I had the absolute pleasure of joining Elsie Escobar, Amanda Doughty, Karly Nimmo, and Barbara Edelman in taking over Ray Ortega’s Podcasters’ Roundtable for an episode surrounding podcasting on the go. We discuss tips, tricks, gear, setup, conducting interviews, getting that interview, and more.
Like the show? Go subscribe to the Podcasters’ Roundtable.
Once again, it is the end of summer and time for Podcamp in Pittsburgh. This year, I’ve gone a LITTLE crazy (just a little) and put together three… count them… three sessions on podcasting. The video for each is below. Enjoy!
Podcasting 101/201 will dig into the basics you need to get your show up and running, and keeping you podcasting. We’ll dig into hardware from microphones to headphones, mixers and accessories, and what you ACTUALLY need. Then we’ll move into the software, RSS feeds, why we need one, and how to get one. Lastly, we’ll put all the pieces together, and prepare for getting our first episodes out the door.
Takeaways:
–What hardware do I really need, and how do I pick from all the options for MY application?
–What software do I really need and how do I get it all setup?
–How do I get my first episodes recorded, edited, and out to podcast directories?
Podcasting 301 will offer a discussion on all the things you wish you knew regarding podcasting. Getting found in iTunes, does New & Noteworthy actually matter, submitting to other directories (such as Google Play Music), what links to create on your site to up subscriber conversions, and other tips that will help you grow and engage with your audience, and other best practices with regards to creating your content.
Takeaways:
–Offering best practices tips and tricks for content creation
–What really matters with regards to podcast directories and getting found?
–How to setup your website for subscription conversions
Tracking Your Podcast Growth will discuss all the numbers we associate with our podcasts, and what those numbers mean. Our stats help us determine if our listenership is growing, where those listeners are coming from, and can affect how we talk about our shows with potential sponsors. Other numbers from social, your website, even your e-mail newsletter can also have an overall impact. We’ll even get into what is worth worrying about, what isn’t, and how often we actually should check our numbers (no need to join stats anonymous).
Takeaways:
–Define the different metrics associated with our podcast stats
–Learn how to evaluate those numbers
–Discover what the average numbers are for a typical podcast, and what these numbers mean for sponsors
I had the opportunity to join Elsie Escobar on her show, She Podcasts, to talk backups.
backups.
What does that even mean?
Backups to podcasters means the traditional, running fully system backups, incremental backups, up to the cloud or to an external hard drive, backups in the traditional sense of having a snapshot of your system should it ever break. But, backups to podcasters also means managing a large number of very large files, and which of those files they need to keep and which ones they edit and which ones they produce. Backups to podcasters also means making sure they are maintaining backups of those particular files, and not using their media host as their backup.
I also get to geek out a little bit on iPad Pro’s, apps, and ‘carry purses’ for carrying my gear wherever my son takes me, so I can still get work done.
Thanks so much to Elsie for having me on, it’s always a fun time!
Be sure to check out the full show notes for links to all the apps and services that were discussed on the episode. Also be sure to subscribe, especially if you are a podcaster, on iTunes.
I was, once again, invited to join the Podcasters’ Roundtable with the mighty Ray Ortega and the venerable Daniel J. Lewis, this time to chat RSS feeds.
OH MY!
RSS feeds aren’t as scary as they use to be, mainly because there are so many services out there that will help you create your feed. It’s a pretty rare thing to find a hand coded RSS feed. OUCH! Blurry, Libsyn, Spreaker, Feedburner, why would you waste your time?
We are content creators, not techs (well, I’m not speaking for myself since I float between the left and right brain, but hey).
Anyway, we don’t get to heavy on the tech. You want that? Go visit me over at Libsyn Live. We talk about different services, how to pick a service for you, even what you should focus on when trying to pick a service. Oh yea, and does Google really hate RSS?
Like the show? Go subscribe to the Podcasters’ Roundtable like, right now.
Why you still reading? Go! Go! Do it! Now!
So the other evening, one of my good friends Andrew Alliance kicked up a Blab with Gamertag Radio’s own Parris (@parris on Twitter). As Blab sends me notifications when a friend kicks up a convo, I jumped on to watch.
After the awesome conversation between Andrew and Parris, Andrew asked if I wanted to jump on and talk also. What I didn’t know was he was including me in the episode. In Andrew’s words… that’s dope.
We talked about the game Destiny and the new expansion, The Taken King. I’m a player, though much lower level than Andrew or Parris. I’ve been playing coop games like this since Final Fantasy XI and WoW (though, I am very much NOT a fan of WoW), and I absolutely love being able to join a party of different character types, chatting, and the like. Destiny falls right into that obsession for me (much to my poor husband’s chagrin, as I ask him to YouTube different quests I’m struggling with).
Thanks so much Andrew for having me, always a blast (even though I’m not a pro) and honestly, if you aren’t already subscribed to his show and your into tech and gaming, DO IT NOW!
Enjoy 🙂
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In August of 2015, I gave a session at Podcamp Pittsburgh X called Leveraging WordPress for your Podcasting Website.
WordPress has become one of the most popular blogging and content management systems on the web, and it’s become almost prolific in the podcasting community.
Why the heck not? With thousands of themes and plugins, free and for pay, available on the web, just about any functionality you could wish for could be easily fixed with the installation of a plugin.
There are many plugins, connectors, and themes available specifically for podcasters. Themes specific to media sites will usually include built in players. Give the post a media file URL and BAM! You have a player for your visitors on your site. This site uses such a theme, and often utilizes the built in player specifically for audio. There are plugins for publishing podcasts, plugins for SEO, plugins for stats, plugins for players, outside connectors for automatic publishing.
With all these options, there are plenty of ways a WordPress user could get themselves into trouble. Themes and plugins are silly easy to install, which means many users tend to just install away, never uninstalling or cleaning up that which they aren’t using. This adds lots of overhead to the site which can slow it down. There are also issues of security, some plugins aren’t compatible with others, some plugins are not properly developed, they can add overhead or security holes, and so on. The same goes for themes.
In this seminar, I cover this and I cover some of the more popular plugins and some awesome (and vetted) themes worth considering. For example:
Enjoy!