Web Worker Daily

So you want to be a star? You don’t actually have to want to be a star to begin recording and distributing your very own podcasts. Increasingly, businesses and web sites of all stripes are turning to podcasting for everything from online marketing to tutorials. Also, many commuters and travelers now get business information from podcasts. Web workers of numerous kinds can benefit from learning to produce them, whether they are for audio blogs, remote presentations, tutorials intended for a workgroup, or other purposes.

The good news is, the equipment you need to do very professional material is either inexpensive or free, and there are multiple ways to distribute your content to audiences that can grow in size if you engage them. In this post, I’ll delve into some of the best choices for your podcasting effort.

Don’t Forget About Audio Quality. Top-quality podcasts have top-quality audio. MP3 files are the commonly agreed upon Esperanto for delivering podcasts. It’s a good idea to shell out a little bit of money for good software that can help keep your audio quality up, customizable and perfectly synchronized with all events as your podcasts are recorded. The right software will also help you during the all-important editing stage.

A very good combination of software and hardware you can get for $179.95 for doing professional-sounding podcasts is Podcast Factory from M-Audio. It comes with a professional-quality microphone and a hardware audio interface that provides professional connections and signal level adjustment for multiple types of instruments. It can efficiently work with multiple guests you may want on one podcast. These connections, controls and the dedicated audio interface provide much better sound quality than just relying on your computer’s and sound card’s audio-in and audio-out features.

Podcast Factory also comes with a copy of Audacity recording/editing software, which works on both the Mac and the PC. You can actually get Audacity online for free if you are determined to do your podcasts on the absolute cheap, but Podcast Factory is a nice way to get everything at once. If you do choose to get Audacity as freeware, you’ll want a good microphone to go with it (check M-Audio’s web site at the link above for some good USB microphones), or Lavalier microphones are very good.

Audacity’s interface is nothing short of beautiful. It presents you with a timeline of your recording for editing, and timing purposes, and all the controls you need are right on the screen. The editing tools in Audacity make it easy to, say, deftly segue from your podcast’s opening theme music to opening narration, and you can also use it to eliminate mistakes in your final version. Windows Movie Maker is actually a surprisingly good way to record and edit audio files too, and if you’re on a PC you probably have it. You can get software utilities that will convert your files online for free at sites such as Download.com.

Publishing Your Podcast. Many web workers may have in mind podcasts to be published on their own sites. Podcast Factory or Audacity without Podcast Factory both make this process easy. The first step is to have Audacity convert your file to an MP3. In Podcast Factory, you then have the included Podifier software add XML metadata and save the result as an RSS file to your web site. There are also many inexpensive downloads you can get online that can do this, such as Podcast Station for Windows, and Podcast Maker for the Mac. Podcast Maker is $30 if you decide you like it, and Podcast Station is $60.

If you choose to, you can get your podcasts distributed in online venues where they can become very viral. Podshow is a well-known one. You can also send requests to have your podcasts included at sites such as iTunes.com, podcastcentral.com, podcastingnews.com, and podcasting-station.com.

And finally, if podcasts work for you, you may become interested in related efforts such as video blogging. For this, I cannot recommend SightSpeed highly enough. It lets you put great, 30 frames-per-second video with audio up as a post, and you can provide the link to others or embed it in your blog or on your web site. It’s completely free, and Windows and Mac users can use it.

Do you have any tips on do-it-yourself podcasting or video blogging?