What is podcasting and why should you care?

I have been reading a lot about podcasting. I even attended a teleclass on the subject, Podcasting for Coaches given by Ramon Williamson. I learned so much about podcasting from that one class, that I decided to write an article about it for this week's ezine. So here goes...

First of all, what is podcasting?

According to wikipedia, podcasting is "the practice of making audio files available online in such a way that allows software to automatically detect new files and download them." In English that means that you put audio files on the Internet for people to save to their computer or ipod or mp3 player. The way I look at podcasting is that it is the audio equivalent of blogging.

So now you know what podcasting is. I know you are wondering, so why should I care about podcasting. Simple, podcasting is in its early stages now. It's where blogging was 4 years ago. If you get in on podcasting now, you will be light years ahead of your competitors in your niche.

You don't have to be a techie geek to know how to podcast either. If you can talk on the phone then you can record a podcast. Blogger.com has a service that allows you to call a number and record your post instead of typing it. You do have to be registered with them, but it's free to register with them. Another way to get your podcast set up is to use audioblog.com There is a fee associated with this service, but you can record longer posts with this service. Blogger’s service only allows you to record a 5 minute post. Audioblog’s service allows you to record a 60 minute post. Of course you could always do some digging and find sophisticated equipment, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Here's what you need to do next. Go to blogger and sign up for an account. Once you have your blog set up, go to audioblogger.com and follow the directions they give you. The site is very user-friendly. Do it Now.

Copyright 2005 by DeAnna Spencer

This article may be freely reproduced as long as the resource box at the bottom of the article is included.

DeAnna Spencer is the webmaster for Learn Small Business, http://www.learnsmallbusiness.com Visit her blog at http://learnsmallbusiness.blogspot.com to download her podcast.