• Create, market and monetize your podcast without breaking the bank. Get your FREE copy of The Podcasters Bible now
    Full Name:
    Email:
  • Your Online Profits Radio Show
Podcasting How To | Ways to make money from home | Connie Regan Green posted by admin on February 4, 2012

Huge profits from a tiny list www.hugeprofitstinylist.com

 

Connie Regan Green

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presenting more ways to make money from home

Is it really possible to be ranked 12th in an affiliate contest, when the others you are up against have lists of 100,000, and you have a list of 671?

Could this be another great one of the ways to make money from home?

Really?

Um, Yes….

And to go from there to becoming a super affiliate, a book author then a mentor to others….to being involved with an organisation contributing to the eradication of a disease that has been on the planet forever?

Needless to say this lady is an inspiration, and that’s why I wanted her for an interview.

Listen and enjoy to several tips, tricks, tools and strategies, of ways to make money from home

I am always interested in peoples stories, I think it is interesting to hear how people got started, how they overcame their struggles, and triumphed.

At the seminar I want to recently where Chris Farrell was speaking- (he is a master of ways to make money from home!), he talked about how he got started, and I think it is impotant to realize that we all start somewhere! And that’s ok!

In other words, enjoy the learning curve, make it an enjoyable climb, not an impossible mountain.

It was Mark Anastasis Seminar, and he talked about the difference between “Rich” thinkers and “poor” thinkers, which I think it a post in and of itself, and I will do that one in a seperate post, as I don’t want to keep you reading all day!

 

****************************************************************************************************

Funny moment with my daughter the other day, I did a charity stunt, involving me wearing a rather embarassing bit of clobber-we did raise £200 for Changez charity- a local charity based in South West London, that help for those most in need.

 

Now for those of us who are parents to teenagers, we know that breathing is enough to embarass them, so dresssing in this way, is virtually (another) disownable offence! I threatened to put it on her Facebook wall- her words- “if you do, I will kill you and block you in that order”

That’s my girl!

*******************************************************************************************************

 

Do leave a comment on Facebook, let me know what you think of the content here, and if I can answer any question, do not hesitate to holler!


If you like this please Click Like!

www.thepodcastersbible.com | Podcasting for Peace | Z Point Process posted by admin on January 29, 2012

 

Z Point for Peace www.zpointforpeace.com

Would you like peace of mind? Can podcasting how to help here?

Yep!

Had the pleasure of talking to Grant Connolly today, creator of the Z-Point Process- a very clever, yet deceptively simple clearing and healing psychology.

What if there were a way of letting go of the stress we all experience on a daily basis.

Peace of mind on demand! Lovely! And simple? Yep.

Perhaps you have important insights that would benefit loads of people, you provide the insights, we will provide the podcasting how to!

 

 

If you are a student of the Law of Attraction, this is in alignment with the teachings of it, as in making peace with where you are- ie Non resistance, or allowing.

This has the potential to make a HUGE difference to people!

 

 

 

 


If you like this please Click Like!

www.thepodcastersbible.com | Podcasting How To | Leveraging audio and social media part 3 posted by admin on September 30, 2011


In this episode I interview Jack Humphrey of Blog Success, the next bit! It is in several short, bitesize parts for you. Enjoy!

Jack:Well you have to be plugged into your sources of information. I mean we all succeed on the backs of people who came before us. We are all succeeding now because somebody thought WordPress would be a good idea and now we are all using WordPress and we are succeeding because somebody thought podcasting would be a good idea, and then it’s the same for information.
You have heard the saying ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’ and throughout human history there are certain points where there really is something new like E=mC2, and then the entire scientific community and physics today is built on the shoulders of that thing that was new and there have been new developments from that and okay, so Einstein said this but now we are finding, but through my research that was inspired by Einstein that this and this are true as well, and that’s exactly what we are doing in the blogging community.
I mean if you think you are the first person to write about a lot of the stuff out there in a niche you are probably wrong and what you are doing is you are putting your own spin on it, you are updating people on new information that will change what the original information was or the way people perceive it in some way, and new ideas for how to handle that information and put things into action, for instance.
So if I came out with something on SEO, which I just have, a lot of that stuff is nothing new under the sun but it’s got my own spin on it and it’s got the very most recent developments in SEO included in it where the original content didn’t because those developments didn’t exist at the time.


