Viral Podcasting

Successful podcasting requires a number of values and skills. The biggest investment you will make is your time, assuming that you really want to make a go of this. Your time is your most valuable commodity. We all have limited amounts and therefore any time we undertake a project, we are making the ultimate investment. But your time alone is not enough. Spend a few hundred dollars and get decent equipment. A mixer, a quality microphone, a microphone boom arm and shock absorber at a minimum. Invest in your work space. Make sure you have a very comfortable chair, adequate work area and a pleasant environment that will help you give the best you have. These resources won't make you a success, there are other factors involved. Rather, they will help you to become the best you can, which is what successful podcasting is all about.

Todd Cochrane is one of the pioneers of podcasting. He wrote the first book on podcasting. He had been a blogger and by his own admission, not a good one. He was in the services and was injured. He volunteered to go to Waco, TX and had a lot of down time. He heard about podcasting and picked up a $14 headset. He made a lot of mistakes out of the gate. There was no formula for success back then. It always helps to be early in an industry. The audience skyrocketed and the rest is history. Now, he's taken the solutions he created for his own show and made it into a business. And to think this all happened before Facebook and Twitter. The people who listen make all the difference. And so had Todd.

A.J. Wilcox joined us for a discussion of social media promotion with an emphasis on LinkedIn! Most people considering using paid advertising to promote their brand do not think of LinkedIn. It's much costlier than Facebook or Google. However, if you have a high dollar, high margin product or service that is geared primarily towards the B2B market, it might be the right fit. LinkedIn gives you the ability to more narrowly target your potential audience better than any other platform out there. You can target CEO's, CFO's, sales managers, etc. And you can also target specific industries. Therefore, knowing your potential customer is essential. You can also test your campaigns to develope a winning message. Once you've mastered the message, you're ready to go big time with LinkedIn. It's certainly not for everyone, but if you've got the right product/service and can afford a higher budget, the results can really boost your brand and your show.

During Podfest Chris Krimitsos had an inspiration. Why not do a movie about Podcasters and Podcasting. He traveled throughout the US and even went to Guatemala to capture the essence of podcasting. In a way all podcasters are messengers and that's how they came up with the name. It's all about spreading ideas and getting a message out. Financing the movie was a challenge. Within two weeks Chris had run out of money. It's hard to appreciate how quickly costs run up when making a movie. Chris self-financed and used crowd source funding. Chris interviewed over 100 people and 40 wound up being featured in the film. At the end of the day all podcasters want to leave people better off than they found them. Financially successful podcasters either got off to an early start or they're in a super-niche. But other paths to monetization are emerging. It's a perfect competitive marketplace, easy entry and exit. 

 

Editing is a sticky issue, especially with beginning podcasters, but even more experienced ones are often guilty. The purpose of editing isn't supposed to make you sound perfect. Over-editing/over-productions makes you sound unnatural and fake. You can edit your way to perfection, but is that really what you want. Don't be overcritical of yourself. It was cause you to be disappointed with your performance, no matter how good it might be.  Edit out obvious blunders, mistakes and miscues. Filter out pops, clicks and hiss. The best way to insure good post-production is to do good work in the first place. Skype can cause issues with your sound quality. Hardwire Skype, take it off of wifi. 

If you interview guests, you'll quickly discover that most of them are not technically proficient in audio settings and quality. Never let them use the built-in a microphone with built-in computer speakers. Get them to at least use earbuds or headphones. You'll get better quality all around.

Echo can never be eliminated. You sound quality is only as good as your original setup. 

Develop your feel for the money lines in interviews. Highlight them at the beginning of the segment. If you run over on your show, mark good spot and figure out what you want included. Remember you can always hire an editor to do it for you, however, make sure they don't overproduce. Always make sure you sound natural and authentic. 

