In addition to our new training area, we are also expanding our reach by offering free Podcasts of our SEO training and tips. We plan on offering a weekly Podcast that will summarize valuable SEO and Internet Marketing tips, tricks, and techniques to our subscribers.
In anticipation of this, we had to do some research to learn how to actually get our Podcasts published and distributed. The process is easier than you might think. Below is our step by step ‘tutorial’ on how to create and list your Podcast on iTunes.
Step 1: Write out your dialog and record your first episode. Make sure it's in one of these formats that iTunes supports: .m4a, .mp3, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, and .pdf.
Step 2: Your Podcast material must be placed on a publicly accessible URL. You will then need to create an RSS feed file and place the URL of your RSS feed onto your server.
Step 3: Open up iTunes and the iTunes Store, and click on Podcasts. In the middle of the screen, amongst the numerous podcasts, there will be a button called "Submit a Podcast." This will take you to a screen where it will request the URL for the podcast RSS feed that you would like to consider adding into the iTunes Store.
Step 4: After entering your RSS feed URL, you will see a summary page. Depending on whether you have added tags already, a second screen might come up, asking you for more information--such as language, category, and whether the podcast requires explicit tags.
Your going to have to wait a while after that last step. The iTunes staff will have to approve your Podcast before it is accessible via search or browse. Give it a half a day and then search for your Podcast. You should see it no later than 24 hours after submission. After which you can create ‘episodes’ on a regular basis and continue building your following.
Notes:
Before you submit it, you should test that your RSS feed works. You can do that by either dragging the URL into the Podcast playlist or going to the Advanced menu in your Toolbar, clicking on Subscribe to Podcast, and typing it in.
If you are asked to add summary information after you submit your URL (because your RSS feed didn't have tags), you can always go back and change them by including tags on your feed. The information on the RSS feed is what is going to be the definitive source of information for your podcast.
Subscribe