Neil: Understood, yeah, certainly an evolving leading-edge thing. Now I know you’ve got a certain amount of tools with your business blog success and I do want you to give that very big plug here  because I am big fan and for the record I endorse – whole-heartedly endorse everything that you do. I have also consulted with you on some projects as well and I wanted to get that in print as well and you are absolutely fantastic.
So if you got internet projects and wondered about how to launch things and you are looking for a damn fine consultant, Jack Humphrey is your main element to get that immortalizing print.
What tools do you have that help people when they are getting information from a niche and when they are sort of researching their niche, or what tools do you have to help Panda information done and keep it focused when people are using it to get the information that they need, the marketers I mean, does that makes sense?
Jack: Yeah, you are going to have your key websites and from my example, I am glued to Mashable.com because I teach people about social media, social marketing – things like that. If you are a political blogger you are going to have Huffington Post and all the other different US political or wherever you are, you are going to have the leaders in your reader, however you organize that. If it’s in Google Reader or whatever, but you are going to check that on a daily or very frequent basis to see what’s new. What’s new in the world? What’s new in my part of the world that’s going to affect my content, that’s going to affect my readers to get them to talk about my site?
Neil: What specific tools do you have that’s…?
Jack: You use Google Alerts. You go to alerts.google.com and that will tell you whenever, based on any keyword, something new has come on the web, somebody has got a new story or whatever, as soon as it comes up and Google finds it, it sends you an email and lets you know what it’s about.
So you get emails on a constant basis when you set that up for a range of keywords that are the things that you probably set your categories on your site up for – the same thing that you are putting your categories so the things that you talk about is a good place to start with setting up Google Alerts.
The other thing is the most basic is just using Google Reader. You can use any kind of RSS Reader but you need to go around and subscribe to all these top line sources of information – news sites, blog sites, whatever it is in your niche, whoever the biggest movers and shakers are who are developing news, reporting news and publishing on a regular basis, so that you can have a constant flow of ideas coming in.
Well I need to do a post on that but I think this person is wrong here and my post is going to be about that news item so I am going to have that keyword but I am also going to give my own two cents about this, or I am going to develop a podcast show around this issue because it just blew up. It’s trending.
And speaking of trending you can go to Twitter, you can go search.twitter.com and do searches on keywords and find out what people are talking about. There’s also one called TrendWatching.com and there are several tools like that. You can just go to Google and type in trends, trend watching.
Google has got a trending tool for search and you can start to understand how these really big sites that are really popular and they are always coming out with content like crazy and now they have a staff of maybe 20-30 people and they are coming out with 50 to 100 posts a day with the entire site because it’s got different sections in it and they are sort of the uber sites – how do they do that?
Well they’ve got people out there using tools like this and their each person is assigned the latest news and politics desk person and that’s all that’s their whole filter. So they set up their alerts to Google Alerts, they follow the sites that are making the most news in that particular area and when anything happens in that area they come back to the blog and report it and they use those tools to do it.
That’s how they stay so plugged in and they have multiplied that over many, many staff members, or when you are doing it by yourself you have to use the same tools as they do and you are responsible for the content and everything and in two different ways in this particular scenario what’s going to be a good blog post and what’s going to be a good podcast to maybe get a guest star.
This is a great way to find people who are movers and shakers that you didn’t know about for interviews, if that’s your podcast style, doing an interview and just interviewing successful people or experts in certain things where you don’t even have to know all the stuff in that industry; you just have to be a good interviewers and all the questions are typically the same across every niche.


If it’s an economist you are going to talk about the same kind of things – it’s going to be your current events, and so you don’t have to be the expert to do all of that stuff.
Neil: Thank you. Are people very open to be interviewed? I mean are people fairly approachable?
Jack: Oh it’s so easy. People have egos and they have their own goals and they need to get out there. When you said you wanted to interview me I didn’t even blink because I know you have a following and I know you are well known and I definitely always want to do interviews with people when I know I am going to get something out of it. I mean I am getting exposure through this – very, very easy to do.
So what you do when you are starting out is you move up the ladder. You start interviewing peers and those peers have connections that you don’t. You try to get a bigger connection and you just keep going for bigger and bigger fish and then leverage the last fish that you were on with to get the bigger fish.


If you like this please Click Like!

www.thepodcastersbible.com | Leveraging audio and social media Part 2 posted by admin on September 26, 2011

In this episode I interview Jack Humphrey of Blog Success, the next bit! It is in several short, bitesize parts for you. Enjoy!

 

Listen or read, and if you like it, please leave a comment below.

Neil: Your greatest success by far was the Authority Blackbook, wasn’t it? I mean that was just incredible that launched you as quite literally as an authority on the scene, I mean it was huge, wasn’t it?
Jack: Yeah, but we weren’t able to take advantage of Twitter and Facebook at the time because there weren’t all the tools so you could put right on your site. Now you can have an html plugin for landing pages where they would download the Authority Blackbook and people can comment on it.

Jack: What we did back then was we setup a blog where people had an autoresponder message after they downloaded the book, it says, “Hey, tell us what you think on the blog”, and we got a massive amount of comments doing that but it would have been so much bigger and better if the Facebook commenting was right under there. If anybody listening has seen that it basically looks just like Facebook. It’s a Facebook comment area and if you are logged into Facebook your little face, icon, whatever your profile picture is already there and when you type a comment out for what you think of that, say the Authority Blackbook, also goes on your Facebook wall, which then takes it viral.

I mean we got viral the old-fashion way. I can only imagine what Authority Blackbook comments would have been like had we had the ‘Tweet’ buttons and everything that we do today. It just would have been unheard of. In the end, so we got well over 100,000 downloads of that book and we still get about 50-70 downloads a day of that book without any…it hit critical mass. There’s so many links out there about it now.

And then the Twitter and the Facebook stuff did pick up. We don’t do anything with that anymore; people just still find it everywhere. All the places we wrote about it, all the places that other people wrote about it on their blogs, people did reviews – lots and lots and lots of reviews came out of it and I tell you it wasn’t as much as us pushing it as putting up a really, really excellent product, and most of those things were people being moved by the product itself to do it and we didn’t have to go around and the weight of the world was not on our shoulders to get all the links that you’d see to the Authority Blackbook.