 

 

 

As a podcaster you need to be obsessed with your brand. But you can never take it for granted. Just because you've been successful in the past, doesn't mean that you can say or do anything you please. The United State's business history is littered with companies who have jumped the Branding Shark. Coca cola, General Motors, Ford, IBM and the list goes on and on. Bigger companies may have the ability to reverse their mistake, but for smaller entities - such as podcasters - this move can be fatal. Here's rule that you can safely live by. Unless your podcast is about politics, don't ever talk about it. The only thing you'll succeed in doing is self-immolation. Look at what's going on in the NFL today. Where you stand politically is completely besides the point. You have nothing to gain and 50 percent of your audience to lose. Is the risk worth the reward? I don't think so and neither should you. You have nothing to lose except your business. If you want to start a seperate podcast to highlight your political viewpoint, then go right ahead. Just don't taint your existing show with extraneous matters. If you have a healthy eating podcast and you start talking sports, the net result will be the same - lost listeners. Unless of course you're talking about dining options at sporting events. 

You've invested so much time, effort and money into building your brand, why risk throwing it away?

Anthony Rigogliosi is a podcastninja. A relative newcomer to the podcasting scene, Anthony felt himself attracted to the community after hearing his first podcast several years ago. From a young age, he preferred to get his information via the spoken word. He wasn't much of a reader and graphics wasn't his thing either. Like so many podcasters, once he started listening, he was hooked. He started learning everything he could about the medium and now he produces podcasts for other hosts. It's one stop production, record your show, send it off to Anthony and his staff of ninjas and everything else is taken care of. His advice to the aspiring podcaster, "Don't try to be perfect. It will stand in the way of your future greatness." If you want to become a professional podcaster, purchase my book Viral Podcasting. Just click the link. 

 

Just moved my studio once again. What a pain it can be. I can hook up the mixer and microphone and all the equipment within 15-20 minutes. But then comes the hard part, making your show sound as good as it was in your old studio. This was a real challenge in my new studio, because it had a lot of echo and it's a very lively room. In addition, the Skype signal was constantly dropping and getting garbled. I even received several complaints from our listeners saying that the show's audio quality had noticably declined. What to do? I didn't want to foam the place, which is the obvious solution. I hate the way it looks and it ruins the pain. I was watching an episode of the hit tv show The Profit. Marcus Lemonis invested in a firm Overtone Acoustics. They manufacture acoustic panels to reduce echo and help the sound profile of your room. I figured, probably won't work but I'll give it a try. I ordered 6 2'x4' panels. They weigh about 7 pounds each and look like cloth panels. They're stuffed with acoustic absorption material. I mounted them and the change was amazing. They're not cheap at around $80 each, but well worth it. To fix the Skype issues, I connected an ethernet cable right from my computer to the WiFi router. Presto, no more Skype issues. Evidently, I had a misbehaved WiFi signal that was causing all the problems. I guess the answer is don't move unless you absolutely have to. I should probably put together a moving check list, should I move again. 

Find Overtone Acoustics products right here.  Order my book Viral Podcasting here.

While podcaster server5 websites come and go, YouTube is by far the largest podcast server in existence. Literally millions of podcasts have been posted there. Many are unaware that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after it's parent Google. This means that when you post a podcast to YouTube, there are potentially billions of YouTubers who can discover your work product. Until recently, it was a pain to post your podcast to YouTube. It required taking you WAV or MP3 file and converting it and uploading it to YouTube. It was a very time consuming project. Now however, it's much easier. Simply go to LIbsyn or Spreaker, click a box and presto your podcast is automatically posted to YouTube. You're limited to have your podcast square as the artwork and you'll have to manually add tags and key words, but most of the work is already done for you. It's a great way to expand your show's outread and dramatically broaden your potential audience. Start doing it now! Dont' forget to purchase my book Viral Podcasting. Just click the link.

Tyler Sheff's podcast took off when he found his inner voice. An introvert by nature, podcasting allowed him to connect with large numbers of people and break out of his shell. Following his passion for real estate and his desire to get potential investors accurate and actionable information, he conceived of the CashFlowGuys Podcast. In a little more than a year, he's gotten over 200,000 downloads. It's helped him get clients and he's helped change people's lives. By far, it's the most satisfying career he's ever engaged in. While there's many real estate podcasts, Tyler prides himself on cutting through the hype and getting the real story out there. At this point in his life, there's nothing he'd rather be doing, for which we applaud him.  Dont' forget to purchase my book Viral Podcasting. Just click the link.