Friday, June 6, 2008

5 Tips for Launching a Successful Podcast

Emarketer reports that in in 2007, 18.5 million Americans tuned into podcasts. In four more years, the analysts projected that this audience will more than triple in size.

Ready to hop on the podcast bandwagon? Great! Check out these tips for launching a successful podcast.

  1. Podcast on a regular basis. You’ll earn loyal listeners if you podcast on a schedule, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Try to upload your shows on the same day of the week.
  2. Keep your podcast episodes short and sweet. Online audiences have short attention spans. Five minutes is long enough. Anything over ten minutes is pushing it.
  3. Stick to informative and entertaining content. If you talk about information listeners really value, you can slip in a little promotion. A rule of thumb for email marketing is 85% useful content and 15% promotional content. It would be unwise to devote more than 15% of your air time to promotions.
    Submit your podcast to iTunes.
  4. Create a compelling podcast website. Your website or blog can feature your podcast schedule, announcements, and special offers, archive show notes, answer audience questions, and promote products or services.
  5. Measure your success. Some measurement tools to try:
    • Google Analytics: tracks users and audio file downloads
    • Feedburner: measures the number of unique subscribers per episode
    • Podtrac and Volomedia: behavioral and demographic data

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