Neil: It was a fact that it was just so damn good, and you use that as a free give away to start with and then you start things on the backend of that rather than setting that individually, which is a very good strategy I thought.
Jack: Well and it is just podcasting how to. I mean you’ve got a monetization idea but you are not charging people for like my weekly radio show is free, and again which we work really hard to make it attractive and get people talking about it and that starts with taking it off of, I’d use BlogTalkRadio, taking that immediately off there and putting it on FridayTrafficReport.com and that’s my clientele right now.
The last two things I got published there that weren’t podcasts were two guest articles and I used to publish and you should when you are starting out. You should publish every day. If you are in the right kind of niche with a lot of topics, a lot of questions being asked out there by people, where you need to be providing the answers and providing link posts, things like that where you have just got a list of resources like ‘the top 10 places to do this’ or ‘top 10 tips for ______’, in the dog training thing how to get your dog stop jumping up on people when they come in the house or whatever.
Neil: So yeah, you are kind of answering the questions to get along on, thank you. It’s odd of but the original question I thought, I have this terrible tendency to go for tangents, which was how do you monetize audio content? We have established, you are a Web 2 master, we have established the tools much better than they actually were and that’s basically what you are doing, you are posting every day doing a radio show and then putting that on the post as well. You are obviously not charging for the radio content but you are finding out what people want and then creating appropriate radio content to answer the questions, would that be right?
Jack: Yeah, and I mean people will ask questions. When you start picking up a little gravity and people are starting to comment and things and you do things like you invite them to ask anything. Ask me anything about dog training, anything you want and if I choose your question I will use your name and if you want, or I’ll even link to your site if you own a website and I’ll answer it on the blog and then all of a sudden you’ve got content coming in that you can’t even handle all of it because there’s so many people are like, “Well, what do you do in this instance; what do you do in that instance?”
That’s a good niche because you can put up a post or you can do a show that answers the questions that way you think they need to be answered but if you are in a really rich niche, like dog training you’ve got millions of different breeds of dogs, you know, and just all kinds of different things. So you can only do so much in your podcast to answer questions. You want your podcast to bring up more questions.
In fact there was a trick that Andy Beal uses at MarketingPilgrim.com which is really a good one and it’s ‘don’t answer every question’, like know the answer to the overall question, give four or five different tips and purposely leave out one of the big tips that someone is going to go ‘Wait a minute, he didn’t say anything about this’ and they will make a comment and they’ll say, ‘What about that’ and that usually is a starter and that gets spread around because on your blog you should have a Facebook ‘like’ button and there’s a plugin for that, and you should have a ‘Twitter’ button – there’s a plugin for that, and those being separate are much more important than using the plugin called ‘ShareThis’ which is sort of overwhelming. When you click on that it’s a little green thing with two little nodules on the end. It opens up into this window that says, “You can share to all these different places”, and most people don’t belong to the vast majority of them. It gets confusing and they end up not sharing as much and we have tested that.
Neil: Yeah, yeah, that did confuse. That’s an aspect that confused me. There’s so much information.
Jack: That you end up doing nothing.
Neil: Yeah, coming in all directions. I love one of your phrases, I have read one of the things you wrote, ‘it’s becoming information overlord rather than the information overload’, which I thought was brilliant and perhaps if we could talk a little bit about tools that help you head down, that laser light focus that is obviously necessary. So it’s interesting you brought out and you talked about sharing because you are right, you don’t want to confuse people. Not that people are stupid, far from it but people are easily confused. You come to the website and say, “Well, what am I going to do here?”
Jack: Right, and that you need to give them very…everything on your site is designed for desirable actions that you want people to take, like opting into your lists or clicking on a link to go to your product page or an affiliate link – I mean you have all of these desirable actions you want people to take and you’ve got to get them to take those actions with the least resistance and friction as possible. They cannot be expected to figure things out in any way; it needs to be handed to them.
Neil: Yes.
Jack: So it makes you pare things down. So the ‘ShareThis’ plugin, if anybody is using that and they are wondering why they are not getting shared a lot, it’s because it’s too complicated. It’s really, really geeky. You have to go back and remember what it was like when you started surfing the web, and you will remember that you didn’t know what all of these buttons meant and ‘ShareThis’ gives you a million buttons to click on.
Most people don’t belong to any of those services and if you are going to share on the web you are going to do it on Twitter or Facebook, that’s just where everybody is. I mean plain and simple, there’s 500 million on Facebook, there’s a 145-150 million on Twitter and those are the places where you are going to want to go to get the most buzz for yourself. So you want those buttons individually at the bottom of each post.
Neil: Right.
Jack: And if you want to throw one more in there you throw in Google Buzz and there is a plugin for that. So you have three buttons and three chances. So if somebody is really loving more than any other, they love Google Buzz then that’s what they are going to push. They are not going to probably come back and push the Twitter button or the Facebook button. You are going to get people to do one thing if anything and so when you are publishing your content just sings to them, is their muse and if they really like it, they like the tune, they are going to spread it around and that’s how you leverage your following – the traffic you are getting from the search engines and the traffic you are getting from the search engines again, to your podcast page. If you use like BlogTalkRadio or you are just podcasting on your own, you are recording stuff and putting it right on the blog, you build up a following and that following needs to know at all times that you would like them to ‘like’ ‘tweet’ or put it on Google Buzz or otherwise blog about it. You’ve got to get people blogging about your stuff too.
If you surf around in any niche you have these little movers and shakers and you are either one or you are going to be one, and what they will do to come up with content is start with a quote from someone else. Somebody came out with a blog post about an interesting dog training trick and you quote them in your podcast and in the notes for your podcast on that same blog post. You might even link to them.

You are doing to them what you want them doing for you and what did they do to get you to do that? They said something interesting and very relevant to your audience, something that your audience you thought really needed to know.
So it all originates with the content. You can’t polish a turd, as we say, and so if you are just slapping up stuff and you are doing it from the sake of it, because you heard podcasting was a great way to, and it is, get a bunch of links, get out in areas that most people don’t think to market in and add really quality different kind of content and especially different mode of delivery to your site, then you can do that. You can’t just go through the motions; there’s got to be good stuff and if it’s good stuff then that’s what gets passed around and getting it passed around, you have to make it very, very easy for people to do that.
Neil: Let’s just destroy the myth that you can just put aside that, put a few plugins on to something and little too much to go far and to make you a millionaire of the night because that’s the impression you would get from some of the websites out there. I mean like you say, it’s got to be good quality stuff, the tools. Of course the tools are secondary to the good quality content. But if you want to make your own podcast it certainly can’t help you.
Jack: And don’t confuse good quality with you’ve got to be able to produce a podcast like Neil does with all the bells and…that’s not the quality, when you create your own podcast – The quality is the information and it’s more specifically answering questions that desperately need answers, that people have already been out there going I wish somebody would just break this issue down for me or keep me up to date on the latest information in a certain area and do it in a way that…you know the way that you do it is not as important as that you are doing it and that you know where to find the content that people really want, the ideas for content that people really want to know about.
Neil: And how would you find that if you were researching on these? I mean so we have established beginning user with the podcasting as our mode of delivery, we’ve got some good tools in place to do it, we’ve set ourselves up on BlogTalkRadio, we’ve got the right plugins but then how do we go and find good old niche finding in the very beginning – how do we get that there?


