Getting Started with Podcasting

June 1, 2009 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Getting Started with Podcasting and tagged: coaching, Getting Started with Podcasting, More business from your website

Most bloggers want to enrich their work with multi-media. I took the plunge last week and created my first podcast.

There’s a lot to be said for managing the process from start to finish yourself. You experience the frustration of realising that certain things don’t work. You dive in. You make your mistakes. There’s a cringe factor too. But the good thing about DIY podcasts is – generally speaking you learn something much more thoroughly that way.  (Or at least, I hope you do!).

I did some research beforehand - I’ve described some of this in a new Helium article called: ‘Getting Started with Podcasting’. You may also want to read what other writers have to say about this on Helium, as they offer some useful perspectives.

For my first podcast I chose the simplest form of recording equipment I could find. I wanted to focus on the content and not become too distracted by technology – so I used Windows Sound Recorder and a basic but good quality Logitech microphone.

I fell down a bit when it came to file conversion and that was the really frustrating bit. I downloaded some free Audacity software, but after spending some time with it, I just found it too complicated – so I’ll come back to that one.  By all accounts Audacity is intended for more advanced users.

Windows sound recorder records sound files in WMA format – and to place this on a WordPress blog you need to convert them to a WAV format. (It took me a long time and five  failed attempts before I got this far).

In the end I used AVS Audioconverter. Seems fine so far. I’ll keep you informed as to how I get on with this when I do my next audio piece.

Of course I’m not absolutely entranced by the final and finished pod cast. It is unscripted though. You’ll notice that after I’d completed recording version five – I started to sit a little bit too close to the microphone and it started to crackle. Still, I’m human and can only improve. My stats are fairly respectable for the blog in question, as it’s fairly new. Let me know what you think (and what I can do better next time…).

Here’s the link.

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