that they’ll charge you tens of thousands of dollars.

That’s less likely with an RSS feed, though because its size is measured in kb, not mb or gb. It would take A LOT of traffic to hit the same bandwidth that would raise the ire of a web host.

The third thing (that both of these solutions don’t suffer from) is to host your RSS feed with a service that doesn’t let you get it out. Imagine that you have a billing dispute, or they go out of business, whatever the case, it’s not worth the risk to lose all your audience. Make sure you can move your feed anytime, for any reason.

My advice would be to host with a media host that lets you move your RSS feed if you want simplicity. If you don’t have tens of thousands of people in your audience and have multiple shows, hosting your own is fine too. It just depends.

For more, watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

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If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

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Podcasting: Three podcast images

On today’s Tech Help for Churches, three podcast images

Once you get it all set up, podcasting can be really easy to do. Still, there are always tweaks, things to learn, and details that can add to your podcast. That’s what this episode is about.

Your podcast can have 3 different images? Click here for what they are:Click To Tweet

Most people know about album art. When you subscribe to a podcast in iTunes, in the Podcasts app, or now in the Google Play app, you see a picture. That’s the album art for the show as a whole. Apple says they want it 1200×1200 minimum, but recommend 3000×3000. That’s big.

Still, it’s doable. Where do you put it, though? How does Apple (as well as Google and others) know where it is? It’s in the RSS feed. When everything is set up correctly, there’s a tag in your RSS feed (the “shopping list” that tells your computer or device that you’ve got a new show) which tells program that downloads your podcast (and podcast directories, like iTunes) where your show cover art is. Most of the time, this gets set up at your podcast host or on your website, if you’re using Powerpress.

The next two types of art are episode art. Most podcasts don’t take advantage of this type of image. It’s possible to change the image with each episode. You don’t have to, but it’s possible.

In the case of a church podcast, this might be a series branding image. It might be a picture of a guest preacher. It might be any number of things, but there are two places it needs to go (and both are slightly different).

It used to be that the most common place to find episode pictures was in the ID3 tags of the mp3 file itself. iPods (and other portable devices without an internet connection) would read the episode art from the file itself. This file needs to be no more than 200kb.

The more common place to see the episode image today is (just like the show image) in the RSS feed itself.

With this information in mind, it is possible to change image for devices which read ID3 tags and not ones that read the RSS file.

Additionally, if you upload a show to YouTube, there’s another image that goes with that one. It shouldn’t be smaller than 1280×720.

Do you use different images for episodes vs. the show itself? How do you do it? For more information, watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

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Should your church use YouTube or podcast?

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Should your church podcast or use YouTube?

Here are some things to consider:

How do you choose between YouTube and podcasting? Click here for some things to consider:Click To Tweet

-Cost–When you consider how much it costs to upload and maintain files, YouTube is the clear winner with a cost of $0.

-Audio–If your content is audio only, you might consider putting up a still graphic and uploading that with the audio to YouTube, but you’ll find that people only watch for a short amount of time before they drop off and doing this consistently trains them to ignore your channel, so if you ever do real video, they won’t watch it. If you’re only doing audio, do a podcast.

-Traffic–If all you want is a ton of traffic, YouTube is the clear winner here.

-Dedicated traffic–If you want traffic that is much more likely to actually be looking for what you’re sending out, a podcast is a better solution.

-Copyright–You control the feed with a podcast, so YouTube can’t pull it down for supposed copyright violations. With that said, there isn’t a good license to get for podcasting worship music, so both have their plusses and minusses.

-Access to audience–With YouTube and a podcast, you have people who will subscribe. While YouTube has the ability to send messages to that audience, that could go away or change at anytime. If people subscribe on your website to a podcast, they might subscribe to a newsletter, too and then you can email them directly. That’s unlikely though. Both allow you to contact people, but neither is awesome at it.

-Control of platform–If YouTube wants, your account could disappear at anytime for any reason. I know of a channel with controversial views (on something political, not church-related), that, although he had millions of subscribers and many more views, he was pulled by YouTube. Happily his channel came back, but there’s not guarantee. You have MUCH more control with a podcast.

So, how about you? Which of these things pushes you over the edge one way or another? Watch the video above for more on this discussion.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

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Podcasting: File compression and audio compression

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http://TrinityDigitalMedia.com/thfc On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: File compression and audio compression

People use a single term (compression) for two different things: file compression and audio compression.

When someone talks about audio for a podcast, they’ll talk about compression. Click here to learn about both kinds:Click To Tweet

Audio compression uses either software or hardware to compress the differences between very loud signals and quiet ones. You do this to keep people from constantly raising and lowering the volume to make quiet parts louder only to make loud parts quiet moments later.

In contrast, file compression takes a large, uncompressed file (like a WAV or AIFF) and compress the size of the file and turning it into, for example, an MP3 or AAC. These are lossy file formats, though are are lossless file formats.

When you apply lossy compression, part of the file are thrown away, never to return. Ideally, you’d record, edit, master and THEN compress into MP3 or AAC. Every time you decompress the file, you lose information, so you could easily end up with a file that’s not very good afterward.

