I was talking with a friend the other night about podcasting and getting word out about their music. They had been talking with others and their description of podcasting and recording seemed very complicated. Below are my thoughts on podcasting and how it can be very difficult to get started when “perfect” gets in the way. — Douglas

Voltaire said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” and it seems that this has never been more true. So many people are kept from exploring the amazing uses of the Internet today, all because they let perfect get in the way.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have perfectly recorded, beautifully mixed sound, but I think letting people hear your music is much more important. The fact is, if you have to go through this much trouble, you will never get anything on the web.

I see this happen all the time. People desperately want to get stuff out, but they end up fiddling with it again and again. Eventually, they say “This is too much trouble!” and abandon it, never realizing that it was their overwhelming desire for perfection that caused this to happen, not any technical issues. Your friend touches on this when he talks about having “tracks” and such. This isn’t a studio recording. A simple, nice stereo mix, recorded from the board or recorded through house microphones would give listeners a great feel for the club and how you actually sounds live. In the same way, I think recording you, solo, in your apartment, would also be a great idea. MTV had it right! Strip it down to the essentials. Let the listeners in and they will greatly appreciate it.

It is my personal belief that people are more interested in hearing you and your music than even the most fantastic audio production. I think they will accept less quality than they might hear from a studio recording, because a live recording simply has more heart, more of you, in it. I am not saying you should be sending out crappy stuff that is unlistenable, but first and foremost, you need to be sending something out. You need to be communicating with your audience directly, long after you pack up the gig and head home. Your fans want to listen to your music, yes, but they also want to know more about you. They want to hear the live shows, warts and all, because they are interested in you. They want to feel like they shared something, even when they couldn’t be there in person.

The fact is, yes, record at the highest quality level possible, then you will be able to use to in any other form later. Record digitally, yes, as it saves time and energy when moving it to a computer to edit. That said, do NOT let these things STOP you from doing it, though. There is a world out there who wants to hear your music and you should do everything possible to make it happen.

Does this problem sound familiar to you? Are you having trouble getting started with podcasting? It just might be perfect getting in the way.

Ever since I first heard George Carlin’s comedy album, Class Clown, a certain phrase has always stuck with me… (paraphrasing) The job of a class clown is…ATTRACTING ATTENTION TO YOURSELF! I call this “Carlin’s Law of Attraction!” Replace class clown with any other profession and you will see the universal truth of that statement. Replace class clown with “podcaster” and you can probably see where I am headed.

Podcasting offers anyone the ability to “attract attention to yourself”, your business, your cause, whatever is important to you. Sure, it can be difficult to rise above all the other folks who have already discovered podcasting, but the odds are certainly much better than they ever were in the traditional media.

Carlin’s Law of Attraction, also dictates that you want your media spread as far and wide as possible. This means posting your videos to YouTube, MySpace, Revver and any other spots where your audience might stumble across them. That said, each piece MUST have some links driving people back to your home site where they can subscribe to your content directly.

Everything depends on your ability to atttract attention to your content. Scripts and books don’t sell themselves in your drawer (or trapped in your computer), art does sell when it sits in a closet and your podcast doesn’t attract an audience if no one ever gets to see it.

Apply Carlin’s Law of Attraction to everything you do, podcasting, writing, office work, whatever, and you will find that things just start to happen for you.

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What does it mean that non-technial people are starting to discover podcasting as a means of getting their message our to their customers, volunteers and patrons? It means that there is a pent-up demand for knowledge that I and other podcasters can fill.

This concept has been reinforced even more this week as two opportunities expanded into several more. First, as part of the film workshop I am doing next week, not only will I be presenting at the workshop, but several departments of the college itself are also asking for some of my time. They are ready to join Apple’s iTunes U to get their content online, but need a little more information to get them started. Additonally, I will be speaking to both their online and on-site instructors on how media, and podcasting specifically, can be used to enhance their educational offerings.

The second opportunity sprang from my relationship with a new client. As we casually discussed podcasting as I resolved a networking problem for her, she realized that she had several clients who could really benefit from having their own podcast. I sent her a proposal for producing these podcasts and we should know by the end of the month if the projects will move forward.

I hope my experiences show you how there is a great demand for information and assistance with podcasting that you can help to fulfill. Be on the lookout for these opportunities as they may come from some of the oddest places.

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I have sensed a definite change in how podcasting is perceived in the last few months. Genuine interest seems to be growing in the general populace about how podcasting can enhance traditional outreach, marketing and PR programs.

I had a great discussion with one of my clients today, a PR professional. It is always amazing to see the light bulb go on above someone’s head when they “get” the full potential of podcasting. As we talked, she began to see how more and more of her clients, in wildly different areas, could make use of podcasting. Happily for me, she also saw how I could help here in developing and producing podasts for her clients.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am having these conversations almost continuously now. No matter what the original discussion might be about, at some point there is time to talk about podcasting and how it can help them to achieve their goals, and the goals of their customers and clients.

We both agreed, though, that we need to find people who can start developing sponsorship and advertising deals to connect the individual podcasters with those who want to reach their audience. I find myself wishing I had more experience in this regard, as I am seeing it as one of the primary factors in taking podcasting to the next level.

One of the large issues mentioned when any podcasters get together is the relative difficulty involved in listening to podcasts. While I agree that there are some issues here that stop the average user from subscribing to podcasts, with the advent of the Apple TV I think we are starting to see movement in this area.

Stopping by the Apple Store the other day, I played around with the Apple TV for 30 minutes or so. One of the first things that caught my eye, thought, was the fact that podcasts were listed right up there with Movie, TV Shows and everything else. I think this sort of parity with other entertainment sources is exactly what podcasting needs. We already see this somewhat in the various podcast directories where indie shows are listed side by side with those from NPR, CNN, NBC, etc.

