Jul 26, 2009
Had a nice long chat with Kali (aka YourGirlKali) from the "Flaws and All" show on
BlogTalkRadio, and Rhonda Carpenter of the Podioracket podcast and
author of "The Mark of a
Druid," about podcasting, promoting podcasts, and related
self-promotion.
Brief call-in from "CRC the
reliever" who also has a show on BTR.
Discussed recording and swapping promos with others, leaving voice
comments and blog comments. Suggested K7.net, Snapvine, or Google Voice for a voice
comment line. I mentioned I'd recorded a comment line
reminder for the Dawn & Drew
Show which has worked out for me. Noted that podcasters
are generally happy to play your promo, if you're willing to
promote theirs, and happy to play any voice comments (including
mention of your website) that are meaningful about their
content. Mentioned producing some content for the
Bloodthirsty Vegetarians podcast, with the similar
results.
Oh, and I won a book on Podioracket earlier, by Brian Rathbone, called "The Dawning
of Power." Another on-topic example, since the book giveaway
was a promotional effort for Brian's book. (I look forward to
reading that. And I like winning stuff. Thanks,
Brian!)
Brought up blogging about others' podcasts with the same idea in
mind.
Talked about the usefulness of Google Alerts for keeping track
of what people are saying about you, good or bad. (Yahoo Alerts can
serve a similar purpose.)
Discussed recording audiobooks for Podiobooks.com, and how
doing those had helped promote my podcasts, and vice versa.
(I have five on there now, and I'm working on my sixth.)
Is there such a thing as Too Much Promotion? Our take was
that the key is to produce valuable content, make useful comments,
add value to the podcasts you're appearing on or mentioned on, and
that indirectly promotes your show(s)
without getting too annoying. (In my humble opinion.)
And if other podcasters do the same for you, they promote
themselves without annoying your audience.
Rhonda presented author Seth
Harwood's appearance on PodioRacket as an example on how to
promote without being "excessively annoying" (Fidonet folks will
recognize that phrase). I brought up singer/songwriter
Natalie Brown's
appearance on my show as a similar example. I also discussed
playing LeVar Thomas' and
City Haze's music
on my show while commenting on that on Twitter.
Rhonda suggested using Ping.fm for
making one post to multiple sites/accounts/outlets. That can
be important when you're doing a lot of shows -- as I am, for
example. And of course, producing a lot of content can help
promotion in itself.
While I took a break, I played a
tune from City Haze called "On My Way," featuring LeVar
Thomas. (See the promotion-related tie-in, right?)
Since I use Skype for my BTR shows,
I can also use a utility called Callburner to do separate mono
recordings of each side of the Skype call, making it easy to edit,
especially to add better-quality music to the shows. We also
discussed editing for podcasting, and what Rhonda and I both use
for that (as lots of podcasters do), Audacity -- free and
effective for podcasting. You can spend more, if you like, of
course. We're both happy with the latest Beta, 1.3.8, though
technically 1.2.6 is the latest Stable version.
I suggested voice acting as another option, though that's certainly
not for everybody. (There's a Yahoo Group for
voice actors, by the way.)
I complained about the audio quality on BTR's archive recordings
for music (though they're fine for talk, I suppose). I
suggested getting a better mike. Rhonda's suggestion was a
phone headset for BTR shows. I was thinking more of an
inexpensive mike, and Rhonda's suggestion there was a Snowball USB mike, which can
be gotten fairly cheaply.
Other recommendations:
"Podcasting
for Dummies," by Tee Morris, Evo Terra and Chuck Tomassi.
The Yahoo Group
for Podcasters
Leo LaPorte's TWiT podcasts, since
Kali lives fairly near there, and some of the local podcasting
groups in the area, including the one Matthew Wayne Selznick is
in.
We talked video streaming, including what Phil Rossi did for the release of his
novel, "Crescent."
We also discussed recording old Public Domain books as I do, and
what an all-around outstanding fellow I am at doing that. I
agreed humbly. :) But I gave much of the credit to my
Samson Zoom H2 Handy Recorder, which is wonderful for a guy
with a bassy voice like mine, and worth every penny my sister spent
for my Christmas present.
Thanks again to Rhonda Carpenter and Kali for talking with me so
long.
Lots of show notes, but it was after all a two-hour show!