The algorithm tries to remove information that not as necessary. It just doesn’t always get it right.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate: http://patreon.com/paulalanclif

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

Subscribe for free in iTunes.

Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at:

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More video can be found on YouTube.com

Also check out my Google+ page

If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate.

Podcasting: What is podfading and how you can know if you’re about to do it?

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, What is podfading and how you can know if you’re about to do it

Your podcast may be in danger, not from outside forces, necessarily (although they may play a part), but from you as the podcast producer. Here’s why.

Your podcast may be in danger of podfading. Click here for how to know and what to do, if so:Click To Tweet

Unlike traditional media, where there’s a whole team that creates a show, podcasts are often solo (or small team) projects. If one person, or one of a team of two or three, starts to lose motivation, the podcast might stop, rather abruptly. What seems one day like something you’ll do for the rest of your life can quickly become a burden that’s hard to bear.

Here are some of the signs. Maybe it’s no longer fun. Maybe shows are getting harder to make. Maybe life seems to get in the way more. Maybe you no longer have time. Maybe the weekly show becomes bi-weekly or a show that you do once a month. Slowly the time between shows gets longer and longer.

If that’s you, you’re in danger of podfading. Podfading is when your podcast abruptly stops. I’ve podfaded one show twice and brought it back each time. For another, I podfaded it, not planning to bring it back.

It’s really a sad thing because any audience may be looking forward to an episode that may never come.

If you see this happening in your situation. Here are some things to do about it.

Take a break. Plan ahead and decide to go on hiatus for the summer, or for a month. Make sure you have a firm date to come back and do it.

You can also, rearrange priorities to give yourself more room to create. It might be that you’re not tired of your show; maybe you’re just tired. Busyness is the enemy of creativity, so give yourself some margin.

There’s no shame in ending a show whose time has come. If it’s time, it’s time. Just end well, telling the audience you’re ending.

For more about podfading, watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

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Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

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If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate.

Podcasting: Should you podcast in mono or stereo?

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: Should you podcast in mono or stereo?

Normally, I’m all for the latest tech, but sometimes an older solution is actually better. Believe it or not, that’s why most podcasts should be delivered in mono, not stereo.

Should you podcast in mono or stereo? You may be surprised to learn it’s…Click To Tweet

Why?

Your audience. Your audience really matters. Stop and think about most of the content of your podcast. Is it spoken word? Probably. What would stereo add to a person speaking? Not much.

Now, think about the listening conditions that most of your podcast listeners are in. They’re in their cars, in traffic, with road noise. They’re working out in the gym with the sound of clanging weights behind them. They’re working, keeping an ear free so that they can respond if the boss yells their name. These are not pristine listening environments.

Now, I admit that if you’re podcasting music, stereo is a better choice, but there’s a problem with doing that. Each podcast subscriber literally gets a free, digital duplicate of the music you podcast. Sure, you _can_ stream podcasts, but they’re really a downloadable format. As such, live streaming licenses really don’t cover them. If you’re using copyrighted music (which even some hymns still fall under copyright), you’re really opening your church up for problems. Once, you eliminate music, the reason for stereo goes away.

For more on this idea, watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

Subscribe for free in iTunes.

Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at:

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My Podcasting Workflow

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, my podcasting workflow

How does someone who started podcasting in 2005 make four shows a week? In the last several years, I’ve gone from producing one audio show sporadically to making four each week. How? Let’s examine my podcasting workflow step by step.

How does someone who started podcasting in 2005 make four shows a week? Watch this to find out:Click To Tweet

First, you should know that all my shows are shot as videos. Whether you listen to just the audio or not, it started life as a video.

I have my set ready to go all the time. That way, when I sit down to record, I don’t have a lot of excuses not to do so.

My lighting is all set, so I just need to turn it on.

I shoot primarily on my Canon T3i with the 18-55mm kit lens.

For audio, I tend to use my audio-technica pro-70 wired lav running through my Behringer Eurorack UB 1202 FX into my Behringer multicom pro-xl compressor/limiter/gate. There are links to buy these models on this page.

I shoot a show, copy the files to my hard drive and edit. I always use the same template, so all I have to do is cut off the intro, put it before the open, add the rest after the open, and move the close to the end of the video I just shot.

Next, I export the video and upload it to both YouTube and ChurchStreaming.tv.

I get the thumbnails from photopin.com (creative commons images only) and write up my show notes.

I also export an aif audio file from the video, open it in iTunes, compress it to an mp3, and upload it to Libsyn.com (my audio podcast host).

Finally, I put together all the media and show notes in a blog post here.

For more details, watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

Subscribe for free in iTunes.

Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at:

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If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate.

Podcasting: Using Apple’s new Podcasts Connect service

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: Using Apple’s new Podcasts Connect service

For years, since the beginning of the iTunes podcast directory really, a podcast producer had to submit their podcast to iTunes by using the iTunes app. For those of us who used Macs, that was no big deal, but for PC users who found iTunes to be unnecessary for anything else, it was kind of a pain to download and install iTunes just to submit a podcast. For Linux users, the only choice was to get a friend to submit their podcast.