If you like this please Click Like!

www.thepodcastersbible.com | Leveraging audio and social media Part 1 posted by admin on September 25, 2011

In this episode I interview Jack Humphrey of Blog Success. It is in several short, bitesize parts for you. Enjoy!

Listen or read, and if you like it, please leave a comment below.

Neil:         Thanks so much for agreeing to do this.  What I want to talk to you about Jack was you have a very successful – if busy internet business, and radio show , and a blogging master-what I wanted to really focus on was how you get your audio and market it on the blog and with Web 2.0 (Social media), and how to make a successful business model out of that.

Jack:  

 Well, I did it kind of backwards in a way, I mean I did the FridayTrafficReport.com was a blog that was mostly text-based original content and what I call foundation contents.  In every market you need to have content on your site that people expect to see.  So if you have a site about dog training there are pieces of content that everybody needs to have on the site.  It shouldn’t be all the same.  It should be original content but it should be, if you are on a dog training site you are going to want to see that they have all the different aspects – puppy training, leash training, paper training – all these different kinds of things which make up the foundation content.  Every dog training site should have that foundation.

That foundation content gets you rankings to start and gets you the respect that you need when people land at your site that you are an authority in that niche at market, and that’s basically what I did for a couple of years on Friday Traffic Report.  I just blogged.

If I was to start over with the idea of having a podcast right from the very beginning I would do the same thing.  I would blog as much as possible.  If you really are honest about your niche and you have chosen a good one, that’s really good version and topic range and all the different things that you can do then you will have a lot of things to write about or have written, outsource it – however you want to do it.  But that’s not just doing keyword research and saying ‘this is what I need’; it’s also doing competitive research with people who are already out there doing this stuff who probably have the popularity that you want at some point and looking at their best pieces, the ones that get the most traffic, using compete.com and your Google Tools and things like that to analyze.

 There’s a really good tool actually for analysis.  It’s at SEObook.com, that’s Aaron Wall and he has got a really cool SEO toolbar that can tell you a lot about every individual page that you land on with your competition and go ‘wow, this content really got a lot of lengths’, you can see the comments without having a toolbar, got a lot of comments interaction. 

You can also analyze how many times that was ‘retweeted’ and ‘liked’ on Facebook.  Typically that will be writing your phase-2, that’s widget’s report back on that and then those…

Neil:         Can you just explain ‘retweet’ quickly for the benefit of those that wouldn’t understand that, what does ‘retweeting’ mean?

Jack:        Basically it’s when someone grabs a piece of content on the web and tweets about it and usually your blog should be set up with a plug in and there’s many plug ins that do this but when you are working with WordPress you just go into the ‘plug ins’ database and do a search on Twitter and you will find every plug in that does anything with Twitter.  Most of them do something to connect your blog to Twitter and so you are the one who is actually putting your content on Twitter all the time.  Every time you post it goes up on Twitter.

And ‘retweets’ are when somebody goes ‘I like this enough; I am going to retweet it’, that means they pass it on to their followers by retweeting and it goes on and on and on like that.  Their followers can do the same thing and it can get viral sometimes.  So that’s retweeting.

‘Liking’ is Facebook and that’s when people click the ‘like’ button.  Everybody is familiar with the ‘like’ button now and what happens there is same thing.

More in  part 2.

If this is of value to you, please leave a comment below!


If you like this please Click Like!

Podcasting How To | Leveraging your podcasting and increasing traffic (part 2) posted by admin on September 10, 2011

OK, you have heard (correctly), that podcasting is good for brand awareness, and you know pretty much how to do it.

But then you realise that the search engines do not index audio – I mean, technology is good, but not THAT good.

So, is it possible to leverage your work , and vastly increase your traffic? Yes, read on to learn how, this is a transcript of a conversation between Neil Long, and internet mentor and genius, Nicola Cairncross.

 

How do you come up with content because I am starting to get the impression that there’s almost a way of making this like a demonstration of continuous motion.  We find things to talk about; we find people to interview, convert it, get traffic from it, which draws people who have got stuff to tell you.  I mean is it like that?  Is it like a perpetual motion machine?

 

Nicola:       Absolutely Neil and that’s why I call my company the Business Success Factory because I wanted to make people realize that business success can be systemized.  It can become like a factory and production line and people, they sort of don’t like that idea – because they think ‘oh well, we know there is no entrepreneurial spirit or anything’ but the thing that having systems in your business does for you is, you know, I am still a one-man band.  I am just trying to take on the first apprentice and I am outsourcing bits and pieces here and there but the thing about having systems means that you could get on the exciting fun stuff but you need traffic to convert to a mailing list, the mailing list you could sell the things to and you could get feedbacks.

 

So for example, I am just about to launch a very short, sharp, shock coaching program 4 weeks – very affordable and I got that idea from talking to our list about what they want because there’s a large portion that can’t afford my up market  mentoring programs but they really did well, a nice little short, sharp shock.

 

So that’s I wouldn’t have got that I do if I hadn’t been talking to our list about what they need.

 

Neil:            Interested about yeah, communication – different levels of, yeah.  So you would recommend podcasting as a good medium of communication and easily done.

 

Nicola:       Yeah, one of the easiest because everyone can talk can’t they, not everyone can write but everyone can talk and everybody can interview people so even if you have got a little blog, a little website, but still get to need traffic and it’s about a particular topic, you could identify your top ten experts in the field and go and interview them on the telephone for an hour each, not only could you then transform that and get it on your blog but you could podcast it and you can turn it into video for YouTube and then you could make a little product out of it from your website.

 

Neil:            Well thank you for this wonderful information.  What about transcripting – is that expensive?

