Podcaster Training: Using Audio on your Web Site or Blog

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to our first episode of 2009! Last week, we wrapped up our Phases of Podcasting Series and will begin the new year with some individual training and will prepare for our next big series, Bridging The Gap Between Mediums. This new series will take us through the three big mediums, Audio, Video and Blogging, and will show you how to convert your listeners to readers, readers to viewers, well, you get the idea I think. That series will begin soon, so I will keep you posted!

Tonight, we will talk about using audio on your web sites or blogs. By using audio, I am talking about embedding a flash audio or an MP3 by using a special flash converter program or by using a special plugin for Wordpress, such as the BluBrry Player, that will allow you to let your visitors or readers play back your audio easily.

To begin with, we will discuss using flash on your web site or blog. Using flash will not only enable you to embed your audio, but it will allow you to easily stream large audio files without the visitor or reader having to wait a long time for the file to download before they can begin to enjoy it.

How do you get an audio file into a flash format? The best way to do this, is to use a flash converter program, such as Web Audio Plus, that will take a .WAV or .MP3 formatted audio file and with a couple of clicks of the mouse, you can choose the player style and then the program not only gives you the embed code, but will encode the flash file for you to upload to your site and let your visitors start using it right away!

Now, if you are using Wordpress, the self hosted version, then you can add a plugin for podcasting such as the one from BluBrry, that will enable you to upload your MP3 file or actually just add the http line to the player and it will stream it from another source. For example, when I want to add the audio file to my show notes, I use the BluBrry Player and add the http line that directs the player to stream from the Talkshoe download location. In this way, I don’t have to worry about uploading the file to another location or worry about hosting an additional file somewhere else, as the BluBrry plugin will automatically use the http line that I entered to pull this file from whatever location I have entered into it. The file must be in an MP3 format for the player to work correctly in this fashion. Some audio plugins will also stream a video in the same fashion, so check with your plugin that you are using before attempting this to insure that it will work properly for you.

Now, if you are using Talkshoe to record your MP3 file and you want to use it in a flash format, you will need to download the MP3 file to your PC and then convert it and then upload the new flash files and install the embed code to your site or blog. Otherwise, you will need a microphone hooked up to your PC’s soundcard and you will need something like the free audio editor called Audacity so that you can record your files and then export them to either a WAV or MP3 format. If you use the MP3 format, then you can easily upload this file to your site and use the Wordpress plugin to stream it or with the WAV or MP3 format, you can convert either of these to flash using the Web Audio Plus software. I might mention that this software is for PC’s only, so sorry Mac people! I’m sure that there is a similar program available for Mac to convert audio to a flash format. Again, since I’m not a Mac, I don’t have any suggestions for this but I’m sure someone knows of one somewhere!

Another way to use audio on your site or blog is to record a short 1 or 2 minute greeting that you can embed near the top of your main page. Put a note there for your visitors or readers to press play in order to hear a special message from you. This will give your site or blog a personal touch. Don’t make this audio play automatically however, as this will tend to annoy repeat visitors and may even drive them away! This type of audio should always be voluntary and not forced onto your visitors or readers.

Embedding an audio file doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be voice only. If you have a site that features music from Indie Artists or even your own music, you can feature this kind of music files in the same way as the audio files. Just make sure that the music you are featuring is either your own, podsafe music or you have the proper licensing to play the music. In this way, you will keep yourself from being fined for playing licensed music.

Wrapping up, adding audio files to your web site or blog doesn’t have to be a big chore or take a rocket scientist to make it work. With the plugins available for Wordpress nowadays, and the flash technology for converting audio files easily, there is no reason why you can’t do it too!

If you have a PC and are interested in obtaining Web Audio Plus, you can pickup your own copy at The Personal Publisher!

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Review: Talkshoe vs. BlogTalkRadio

Today, I received an e-mail asking why I chose Talkshoe over BlogTalkRadio for my live podcasting. So, before I responded back to this individual, I decided to check out BlogTalkRadio again so that I could give a decent response to this inquiry.

As most of you already know, I started with Talkshoe more than two years ago. For those not in the know, Talkshoe is a free service that offers live, interactive podcasting, hosting and chat rooms for hosts that want to produce a live podcast with a live audience. BlogTalkRadio does this as well, but more on them later.

When I started podcasting live with Talkshoe, they were a fledgling company and were still having some teething pains with some of the technology. A lot can be overlooked, especially when the service is free of charge! Over time, Talkshoe has grown out of most of their technical issues and have added a lot of great features over the past couple of years.

BlogTalkRadio offers many of the features that Talkshoe offers, however, they have some restrictions that some hosts, myself included, just can’t deal with.

Here is a list of Pros and Cons of both services as I see them. This list is strictly my observations and do not represent the opinions of these individual services.

