The NMP Network

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Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing The Phases of Podcasting. We have covered the basics, history of podcasting, and prepping for your podcast. This week, we will begin discussing Phase 3, Going Live for the First Time. Since we have covered pre-recording your podcasts, many want to take their podcast to the next level and go live and interactive.

For most, this is a scary step to take and many will stop short and not go ahead and do this. Instead, they will just continue to be a listener and never a host!

Actually, going live isn’t as hard as it appears. Thanks to services like Talkshoe, going live is as easy as picking up a telephone and making a call! Tonight, I will walk through the steps of getting your podcast live on Talkshoe.

Before you can go live, there are a few things that you need to do to insure that you are ready to go live with your podcast. Let’s go over some of the details:

First, you need to go into Talkshoe and create a free account. If you already have an account, then great! Otherwise, create your account and then go into your profile. Put as much relevant information into your profile as you can. Remember, not only will other people be looking at this information, but search engines will as well. After you have completed your profile, you are ready to move on to creating your show.

Before you jump in an create the show, take a few minutes to think about what you want to talk about. What will your show be called? What will your subject matter be? What time will your show air? How long will the show be online live? And these are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself BEFORE you start!

Once you have answered the initial questions, you are ready to go and create or schedule a show. To do this, login to your Talkshoe account and click on My TalkShoe. If you don’t already have a show created, you will be given the opportunity to create your new show here. Using the answers from the initial questions, you will easily be able to create your new show page. Once completed, click on the show title to enter your show page area.

You will see a tab listing near the top marked Schedule Episode. Click on this tab to begin your episode creation for your new show. Future is already clicked by default. You will use this option most of the time, unless you are wanting to launch a show Right Now, and then you just simply click Right Now. Next, click the calendar next to the Date field and choose the date for your future show. With the Right Now feature, you will not choose a date or time. For future show dates, next, choose the proper time you want the show to begin on. Make sure to choose AM or PM in the time for the show to begin when you want it to begin. After that, give your episode a title. This should be a descriptive title as it will be picked up along with the description in Google and other search engines thanks to the SEO built into Talkshoe. The next step requires you to put in a description for this episode. You can even add a web site address in here and again, the search engines will pickup on this as well. The final step on this page is to choose the duration of your show episode. You can choose up to 2 hours for your show, however, the show will continue and record for up to 5 hours. Click the Next button to proceed. You will be prompted to send invitations to people that follow your show and to e-mail addresses that you have entered into your invite list. You don’t have to send invitations out if you don’t want to.

Ok, you have now created your first live episode. When the appropriate date and time comes around, at 15 minutes before the actual show start time, your show will go live and you can login and fire up your show and when you are ready, press the record button and Go Live!

Now, we have covered the basics for getting your show on the air. What happens after you fire up your show? You will have the chat room up on your screen and you will want to login to Talkshoe using the account info for your show including Show ID and your PIN Code. At this point, your show will appear on Talkshoe’s front page and Live Now Page so that other’s can see you are live and ready to rock n roll! At this point, keep one thing in mind…just because you built it, they won’t just come in! You will need to promote your show any way possible. For those of you that follow me on Twitter, Tumblr and other social networks, you will see a tweet or blurb come across normally several times during the hour just before the show goes live. Also, once a week, I send out invitations to my e-mail list that I am building on Talkshoe. I also post a blog post about the show, usually once a week for “sneek peek” to give everyone a heads up on the upcoming show. Don’t be shy when promoting yourself and your show. Tell anyone that will listen. If you are on a forum, posting to a blog comment, sending an e-mail to a friend, whatever…tell them about when your show will be live so that they can come and check it out!

Ok, you are now in the first 15 minutes before your actual show start time. What do you do now? This is a good time for a Pre-Show. When someone comes into your show, they will be able to see whether or not you are recording or not. Be sure to greet them, by name or Guest1, Guest2 whatever. And they will most likely be on the chat room only, so greet them on the chat as well. Talk to them so they can hear your voice and even take a second to ask them how you sound, are they hearng you ok, and the like and this is where if you have a Plan B, you can fall back on that. We won’t go into Plan B tonight as that’s a whole other lesson, however, the idea here is, use the Pre-Show time to work out bugs in your audio, even if you need to take time to logout and login once again on the phone, just to make it work.

Remember, you only have 15 minutes before your show starts, so don’t get to wrapped up in the technical issues at this point. You need to get something going so you can start the show and work out the bugs after the show is over and done.

Ok, now the time is at hand. Your show is ready to start, you are at your starting time, so where to now? Start by announcing to your listening audience that you are about to start the recording, tell them to hang on a sec, or however you want to say it and then click the Record button. You will hear that ever popular jingle from Talkshoe and then you begin talking! That’s really all there is to it.

If you would like to learn more about podcasting and get one on one mentoring and coaching from a New Media Trainer, check out LearnToPodcast.com to get all the details!

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Tags: interactive, live, podcaster, training