Hello everyone, and welcome to the Voxonic Studio Digital Marketing Podcast. Today, I'm going to pick up from where I last left off from the last episode. And I'm going to talk about recording your audio for your podcast and uploading that audio to the hosting site. So before we start talking about mics or software, your best bet for a podcast that sounds organized and professional is to practice beforehand, by figuring out what you're going to say and coming up with an outline of your recording. You don't have to go so far as to script things out, just have a general roadmap for where you're headed, and what you want to touch upon. When it comes to the actual recording. The easiest solution might be just a simple recorded Skype call, you can call up your co-host or guests via Skype or record the call with Skype recording software. When you're finished, you have your choice of multiple editing applications to help you with the cleanup, processing, music, and publication. So depending upon what type of computer you have, for Mac users, you can use Call Recorder for Skype, or LinkedIn machine notes. And to edit use GarageBand. Free for Windows users, you can use Pamela and edit with Audacity. Again, links in the show notes. Now, if you have co-hosts, you might consider each of you recording your end of the conversation, your audio separately, and stitching the separate audio files together in post-production. This makes for far cleaner audio because each of you has a separate track for your own voice. After you're finished recording, editing, and producing your podcast, you can upload it to hosting sites like Lipson, SoundCloud, anchor, and Transistor. They'll generate your RSS feed for you. So you can submit it to Apple podcast, Spotify, and other players. What's an RSS feed? Well, Apple podcasts and Spotify actually don't hold any of the audio on their sites, or they are shop windows for your products. So you need somewhere to hold your audio and the aforementioned sites like Libsyn like SoundCloud, Link anchor and transistor are where your audio is being held just like Dropbox. The RSS feed is the link in between the hosting site and Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you log on to my website, www.VoxonicStudio.ie, you can download a free PDF guide that will take you through all these steps to get your podcast published. So step one in creating an RSS feed for your podcast is you upload your files to Libsyn anchor or transistor and the feed creation is done automatically for you. Step two, log in to Apple podcasts connect using your Apple ID login at podcasts connect.apple.com. Step three. Enter your feed URL and then click validate. Apple will pull your podcast feed details. This will include artwork, title, descriptions, etc. And then click Submit. Apple will give you a confirmation message letting you know that there may be a review process for your podcast. So this typically takes about 24 to 48 hours, but sometimes it can take up to five days. You'll then receive an email letting you know if you've been approved. Three to five days after that people can begin searching and finding your podcast in the Apple podcast app. For promotion and sharing of your podcast, a lot will depend on the site where you upload. Places like SoundCloud, for instance, offer a fairly robust set of sharing options built-in. You can share directly to Twitter, Facebook, and more. And you can embed the audio directly into your blog posts. In my opinion, embedding audio is perhaps the best way to sync your podcasts with your blog content. Many top blogs use their podcast as an additional blog post, adding the audio directly into the body of the post and providing either the full transcript of the podcast or a list of topics and resources covered in the podcast. Complete transcripts are so helpful for SEO and accessibility. It cannot be understated. If you're going to have a podcast, you must transcribe it. Otherwise, Google has a much harder time trying to find your podcast, audio is still nowhere near as easy to find as the written text. As a business owner or service provider. If you understand the value of creating content, like blogging, for your business and brand, then you understand the value of podcasting. Creating a podcast allows you to reach a brand new audience, people who might otherwise never find consume your long-format content because they just prefer the audio format. You don't need to be an established content creator or have a blog to become a successful podcaster. A podcast is an excellent way to build an audience from scratch, and position yourself as an authority in your industry. Podcasts also provide the potential to drive traffic back to your website or store. Every Podcast Directory gives you a link back to your website. And since it's your podcast, you can direct listeners to your website at the end of each show. On Apple podcasts, there are dozens of categories and subcategories where listeners actively seek new content. This means your podcast content will be highly targeted. People who are interested in your topic can seek you out. Having a podcast these days is vital. It used to be in order to position yourself as an authority on a topic you needed a book. But that's no longer enough. Starting a podcast allows you to position yourself even further as an authority on your topic by being more current. As you publish your podcasts every week, you're staying up to date with current topics and trends. It helps build your audience and it also makes it easier to sell your product or service. Since you're a credible source. being seen as an authority can really help influence potential customers to purchase your products. So let's talk about cover art. Your Podcast cover art needs to be beautiful. Don't neglect this aspect of your podcast, as Apple podcasts, in particular, seem to only feature podcasts with professional-looking artwork, you may need to invest a little money in hiring a professional to design your cover art. Whether you're doing it yourself or hiring a pro use words and images that are large enough to be clearly legible at almost any size. Take a look at the artwork that catches your eye on Apple podcasts and model your cover art after it. If you don't have some artwork, I'd recommend trying Fiverr or hiring a graphic artist from Upwork. To create something beautiful for your podcast. Your cover art should be a minimum of 1400 by 1400, and a maximum of 2048 by 2048. Now there are dozens of categories and subcategories on Apple podcasts, everything from Arts and politics to comedy and religion. Choose the category that suits your theme. It doesn't need to be the exact topic. Again, if you're struggling to decide on a category, look at other podcasters on Apple podcasts that are similar to yours, or not which category and subcategory their use. As mentioned in the previous episode, the podcast description or summary is the most important part of the promotion of your podcast. You don't want to skip on the description of your podcast, you'll want to include as many relevant keywords as possible. This is going to help with search engine optimization SEO of your podcast listing. Apple podcasts is a search engine. So many people who find your podcast will find it through a simple search. So when it comes to recording audio, can you record your podcast with an iPhone? The short answer is yes. Since iPhones have microphones, they have everything you need to record the audio. However, the audio will not be as clear or as professional sounding as you'd like. That being said there are several apps out there that you can download to turn your iPhone into a podcast audio recorder. Podcast hosting services such as pod bean and SoundCloud also offer in podcast recording capabilities. Many of these apps are available for Android devices too. So Anchor, Spreaker, and iRig Recorder are all apps that you use. I don't want to talk too long about r...