Podcasting

Why and How to Market Your Books via Podcasts

Podcast-CreationDid you read in a recent Amazon Kindle Newsletter “Words of Inspiration” by bestselling Author Hal Elrod?  He explained: “I invested over $10,000 to get myself booked on 15 local and national TV shows (and saw very little increase in sales) and then invested zero dollars to get booked on over 200 podcasts, which has driven my sales to as high as 10,900+ copies in a single month.”

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How Hal Elrod Achieved these Fantastic Results:
You might have realized that the buzz around podcasting has been growing lately. It’s getting very popular, and many of the great bloggers are starting their own podcasts.

Hal Elrod: “A great place to start is to look on iTunes in the “New and Noteworthy” section to find podcasters who are new (so they’re not inundated with requests) but are gaining a lot of momentum and listeners. Google them, go to their websites, and reach out to tell them how you and your book would add extraordinary value for their audiences!”

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Pat Flynn, Passive Income guru explains:
“Why is podcasting so valuable to passive income online-based businesses? Because with a podcast, you are literally speaking into the brain of your fans—helping to educate and inspire them with your knowledge.

Also, the podcast marketplace is far less saturated than the blogosphere. That means you can stand out from the crowd easier if you produce a high-quality show—which makes podcasting both a great business launch strategy as well as a growth strategy.

If your podcast performs well, you may be able to attract sponsors to your show that you know, trust, and that add value to your listeners. Such high-quality sponsors are another fantastic source of passive income.”

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Create Your Own Podcast:
Another way than reaching out to podcasters on iTunes is to create your own podcasts on hot topics – that are ideally covered or touch on something in your books.
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What exactly is a Podcast?
Remember the good old radio plays? Or consider the audiobooks these days.  A digital audio file is made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player, typically available as a series, new installments which can be received by subscribers automatically.  The word “podcasting” is combining the words “broadcasting” and “iPod.”
The most popular format of a podcast is MP3. Which you can listen to at your computer with some music software such as Windows built-in Media Player or iTunes for Mac (which has a podcast library), your iPod or your smartphone, or even in your car. It’s all about having the files come to you through syndication (supply of content on a subscription basis) instead of you going to the files through search.

  • Do you have a quiet room in your house?
  • If you don’t have a website/blog yet, make sure the domain is available
  • Create the artwork (comparable to a book cover) for your listing on iTunes
  • Choose a unique name for your podcast, but easy to understand.
  • WordPress, a free software that you can use to manage your website has tools to help you podcast.
  • To get your WordPress installation ready to podcast you need to add a plugin called “PowerPress” which makes podcasting super easy with WordPress.
  • Want to add music? Musicalley is free, Audio Jungle inexpensive
  • Record into a portable recorder, some podcasters record directly into their computer. If you make a mistake in recording, pause 10 seconds and then continue with whatever you were saying. This allows seeing the edit spots easily.
  • Make sure all audio levels are set up correctly, adding in intro music and podcast end music.
  • Add ID3 Tags, information that is stored in the media file. You can use mp3tag software (free) for this, or on a Mac check out the ID3 Editor.
  • Upload your podcast to your media host. It’s a lot like attaching a file in an email.
  • Write your show notes, typically a paragraph or two of introduction.
  • Copy the Media URL and paste it into your show notes
  • Click “Publish” – Your podcast episode will appear on your website.
  • Set up tags for iTunes
  • Before submitting your feed to iTunes, go to feedvalidator.org and make sure it says “You’re feed is valid.”
  • Submit your podcast to iTunes, you go into the iTunes software, into the store, into the podcast section and submit your podcast to iTunes. This will give you a summary screen.
  • If everything is correct, you submit the information and you are done.
  • Here are the iTunes explanations: Creating Podcast Feeds and Metadata.  With iTunes Link Maker, you can create links to your podcast in the iTunes Store and also use them on Social Media to market your podcasts.

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The Technical Equipment:
For a one-person podcast comes to approx. $450 for headphone, mic, cables, mic stand, recorder etc., see the listing at School of Podcasting
Software can be free: Mac: Audacity or Garageband $0
PC: Audacity $0, or Sony Acid $45
Media Hosting (for your mp3 files): Libsyn.com $15/month, Blubrry.com $20 a month
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How to Subscribe to Podcasts:
You subscribe to podcasts much like you subscribe to blogs. In fact, often podcasts are distributed through a blog and provided your feed reading software handles podcasts you should be able to either instruct your reader to download new podcasts whenever they become available or manually choose which podcasts you want to download by clicking a link to the audio file. These files can then be listened to on your computer or you can transfer them to your portable player to listen to later.
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An Internet podcast star can potentially reach a much larger audience than any traditional radio personality ever could.  With potential numbers in the millions, it’s easy to see why there is so much hype behind the technology.  How can you get a spot in the iTunes “New & Noteworthy” section – if you don’t already have a list like these big name bloggers?  iTunes is very secretive on this, but two things are needed for sure:

  • You must have decent artwork and content
  • You must proof that there is general interest in your show
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Podcasts allow you to listen to audio content whenever it suits you, for example during your commute, or while you do boring work or on a leisure walk.  And let’s not forget the great benefit for blind people.
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More detailed infos about creating DIY podcasts:
http://schoolofpodcasting.com/is-soundcloud-a-legitimate-option-for-podcasting-8-podcast-media-hosting-companies-compared/

http://schoolofpodcasting.com/the-27-steps-to-get-your-podcast-into-itunes/

https://discussions.apple.com/community/itunes/producing_podcasts

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