The Apple TV is pointing the way to the future where people won’t know or necessarily care where their entertainment is coming from, only that they found something they enjoy. They might be getting one show from a broadcast network, another from a cable channel, another via their TiVO and others via podcasting. The fact is, in devices like the Apple TV (and others, Phillips has announced that they are planning a similar device) make it easy to consume entertainment, regardless of its source. I think this is great and look forward to more listeners and viewers of my own podcasts as this “podcast parity” trend continues.

I am often asked to talk about the steps I go through to create my podcasts, so I began to outline my methods a few weeks ago. I have been podcasting for over 2 years now, so most of this process is internalized, but it is probably a good idea for me to review the process to see if there is any way I can streamline it.

A word of warning, though, since I have been podcasting for so long, some of my methods have been superseded by much better methods. I am simply being slow to change the systems I have been using as they continue to operate well for me. I will mention the alternatives as I detail the process.

Creating the content

My main podcast, Career Opportunities, is a print column first. It appears in ComputorEdge in San Diego, California. This means that each podcast has been written, usually in MS Word, up to 6 weeks before it appear in the magazine and as a podcast. My other podcasts are more freeform and usually are recorded directly from an outline or loose notes.

Since each show is pre-written, I am able to move to the recording stage of my podcast without much more work.

Recording

When I first started recording my podcast I used the tools at hand, which meant Apple’s Garageband. In fact, the theme music you hear at the beginning of every show is made from 2 music loops that ship with Garageband.

I record each podcast directly into Garageband, preserving the music and the outro from the previous show. I lay down the intro, adding a changing piece of contact information and the show title. Then I begin recording the actual column.

I try to record about a paragraph at a time from the written column. If I make a mistake, I immediately stop the recording, trim the offending part and start recording again from that point. I do this to avoid the “Oops” problem, where unedited sections of audio make it into your final product. I occasionally hear this in my friend’s shows, so I use this method to avoid it.

Once the entire show is recorded, I go back to the beginning and begin tightening up the breaks between each recorded section. This usually means bringing the clips closer together so the breaks sound natural, as if I recorded the entire show in one (excellent) take. If only that were the case. (SMILE)

Once the show is complete, I select the Share to iTunes menu choice in GarageBand. This mixes down all the individual tracks and moves and AAC file over to Apple’s iTunes software.

Titling, Tagging and Conversion

Once the show appears in my iTunes Library I add an appropriate title, Artist, Show Title, notes (including URLs and contact info) and the graphic artwork for the show. Once complete, I use iTunes conversion options to convert the file to a standard MP3. In the beginning, I usually converted the show to a 64kbps MP3 file, but as time has passed and my recording quality has increased, I regularly produce this final file at 96kbps or even 128kbps. This results in a larger file but with a short show (around 6 minutes) it doesn’t cause a significant impact on files size or download time.

Once converted, I listen to the show to check for MP3 compression artifacts or other errors. Then I locate the file on the hard drive and name it appropriately for the web. These names take the form of career-op-20061020.mp3, where the numbers indicate the date the show was released. This means that even if a listener is not using iTunes or other MP3 player that can view the ID3 tags in the file, it still indicates that this is a Career-Op episode from a specific date.

This MP3 file is then uploaded to my web site, currently hosted at GoDaddy.com. I use YummyFTP as my Macintosh FTP client. There is a standard file structure on my web site that makes it clear where each file should reside.

Once the files is uploaded, I access the MP3 directly using my web browser to ensure that it plays correctly.

Web pages, Blogs and RSS Feeds

One oddity that arises from my early start in podcasting, and the fact that Career-Op is a written column, is that I post the full text of each show to my web site. Each column gets its own static web page which also direct links to the MP3 file. I create this file using Dreamweaver, based on the page from the previous week. I then test that file, using my web browser.

Next, I create the blog post for the main Career-Op page that announces the new show and links to the static columns page and the MP3 file. I use Blogger.com to create all of my blogs. One artifact from using Blogger is that it cannot create the RSS 2.0 with enclosures file that is required for podcasting. Other blogging software can do this, but I have not yet made the transition to these newer systems. Blogger does create an ATOM formatted feed, which is an RSS derivative.

To work around this issue, I use the services of FeedBurner.com. FeedBurner can take the Blogger-created ATOM feed and process it into a podcast-compatible RSS 2.0 feed, while adding a number of other features including iTunes specific ID3 tags, advertising and more. My subscribers then subscribe directly to this FeedBurner-created feed to receive my podcast automatically.

This is another artifact of my early start in podcasting. Today, while you might wish to use FeedBurner to create your final podcast feed, you should mask this feed behind a re-direct on your web site. For example, your subscribers might use the URL http://welchwrite.com/podcast.xml to subscribe to your podcast, this address might actually be re-directing the users to your FeebBurner feed. In this way, you retain full control of your feed and can easily stop using FeedBurner any time you wish without forcing all your listeners to re-subscribe to the new address.

Now, I post the blog entry to the blog using Blogger, which creates the new blog page and automatically moves to my web site, ready to be accessed by my readers and listeners.

Since FeedBurner is using the Blogger ATOM file to create its enhanced RSS feed, I also visit a special web page which tells FeedBurner that my basic RSS feed has changed and instructs it to update its RSS feed based on this new information. This would happen automatically within 30 minutes, but I prefer to force the update manually so I can check that the podcast downloads correctly.

At this point, my show is now available to the next listener who might request the RSS feed.

This is a very basic outline of my podcasting process and yours is sure to be somewhat different. In the interest of brevity, I have assumed quite a bit of knowledge, so if you have further questions on the process, please add your comments using the link below.

Keep podcasting…or get started today!