How to podcast for free

April 29, 2008

Has video killed the radio star? No, you should be using audio in your marketing campaigns if not you’re missing out on rankings for your Keyword Phrase and quality backlinks to your site.

There’s no doubt that video is a sexy way to promote your site but you should be doing both video and audio promotion. If you are leaving out podcasting because you don’t know how to go about it and can’t see the benefit. remember that getting multiple rankings for your keyword is not just about getting links back to your money page it’s also about kicking a competitor off the Google page for that term!

So it doesn’t really matter too much if anyone listens to your podcast or not! Yep, you heard me as long as you can get a back link to your site from your various Podcast directory libraries and your podcast gets ranked in Google above a competitor for your target keywords then that ain’t too shabby in my book.

That doesn’t mean you can just create a crap podcast by any means - always do the best you can, be professional. It helps that you can create a professional podcast without shelling out for any software.

How to create a free podcast:

OK first things first. Write a script. It doesn’t mean you have to read something word for word I use a list of bullet points to keep me on track as I tend to go off on tangents and ‘um’ and ‘ahh’ a bit too much as I think of what to say next.

If you are considering presenting a professional weekly internet radio show then a well thought out script helps and, sure, get some intro/outro music and so on and aim for a 20-30 minute show. Maybe interviewing someone in your niche or have a discussion with a friend about a product you’re promoting. There’s lots of information on the web on how to do that and we’ll cover it in a future post.

But on this site we’re principally interested in podcasting as a Web 2.0 marketing technique right? Here’s one option (more to follow, as I say, in other posts).

1) This is so fast it’s scary, got your script or bullet points? Microphone turned on? Let’s go:

Go to MyPodcast.com
Click on the create free podcast link
Type in your title - this must have your keyword or phrase in it ( otherwise what’s the point?) then use your keyword to create your URL i.e. http://mykeywordphrase.mypodcast.com
Create your account on the same page
Choose your podcast template then click ‘Create my Podcast’
Download the Podcast Recorder application
While that’s going on take the time to fill in your profile (top right of page) - yeah I know you can’t get a hyperlink in there but it’ll only take you 10 seconds.
Open the Recorder and off you go ( there’s no audio graphic equalizer thing to check that your actually recording so have a play with it first to make sure all is working.
Interestingly you can click on the word bubble next to the Record button to insert an ad! Time will tell how this works but in theory you might earn a share of any ad revenue. Truth be told I reckon you’d have to be creating something pretty decent for this to happen but do it anyway when you come to a natural break in your flow.
All done? Click ’save’ and the mp3 file, anme it after your keyword, is saved to your computer.
Now click ‘Publish’. Fill in the details, Login etc. get your Keyword again in the title and description.
Done!

What has happened is that they’ve created a web/blog type page for you ( optimized for your keyword phrase) with your podcast embedded. The pages created are monetized by their Google Adsense but you can’t have everything