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The Podcast Pro

How To Make and Publicize Your First Podcast

So you’re ready to podcast.
Maybe you’re planning a trip to Greece, a wedding, or your best friend’sbirthday party and want to share more than just photos. Maybe you have views on Iraq, “The Da Vinci Code,” or the right way to make sushi. No problem. Podcasts are the ideal tool for sharing those views with the world.
They’re also cheap and easy to make. With the right software and some knowhow, you’ll be up and running in hours.

Get The Gear

You’ll need some equipment to get started, but it’s not expensive. First, of course, you’ll need a PC with a sound card. You’ll also need a microphone, podcasting software, and a Web site where you can post your podcast online. (If you don’t have a Web site, don’t worry; there are plenty of sites that can host your podcast for under $10 per month, and some will even host it for free.)

You can splurge on fancy products—a snazzy microphone with shock and wind guards can run several hundred dollars—but in truth, you’ll never hear the difference. A microphone that costs $20 at your local computer store will do nearly as well. Just remember to banish the screaming kids and barking dogs when you record, unless they’re a part of your podcast.

Next Up: Software

You can buy it from companies such as Industrial Audio (www.industrial audiosoftware.com) or PodcastStation (www.podcaststation.com) for less than $100. Or you can use a free and powerful tool such as Audacity for Windows (audacity.sourceforge.net), which is fast becoming the de facto standard. If you’re a Mac user, you can buy Apple’s iLife ’06, which includes GarageBand (www.apple.com/ilife/garageband). You can even use Windows’ built-in sound recorder if you want. (In Windows XP, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, and Sound Recorder.) It’s not that advanced, but it will do in a pinch.

Next Step: Content

Whether your subject is Shaquille O’Neal or your son’s commencement, your content is king: It’s what your podcast is all about. You’ll need a plan because well-structured content is the key to a good recording.

First, choose your format. Do you want a talk show with different segments and guests? Or is a one-man show more to your taste? Maybe you’d like to splice your podcast with music or even ads. It’s all up to you. Just remember to make a simple outline before you begin or scratch a few notes on index cards. The last thing you want, of course, is a written speech that you’ll read into the microphone. Podcasts should be loose and fun, with just enough structure to make them easy to listen to.

Last, choose a good title. “My Podcast” just won’t cut it. But “My Romance With George Clooney” or “What I Found In Nepal” will keep listeners glued to their earbuds.

Time To Record

Now it’s time for the fun stuff. It’s time to get your voice on disk.
First, make sure your microphone is plugged in to the microphone input jack on your computer. Now open up the software and record your podcast in one long, uninterrupted run. (If you want, you can record your podcast in different segments and splice them together when you’re done, but you’ll need to know some of your software’s advanced features to do this.)

The recording process differs in each piece of software, but by and large, you’ll follow a few basic steps. In Audacity, for instance, it’s as simple as pressing the big, red Record button on the main screen and then speaking into Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) is one of the Web’s most popular podcasting tools, largely because it’s free, well-designed, and fairly easy to use. 60 www.smartcomputing.com / iPod the microphone. When you’re done, click Stop. Most software has a GUI (graphical user interface) that mimics a tape recorder for convenience.

The Fine Art Of Editing

Why edit? Because it makes your podcast better. You can add special effects, such as echoes and reverbs. (Just don’t go overboard.) Or you can simply remove the coughs, stutters, and extra silence from your original recording. You can eve

10 add music for intros or extros or dabble in background tracks for extra flair.

You can also take advantage of your software’s sound-quality tools, such as the Normalize or Noise Reduction features. (In Audacity, for instance, click Effect, Normalize or Effect, Noise Reduction.) This lets you balance sound levels from different speakers or get rid of microphone hiss.
If you’re looking for background music or sound effects, point your Web browser to SoundRangers (www.soundrangers.com), Blish(www.blish.com), or Sound-Dogs (www.sounddogs.com) where you can find effects for everything from airports to zithers. PodcastThemes.com will even write your own theme music for you, if you have some money to burn.

Save Your Podcast

Now it’s time to save your podcast and post it online. First, save your work in your software’s native format at maximum quality. This gives you a complete, uncompressed copy that you can use later. (It’s not the copy that you’ll post online.)
For the online version, save a copy of your podcast as an MP3 file. MP3 is the Web’s universal sound format; it can be used on nearly all computers and digital audio players, including iPods. It’s also a compressed format, which takes up less space and downloads more quickly but leads to a slight loss in quality, as well.

The process of saving an MP3 varies by program, but by and large, you’ll find the feature under the File menu as a Save As or Export option. (In Audacity, for instance, click File, Export As MP3.)

Your software may prompt you to choose a bit rate for your MP3, which in part determines the audio quality. For speech with no music, choose a bit rate between 48 and 56Kbps. For combined music and speech, choose a bit rate of 64Kbps or more. If you want the even better quality sound, choose 128Kbps, but remember that high bit rates mean bigger files and slower downloads.

Last, your software may prompt you to add “ID tags” or “meta tags” to your podcast. These are special bits of information encoded in the recording, such as the title, author, and genre, that an MP3 player displays when a podcast is playing.

Time To Go Live

When your podcast is complete, it’s time to post it to the Web, so users can listen to it at their convenience.

If you have your own Web site, just FTP your podcast to your site, as you do with all your site docs. (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol; it’s a type of software that transfers documents from your computer to a server, which is the computer where your Web site is stored.)

If you don’t have your own Web site, don’t worry. Yahoo!’s GeoCities (geocities.yahoo.com) can distribute your podcast for free. (They also have paid monthly plans that cost up to $8.95.) PodcastHosting.com is another option, with plans that start at $10 per month. Each host will give you instructions on how to upload your podcast to their site, which you can do with nothing but a Web browser.

If you’re planning to make more than one podcast and want your audience to know when your updates are ready, use an RSS feed to notify them. Short for Really Simple Syndication, RSS lets users with podcast playing software (such as Apple’s iTunes) download new podcasts automatically.

You can write an RSS feed with any text editor, such as Windows’ Notepad. But it’s much simpler to use a program such as FeedForAll (www.feedforall.com), which lets you upload your RSS feed with your podcast automatically.

You’ll also want to publicize your podcast in a directory, such as iTunes.com, Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com), or Odeo (www.odeo.com). Who knows? You might just get famous. And if nothing else, you’ll express yourself to the world, which is a fine reward for a few hours of work.