With the advent of the iPod and numerous other audio devices, broadcasting has been taken into the next level. It’s not the radio anymore. It’s podcasting, baby!

Before you get intimidated, podcasting does not mean huge recording machines with those little levers, big microphones,  and a sound booth. Recording a podcast is virtually as easy as listening to one.  Really. All you need is a computer, a recording device, a microphone, an Internet connection and something to say. You also want a nice, quiet room to record in. You don’t want background noise to take center stage while you’re recording your podcast. Good be your bedroom, could be the bathroom, whichever works.

Let’s start making your podcast, shall we?

1. To start, you’re going to need a recording device - Computers (unless they were purchased during the Jurassic Era and runs on software older than Windows 95) come with audio devices which allow you to listen to music and, yes, record your voice. Now depending on the quality of audio that you want, you can settle for your computer and a microphone, or even a cell phone that has audio recording capabilities.  If you’re using a computer, Audacity is a great recording software, not to mention free.
2. Think about your content – You can’t do a podcast, or at least, a good podcast by just blabbering about. You have to think about the content. What do you want to tell people? What would people want to hear from you? As much as you love that burrito you had for lunch, not a lot of people would be interested to hear your burrito-heaven experience.
3. Talk away – Now that you have an idea on what to talk about (Obama’s first three months in office, the new NYT bestseller that you thought sucked, the advantages of being vegetarian, etc.) Record away. Make your recording interesting, and entertaining.
4. Edit your content – Like with written blog entries, you would want to edit. Let me warn you though that editing your podcast is where the work really comes in. You don’t want errors or excessive fillers and you can cut those out of the recording. If you say something dumb, it’s as easy as cutting off that part too. If your podcast is an interview, you can edit the parts that don’t seem relevant to your topic. Polish your podcast until it shines.
5. Publish your podcast – After you’ve recorded your podcast and edited it within an inch of its life, you’re ready to publish it. There’s a good, old trusty site that you might want to try. You might have heard of it, it’s called iTunes. Seems like a lot of people go there to listen to podcasts so it might be helpful to get your podcast listed there. If you have a WordPress blog, there’s a nifty little thing called PodPress that integrates your podcasts with your blog.

What makes anything on the Internet a phenomenal success is getting people to see it and talk about it. While it’s easy to get your podcast online, it won’t fly without you advertising it. Get people to listen to it, to talk about it, post things about it online and encourage people to listen to it. Remember, a podcast doesn’t need to be fancy to be successful. It only needs to be heard.

One Response to “5 Steps to Create Your Own Podcast”

1. nia Says:
   December 14th, 2009 at 3:17 am

   Wow this was doubtlessly one of the best articles I’ve had the chance to view on the topic so far. I don’t understand where you get all of your data but up! I’m going to send some folks your way to check this out. Amazing, totally amazing. I’m have just started getting into spitting out articles myself, nothing remotely close to your writing potential (doh) but I’d love for you to have a look at my stuff someday! here

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