Now, we have another option. In the past couple of weeks, Apple has released PodcastsConnect.com. Note that there’s an “s” after the word “podcast” and before “connect” when you type in the url or you’ll go to the wrong site.

You used to have to use iTunes to submit a podcast to Apple, now you can use this:Click To Tweet

So, what can you do on Podcasts connect? Get your mirror URL, change your feed (trust me, don’t do it), delete shows (not episodes), hide shows (again, not episodes), refresh your feed (don’t do this either), and go to the listing for your show in iTunes.

Let’s look at what each does.

The mirror url is an Apple created redirect for your show. No one I’ve heard talk about this feature knows for sure what Apple has in mind, but it seems to be a url that doesn’t change even if your feed does. So, you could hand it out and it should (in theory) remain the same whether you release one episode or ten years of episodes. I’d hold off doing that until we get more clarification.

Changing your feed. Let’s say you change podcast hosts. You might be tempted to go into this field and just type the new feed. Don’t do it. By typing the new feed, you don’t change the feed that your current subscribers are connected to. You just change what future subscribers will use. This could cause you to lose most of your current audience.

Delete shows. Let’s say you have an old show that you’re not going to do anymore. In that case, you might want to delete it. This is the place to do it, but be careful because it’s a one-way trip. You can’t undelete.

Hide shows. Have a show that you may or may not want to bring back, but you don’t want to get new subscribers for, unless it does come back? That’s what this does. This is reversible, so I’d start with this instead of delete, unless you were really sure. As an aside, there is a feature in the RSS tags of your feed that can hide individual episodes from iTunes. I don’t know why you’d want to use it unless you were putting profanity in the title, but since this is “Tech Help for CHURCHES,” it doesn’t really apply to you.

Refresh feed. This allows you to send a message to iTunes to refresh what’s in your feed. Only use this if it’s been over 24 hours since you published and your episode isn’t showing up in iTunes. Then, try and use this sparingly. We don’t want Apple to take it away because podcasters abused it. When in doubt, don’t use it.

For more discussion on this cool new tool (including the web browser that it doesn’t seem to work in, at least for me), watch the video above.

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video,

Podcasting: The Type of Professional Microphone you shouldn’t use

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: The Type of Professional Microphone you shouldn’t use

Most of the time, professional gear is best, but this time, in this unique situation, there’s a certain type of professional gear you should NOT use.

Most of the time, professional gear is best, but here’s the type of professional microphone you shouldn’t use:Click To Tweet

Most microphones are either dynamic or condenser microphones.

In a professional studio, ambient sound is very well controlled. As such, you won’t have unwanted sound, so you’ll want a microphone that picks up every last detail of what’s being said.

Most churches don’t have professional audio studios, so for a podcast other than the sermon, you’ll want a microphone that doesn’t pick up as much random sound.

Back in the day, one of the first microphones that podcasters were recommended was the Blue Snowball. This microphone seemed perfect. I came with a stand and was a USB mic, so you didn’t need a mixer or any audio interface to get it into the computer. Unfortunately, it was a condenser microphone, so it picked up all sorts of audio from the environment that you didn’t want.

Fast forward to today. Now, we have choices like the ATR-2100 USB microphone (affiliate link) which can connect directly to a computer, but also has an XLR connector to interface with a mixer, should you ever need that, too.

Like all the microphones you should consider, this is a dynamic mic. It doesn’t pick up details that you don’t want, but does pick up your voice.

For most situations, a microphone, like this one, will actually give you better results than a professional broadcast condenser microphone costing hundreds of dollars.

For more information, watch the video above.

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

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Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at:

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More video can be found on YouTube.com

Also check out my Google+ page

If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate.

Podcasting: Creating Local Podcasts

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcasting: Creating Local Podcasts

The advantage of podcasts is that they’re not geographically locked, they’re time-shifted, and easily consumed.

For some churches, the international availability of a podcast might be it’s downfall. They are local and want to serve local people, so how do you create a podcast that draws local people? You do it by creating local podcasts.

Podcasting has a global reach, but that’s a problem if you’re reaching out locally. Here’s how to overcome it:Click To Tweet

Sports:

High school teams

College teams

Pro teams

Regional sports

Unusual sporting events

Food:

Regional favorites

Local delicacies

Culture:

Arts

quirks of your location

Parenting:

kid-centered event calendar

Local news:

cover what television and radio don’t

Local history:

What happened here in the past

Interviews:

Interview local people of interest

Singles:

Events and fun for singles

Couples:

Weekly date night ideas

The “C” Church in your area:

Church news of the positive

Comedy:

Clean comedy aimed at local events, etc.

Spiritual warfare:

Visit “haunted locations”

Helping the poor:

Events to help the poor

Ideas to help out

What viewers can actually do according to non-profits

Missions:

Highlight each local church’s mission trips over a year

Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)

About this show:

If you use the internet, social media, or new media to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.

Subscribe for free:

Subscribe for free in iTunes.

Subscribe for free in other software. and don’t forget to rate the show there as well.

For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at:

Facebook or Twitter

More video can be found on YouTube.com

Also check out my Google+ page

If you’d like to chip in a few bucks, anything you do is appreciated. Just click this link to donate.