 

Nicola:       No, I have got a lovely lady in the Philippines who I thought was called ‘Aa’ because whenever she wrote to me she just signed herself ‘Aa’ and it turns out that’s actually her initials and I think pulling her off at last.  But she cost me about $10.00 an hour for transcription.  If I send her an hour’s worth of audio it costs me $10.00 to get it transcribed and she has got used to my little colloquialisms now so she comes back very accurate indeed.

 

Neil:            Yeah, well thanks so much for sharing this information with us.  I am off to do exactly that to follow your advice to the letter.  So Nicola Cairncross, thanks ever so much but before we go because this is going to be on my blog and on YouTube and podcasted, as you know, please give us some details about what you are offering and where people can find that.

 

Nicola:       Okay, I have a nice little webinar going at the moment which is called ’17 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Know to Profit in Tough times’ and you can find that at www.NicolaCairncross.dom/17things

 

–        that’s the number 17 and the word ‘things’, so www.NicolaCairncross.com/17things

 

 

Neil:    Okay, thank you very much indeed Nicola Cairncross.

 

Nicola:       You are welcome any time.

 

Neil:            Thank you.

 


If you like this please Click Like!

Podcasting How To | The Trouble With Podcasting posted by admin on August 7, 2011

It seems to me that many small to medium sized companies like the idea of having their own podcast and have heard that they are good for business, and as a result, we receive plenty of enquiries about recording and podcast production. However, a lot of work and time is involved in producing a regular podcast and can turn out to be quite daunting for the new podcaster. It is therefore no surprise that a good number of enquiries do not actually turn into podcasts.

I feel that there are some very valid reasons for this.

Cost

The cost of professionally produced podcasts can be prohibitive for small to medium sized companies who are new to the world of podcasting. In our experience, a podcast is only really effective as a series, with the recording and production costing anywhere from 150 GBP to 500 GBP for each podcast, depending on the complexity and involvement of professional voice-overs and audio editing services. With an average cost of around 300 GBP for podcast production and a series of at least six shows, the financial investment is significant; however, if you get the content of the podcast series right, you should get a healthy return on your investment. More about this later.

Typical costs can include: -

  • Using professional voice-overs
  • Location recording
  • Mixing, editing and production
  • Inclusion of sound effects and music

If done properly, the benefits of your podcast series will far outweigh the costs for many years. Once on the web, it can be accessed and enjoyed by millions of people around the world. The trick is to pitch the podcast content correctly to your target market. If you are business minded and approach your podcast from this point of view, it may make sense to try and cover your investment by selling Podverts (podcast adverts) to potential sponsors. This works quite simply by placing one or a number of podverts within the content of your podcast show. The benefits of this are clear as the sponsor will have their product(s) advertised to all of your listeners. Furthermore, your listeners will be in a particular market group and it makes sense for complementary industry sectors to get on board with your podcast series from the beginning. Initially, this will probably be more difficult as you do not have a proven track record, but once you have a successful series under your belt you should have listener figures that you can impress sponsors with.

Your sponsors can pay a one-off fee for their podvert or you could offer a discount for purchasing multiple podvert slots. In a 10 to 15 minute podcast, I do not think it unreasonable to have 3-4 short adverts / sponsor messages dividing up subject segments. Provided your audio producers are discreet about the placement and number of podverts, your listeners will just accept these as part of the package; we are all used to seeing and hearing adverts.

Once your podcast is established, you can take this concept a stage further by offering an advertisement feature to your sponsor, for example, an interview about their product and/or services. As long as the feature is relevant and offers value to your target market, this too will be accepted as part of the package. This already happens on radio shows and TV. Most of the time we don’t even realise we are being advertised to.

Podcast content

This is probably the biggest reason that a podcast never evolves into a series and is probably the hardest part for most businesses to actually get their heads around. Writing the script for a podcast can be time consuming and quite difficult to start with; however, once you have got a feel for it, like everything else in life, it becomes easier. If you really struggle with this, there is no reason why you cannot employ the services of a scriptwriter and give yourself the position of creative director. Personally, I believe that it is more important to find a subject matter that is interesting and valuable to your target market than creating a perfect script. Brainstorming with colleagues and even clients about potential topics, subjects, features, interviews, and entertainment items will soon give you a rough outline of content that can be the raw material for your scripts.

Once you have the outline for your first podcast and possibly your second, the shape of the series will become clearer and from this, you should be able to create a show template. It is a good idea to test these initial ideas with a few people before going to the expense of having a professional podcast recorded and produced. Once you are happy with the overall ideas of your podcast show, you will need to either script it for a professional Voice-over to narrate (usually more favourable) or host the podcast yourself.

The choice of using a professional voice-over or doing the narration yourself is one that you need to take. There are good and bad points to both of these. If you are unaccustomed to talking into a microphone, the results could be pretty horrific for the listener and as a result many people may switch off and never listen again. On the other hand, if you are good at talking into a microphone and can project the right amount of personality, you may just become a hit with your audience. The clear benefit of using a professional voice-over is that your podcast will sound polished and more like a radio show. Either way, you need to decide which would be more appealing to your listeners / target market.

If you decide that becoming the host is a little bit of a stretch for you, there are companies that can organise the services of a professional voiceover for you.

There are various ways that a good producer can incorporate elements of location recording with a studio-produced voice-over to provide a varied and authentic contrast in the podcast production. For instance, it is easy for a voice-over to introduce a 5-minute interview or a 5-minute chat you had in the office with a colleague or business contact. The contrast between the two will create a variation for the listener. For example, I have known podcast interviews to be carried out on trains, planes, bars, nightclubs and even limos.

Don’t be afraid to be creative. Being different can help you stand out from the your competitors and could be the factor that gets you recognition by your target market and industry.

Getting it out there!

Podc ast marketing is a big subject, and

as a company, the best way to get your podcast to the right listeners is to tell them directly. Use your client list / mailing list, after all, these are people that have an interest in your product and services because they have either used your services or joined your mailing list. If you have a newsletter that you send to clients on your mailing list, you could maybe create an audio version of it or just promote your new podcast series on your newsletter.

Okay, so you have a mailing list of 20,000 people that you have sent your latest newsletter to; you tell everybody that you have a great new podcast and everyone listens to it… not quite. Even though most people have heard of the term podcast and think they know what it is, there are still lots of people that do not know what podcasting is, where to find podcasts or how to listen to them.

When advertising your podcast, direct your mailing list subscribers to a page on your website or blog that clearly explains and educates them about your podcast, the listening options available and how to subscribe to future podcast shows.

In reality, a lot of people do not realise that a podcast can be easily listened to from their computer, iPod or mp3 player, or burned to CD for listening at home or in the car. Many people do not realise that their downtime, especially during commutes, can be used as valuable podcast listening time. You could be the one to educate and entertain them via your podcast; they will be ever grateful to you for this.

Depending on your budget and product, a great business promotion would be to offer your top clients a complementary gift, an mp3 player for example, pre-loaded with your podcasts and even company branded.

There are companies that produce branded merchandise i.e. pens, mugs, coasters etc. who could possibly do the same with your promotional gift.

Once you have your podcast subscribers, you need to keep them listening. Asking for listener opinion and feedback will help refine your podcast series in order to keep them engaged and eagerly awaiting the next show and possibly, your new series. You could do this quite simply on your website by asking for feedback or having a comments box on your blog. It is a good idea to offer an incentive for providing feedback, such as a prize draw to win a new iPod, gift vouchers etc.

I highly recommend that you have your podcast transcribed and available as text on your website or blog. The reason for this is that the search engines cannot analyse the content of your audio, they can only analyse and index content that is textual. Your transcript will contain all of your relevant keywords and key phrases that will attract the search engines and attract new listeners and potential new clients. This is an ideal place to have your comment box.

Monitoring

Once your first podcast series is out there, you need to monitor its effectiveness. Time and money has been invested into the recording and production of your podcast so you need to see a worthwhile return on your investment. This can be measured in various ways, however, the key objectives of your podcast should be to:-

  • Cement existing relationships between you and your clients and provide them with added value.
  • Attract new clients via your podcast on the web and via referrals from existing listeners.
  • Increase awareness about your products and services and to spread your message.
  • Keep your company ahead of your competitors.

If you can achieve all of this whilst getting sponsors to cover the cost of your podcast production, your venture into the world of podcasting should be highly successful and very profitable.

About the Author: Lee Pritchard is the founder of Media Music Now, a high quality Royalty Free Music library that offers a variety of music, voice-over and audio editing services including Podcast Production using professional voice-overs. Lee also has a keen interest in music licensing and is excited about the future of independent music on the internet.

Podcast Production: http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/podcast_production/
Blog: http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/blog/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Pritchard

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1800004

If you like this please Click Like!

Podcasting How To | 10 Ways a Business Leadership Podcast Can Help You and Your Podcast Audience posted by admin on August 6, 2011

Podcasts are fast becoming one of the more popular Internet communication mediums. You might have even sung the praises of podcasts like so many others. The praises may include the fact that a business leadership podcast (or any podcast for that matter) can help you increase your SEO visibility or that a podcast–if done well–can position you as an industry expert. However, you may not have considered the following 10 benefits of a business leadership podcast, but first, what is a business leadership podcast?

A Business Leadership Podcast: What is it? A business leadership podcast is a podcast that may directly or indirectly mention your products or services but first and foremost requires that you inspire your audience to gain valuable leadership skills.

10 Benefits of a Business Leadership Podcast

1) A Business Leadership Podcast Can Help You to Reevaluate Your Audience…..Again! When it comes right down to it, every thing in business is about reaching the CORRECT audience…the people who have a valid interest in your services or products but who also want to be inspired. With a podcast, not only do you have the chance to audibly explain your market niche but whoever is listening WANTS to be listening. Whether they’ve clicked through an email to your podcast, found it via your website or greedily grabbed for it via an RSS feed they want that information!

2) A Business Leadership Podcast with Personality! When it comes to business leadership and communication, personality counts…..a lot! Whoever said experience counts may have been wise but personality seems to be the inevitable default choice. The great thing about a podcast is it takes communication from the written word to a convenient audible expression of what your company is all about. So even if you work for a “boring” software company, your podcasts can be witty and clever and charm the socks off your interested audience. This of course also requires that you find talented script writers and energetic spokespeople.

3) A Business Leadership Podcast for People on the Go! For your adoring audience, podcasts are the perfect element of convenience. You can download them onto portable devices like an iPOD, an MP3 player, etc. For all you know, Mr. Joe Giles on 7th Street in Michigan likes to listen to your podcast as he runs in the morning. Time for your audience is often more valuable than money and if you save them more of it, your audience will notice.

4) The Benefit of Repetition in a Business Leadership Podcast This might be an obvious benefit, but hey a podcast is obviously a better option than a radio spot. After all, your audience can skip forward and skip back from segment to segment and perhaps even rewind and fast forward. If they miss the announcement of the new launch of your website or an important phone number, all they have to do is access the info with the quick click of a button.

5) Your Customers Can Access a Business Leadership Podcast via RSS Feeds As mentioned above, RSS feeds allow interested members to find information from a specific category that they have been looking for. Once they find your podcast for instance, they can sign up for an RSS feed (if you make it available) that will notify them when a new podcast is available.

6) A Business Leadership Podcast can Increase Involvement with Your Audience Your audience could even be a part of your podcasts. You could include podcast testimonials with clients who are willing to participate and invite other audience members to call in and share their experiences for future podcasts.

Perhaps you could host a contest for the most interesting testimonial.

7) A Business Leadership Podcast Requires Research Entertaining and Informative podcasts require research and thought…..continued research and thought, which makes it difficult (if you keep making podcasts) not to remain on the leading edge of your industry. Most savvy business professionals know that continued research and study is essential for a healthy business but how many businesses continually act on that knowledge?

8) A Business Leadership Podcast Creates Unity Within a Company If you use individuals from every branch of your company or at least request the advice of many trusted members, you will find that a business leadership podcast–especially an entertaining one–can indeed create unity within your company. As in #7, most business professionals know that creating unity is essential within a successful business but once again, how many professionals are consistent in their unification endeavors?

9) A Business Leadership Podcast can be a Boon for Your SEO Campaign
Podcasts can indeed bolster your SEO visibility! According to an online podcast sponsored by Pod Blaze, “…Yahoo and MSN both have the ability to search for content that is presented in an RSS format,” and to paraphrase, there are also a variety of podcast online directories where people are searching for the information that they are interested in. These directories in combination with RSS technology make it easy for you to get the information that you need to savvy information seekers. 10) Better Leadership with a Business Leadership Podcast When you are required to be a leader in your industry, it’s hopefully easy to see new ways in which you can improve. A leader has to be willing to try, fail at times and succeed at times. Use your business leadership podcast to increase your own leadership skills and those of the people you work with.

Marci Crane is a web content specialist for Innuity. To get a better idea of a business leadership podcast, feel free to visit the VitalSmarts website which boasts an excellent example.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marci_Crane

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/621399

If you like this please Click Like!

Podcasting How To | Dental Practitioners Become Podcasting Pros in 7 Simple Steps posted by admin on August 5, 2011

Do you value community outreach activities? Are you looking for better ways to communicate with—and educate—your patients, your peers, or even the media? If your goal is to deliver your message to more people, more effectively, more often, then I have the answer you’ve been looking for … and it’s powerful, fun and remarkably simple.

Why not use the cutting edge technology of podcasting to spread awareness about the importance of proper oral health? Stay with me now—if you have a slight case of technophobia, that’s okay. I’m confident that if your practice has the technical know-how to produce an online newsletter, then learning to integrate podcasting into your outreach activities will be a snap. And believe me—podcasting is the most innovative mass-communication vehicle to emerge in years, and will greatly increase the impact and reach of your message.

Let’s begin with the basics. Think of a podcast as a radio program that anyone can download from the Internet. Put another way, a podcast is a digital file that is available to everyone—via free subscription—over the web. Most podcasts are audio files only (like CDs), but video content can be added as well (like DVDs). The main advantage of podcasting over traditional broadcasting is that users can download these web files to their personal computers, mp3 players, and/or CDs, and then listen to them at their convenience—in their car, during their morning run, or even in your reception area.

More and more, podcasts are becoming recognized as the latest robust communication tool to harness the Internet’s power to reach a large number of listeners quickly. If your podcast contains valuable information, your listeners will share it with others, rapidly disseminating your message around the globe. Also, because podcasts use RSS (really simply syndication) technology, new episodes are delivered to your subscribers seamlessly. Once a listener subscribes to a podcast using iTunes or another similar service, that service automatically downloads new episodes as they are released, making it practically instantaneous and effortless for your audience to receive your message.

Putting together a professional-sounding podcast is easier than you might think. Since valuable content is paramount, the first step is to prepare interesting topics for your episodes. I suggest that you commit to producing bi-monthly episodes, meaning that you initially need only six topics per year. Once podcasting becomes part of your routine, increase your production to twelve topics per year. If you are already producing a paper or online newsletter for your patients, the most logical progression would be to reformat some of that content into podcasts. A good way to start is to identify topics that you could cover in more detail by talking about them in a podcast rather than writing about them in a newsletter.

For example, the most recent newsletter that my dentist emailed to me included an article about the dangers of periodontal disease, including information on how it may be connected to the development of heart disease, warning signs to watch out for, and recommended preventative actions. This is valuable information that I am interested in, and I am thankful to be on this mailing list. But imagine that I have received this information in the form of an audio podcast, personally recorded by my dentist, urging me to book an appointment for a much-needed checkup. I am immediately spurred to action! Speaking directly to your audience—in your own voice and with your own inflection, tone and spirit—creates a much more intimate connection with your patients. This relationship-building quality is inherent in audio, and it’s part of what makes podcasting so powerful.

If you have doubts about the widespread acceptance of digital audio files, consider this statistic: on April 9, 2007, Apple announced the sale of its 100 millionth iPod and more than 2.5 billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. Now consider that anyone can download podcasts from this same music store and listen to them via their mp3 player or their computer, or burn them to CD … for free! As more and more people (including your patients) “tune in” to audio files via the web, offering them podcasts that complement and expand on the content of your existing newsletters provides you with another way to remind them about the importance of proper oral health and the services you provide.

So, what equipment and software do you need to record

and produce a podcast? You can become a podcasting pro in just seven simple steps:

1. Verify that your PC is running Windows 2000, XP or Vista, and has the ability to play audio files.

2. Invest in a microphone. Altec Lansing makes decent products, some of which list for under $30, and are available at Future Shop. But I recommend splurging a little to improve your audio quality. Blue Microphones makes a great USB mic called the Snowball, which retails for $130 on the Canadian online Apple Store. (This mic will also work with your Windows PC.)

3. Download and install your recording software. Audacity is an excellent audio editor that is available for download from http://audacity.sourceforge.net. And you can’t beat their price point: it’s free.

4. Record and edit your podcast.

5. Partner with an online hosting service to set up a website specifically for your podcast. Liberated Syndication is extremely inexpensive and gives me everything I need. At $5 USD per month, I can lease 100 megabytes of storage space per month, which translates into about two hours of audio. This basic hosting account gives me unlimited bandwidth, meaning that even as my audience grows exponentially, my monthly cost never increases. LibSyn also provides me with easy-to-use templates for my podcast’s website, and automatically generates and updates my podcast’s RRS feed. Another, similar service worth considering is Go Daddy.

6. Upload your new podcast to your hosting service using their simple submission page. Completing the submission page is similar to sending an email. Simply type in the title of your podcast (like a subject line), add the description of your episode (like the body of your email), and include your mp3 file (as an attachment). You can even attach a corresponding image, if you like. Uploading your podcast stores the mp3 file online and makes it available to your audience—they can download your podcast from your newly created podcast website.

7. Promote your podcast! This is as easy as sending an email announcement to your contact list with the URL of your podcast’s website. But to take advantage of the various online podcast directories, you need to visit their websites and submit your podcast’s RSS feed.

You should never pay to be included in these directories, since the best ones—including iTunes, Podcast Alley, Odeo, and Podcast Pickle—are free.

For Mac users, these steps are even simpler, thanks to Garage Band and iWeb. As a Mac user myself, I’d be happy to pass along some pointers to get you started.

Like you, I believe it’s important to remain connected with my client base, and as a lover of all things tech, I choose to use innovative approaches. I have successfully engaged the power of podcasting to promote my company in two weekly podcasts with rapidly growing success. And by following these seven simple steps, you too can become a podcasting pro!

Copyright 2007 – Blue Melnick. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and include the following by-line:

Blue Melnick is a professional podcast producer, and the co-host of two weekly podcasts: Biz Link Radio and The Tech Advisors. Contact Blue through www.bizlinkradio.com [http://www.bizlinkradio.com/], through www.thetechadvisors.ca [http://www.thetechadvisors.ca], or by phone at 416-462-3323. To listen to podcasting for dental practitioners in action, download the April 30, 2007 episode of Biz Link Radio, featuring Toronto dental surgeon Dr. Lancelot A. Brown!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Blue_Melnick

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/597156

If you like this please Click Like!

Podcasting How To | How Podcasting Can Improve Your Business posted by admin on August 5, 2011

The term podcasting has been floating about on the radio and in discussions with
friends, but you’re still not sure what it’s all about and if it’s relevant to your
business.

I’ll start by explaining in simplest terms what a podcast is.

A podcast is the combination of an audio or video file and a RSS publishing file,
placed on an Internet server and available for downloading.

Let’s say you plug a microphone into your computer and record a 15 minute blurb
about an area of knowledge you have. Now you have a sound file on your computer
waiting for a home, and you want that home to be on the Internet for millions of
people to listen to.

You will first need to find a “host” company to take your file and put it on their
“server” to make the file available to the world. This is called a “podcasting” server.

Once you have contacted a server and have placed your file on their server, you will
want people to find your file. To do this you have to create a special document that
“publishes” your file to the world.

This document is called an “RSS” file – which stands for Really Simple Syndication. In
this document you will put vital information like subject matter, keywords, website,
contact info and other information about the podcast and your business.

When this RSS file has been created, it is placed in the same folder as the audio file
on the podcasting server. When you have posted an audio file and published it using
your RSS file, you have successfully created a “podcast”.

Now you want people to be able to find your podcast

There are many online directories for podcasts that have searchable databases.
These services are generally free. On these sites people with new podcasts fill out a
form telling the world about the subject of the podcast, which is posted to the
directory.

Once your podcast information has been posted, anyone visiting that directory
searching for podcasts containing the subject matter of your podcast, will
immediately find a link to your podcast.

Of course the more directories you list with, the more people you’ll expose your
podcast to.

Another great thing about these directories is that Google and other search engines
visit these sites to find content, so there is an even greater chance of people finding
your podcast.

Once your podcast has been posted to a number of podcasting directories, it is now
available to millions of potential listeners worldwide.

How does one listen to a podcast, you might ask?

It is very simple. Once they have clicked the link on the directory or your website,
the podcast will automatically download and play in whatever audio player is
appropriate for the podcast file.

Then VOILA, they are listening to your podcast.

The beautiful thing about an RSS file is that once it is registered with a directory,
you don’t need to go back to the directory if you decide to add new podcast
episodes. All you need to do is update your RSS file to show that there more
episodes associated with the podcast. Listeners will be made aware of this if they
locate your podcast after a new episode has been added.

Millions of listeners and Google users are searching for information in podcast form
to listen to at their leisure. This is the most beautiful part of podcasts. The listener,
once they have downloaded a podcast, can listen to it many times over, at their
convenience.

How can podcasting help your business?

Simple, a key part of your RSS document is your website URL and company
information.

When someone listens to your podcast, this information is made clear to them
inside your podcasting information. Consequently this can generate a serious boost
in Internet traffic to your website which can result in more sales.

You don’t need to be a radio professional!

If you speak with customers on a daily basis about your specialized knowledge, you
are perfectly positioned to record and release a podcast.

Where to start

?

First, get a decent microphone for your computer – USB microphones are best – and
practice recording to get comfortable recording yourself and delivering your
message. The process is the same for video, but a video file will be created instead
of an audio file.

When you have a recording you’re happy with, save it as a file in its own folder, and
contact a podcasting service provider. You can find one on the Internet.

Once you have located a podcasting service provider they will help you with the rest
of your podcast, right down to creating an RSS file and properly posting it on a
podcasting directory.

It is important to find a host that provides ‘unmetered’ hosting. If your hosting is
metered, the more often your podcast is downloaded, the more your service
provider will charge. An unmetered host charges a set rate regardless of the number
of downloads.

Podcasting is a wonderfully affordable way to be heard and found. It is portable and
easy to access. Once you get the hang of it, podcasting can be an easy way to reach
potential clients.

Podcasting truly is a great gift for small business.

Sean Paddison is the president of Northstreams Inc., a company that specializes in the production of audio and video podcasts and electronic press kits (EPKs) for clients in the Greater Toronto Area.

[http://www.northstreams.com]

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Paddison

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/178290

If you like this please Click Like!

SEO Powered By SEOPressor