Talkshoe

1. Free Account Signup for member and host
2. Free hosting and storage of MP3 recordings
3. Unlimited storage for archives of MP3 recordings
4. Up to 5 Hour limit on recording of podcasts
5. No restrictions on time slots to host podcasts
6. Up to 250 people on the chatroom and phone bridge
7. Dedicated phone number and show ID for calling into show
8. No restrictions on advertising placed within your podcasts
9. 15 minute “pre-show” window before starting your podcast
10. Manual or automatic recording option for your podcast
11. Ability to mute chatroom and phone bridge callers
12. Ability to manually start and terminate podcasts
13. Ability to use SIP/VOIP or Phone to call into show
14. No ad revenue sharing for the hosts
15. Ability to schedule future shows for any day or time
16. Easy to use interface on show page
17. Ability to continue streaming before and after recording
18. Recordings available within 30 minutes of termination of show
19. Ability to not use a PC to host a live podcast

BlogTalkRadio

1. Free account signup for member and host
2. Free hosting and storage of MP3 recordings
3. Unlimited storage for archive of MP3 recordings
4. Up to 2 hours of podcast recording
5. No apparent restrictions now on time slots to host podcasts
6. Up to 5 people on the phone bridge at one time
7. Not sure on limit of chat room visitors
8. Dedicated phone number and ID for calling into show
9. Certain restrictions for advertising on your podcasts
10. Voluntary Ad Revenue Sharing program
11. No “pre-show” window for starting your live podcast
12. Automatic start and terminate of your podcast recording
13. Ability to continue streaming after recording is completed
14. Ability to mute chatroom and phone bridge callers
15. No ability to manual start or terminate podcast recordings
16. Ability to use VOIP or phone to call in, no SIP support
17. No ability to go over preset time limit for show recording
18. Ability to schedule future shows up to 30 days in advance
19. Not a user friendly interface for scheduling or show maintenance
20. Unsure as to how long before recordings show up after termination
21. Ability to not use a PC to host a podcast, but not recommended

This list is not complete. Only from the observation point of a show host. As you can see, BlogTalkRadio has more restrictions in place that makes it more difficult for an individual to host a show. BlogTalkRadio has some features that Talkshoe doesn’t, such as the ad revenue sharing program. Talkshoe, at one time, had such a program. However, with no advertising restrictions, Talkshoe allows the host to producing their own advertising dollars.

My response to the individual about why I chose Talkshoe over BlogTalkRadio was honest. In my opinion, Talkshoe still has the better service going between the two. Granted, Talkshoe has it’s share of technical issues still, and the test podcast I ran on BlogTalkRadio today, went smooth and the recording was clear and usable. Again, there will always be differences, but for the money (remember, Talkshoe is still a free service) I will be staying with Talkshoe for the time being and will hope that the technical issues get ironed out soon.

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PodcasterTraining.com Updated

The Podcaster Training Site has had a minor makeover, so here’s what’s new on the site!

A new Audacity Tutorial Video Series has been added that will take you through the steps of downloading and installing Audacity to installing the Lame Encoder to actually recording and exporting an MP3 for your podcast! Also included with this video series is a free download of Web Audio Pro that allows you to create flash buttons for your web site or blog and an additional 6 videos for converting your audio files to a podcast to enable better traffic to your blog or web site.

Some new promotional tools have been added as well as new links to additional training that you can receive!

Check out the new changes at http://www.podcastertraining.com

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Podcaster Training: The Phases of Podcasting - Phase 1 The Basics Cont’d

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Last week, we started discussing a new series called The Phases of Podcasting. To recap, in Phase 1: The Basics of Podcasting, we talked a bit about the history of podcasting and how to begin recording a podcast using Audacity. Now, keep in mind, that a lot of this phase really requires a hands on approach, so if you are interested in doing this and need further instruction, please contact me and let me know how I can help you.

Today, we continue with more on Phase 1: The Basics of Podcasting. We will begin by taking the recorded audio in Audacity and we will do some basic editing. I will do my best to describe how to do this, as again, this is more a hands on type of training and cannot be handled very well with words, but we will do our best to get through this!

To start, fire up Audacity on your PC and record your podcast audio. We covered this last week, however, to recap that a little, click on the red button on the toolbar to begin your recording. Once completed, click the yellow square button to stop the recording. Now, listen to your audio all the way through and while doing so, take notes where you need to edit out ums and dead space or stuttering, etc. and then once you have listened all the way through, you are now ready to begin the editing process.

Run your audio to a point on your timeline to where you need to cut out some dead space or an um or whatever. Stop your playback just before that area you want to cut out and click on the Selection Tool (looks like a capital I) and then left click and drag across the area and only the area, you want to cut out. Once you have completed your selection, release the left click button and you should have a small portion of your timeline highlighted. Let me caution you right here. SAVE FIRST BEFORE EDITING! This is very important. If you edit an unsaved audio file and then you will not have a way to go back if you accidentally remove something you didn’t want to cut out.

Next, once the highlighting is done, click on the scissors on the toolbar and your highlighted section will disappear. You have now, cut out a small section and can playback that area to hear your results. If you are satisfied, you can move on to the next section until your editing is completed.

I will not cover how to add in new audio or import say like music and the like in this section. This can all be handled through the audio process as well and there are plenty of YouTube videos covering Audacity that will walk you though these steps.

After the editing is completed, you are now ready to export your audio to an MP3. To do this, you will need to have the Lame MP3 Encoder installed in Audacity. This too, is a free download. You will find the link on the Audacity download page.

To export to an MP3, click on File and then Export and choose MP3. You will be prompted for a filename, give it one that will describe your podcast and then the ID3 tag window will open to allow you to edit and change the ID3 tags for your MP3.

To learn more about using Audacity, there is a great online tutorial you can follow produced by Jason Van Orden. You can find the tutorial here.

Moving forward, after you have your recorded podcast ready to upload, you then need a podcast host. There are lots of hosts out there such as Libsyn and Podomatic, however, you are limited to a small storage area unless you pay a monthly charge for more space. Also, some hosts will charge you for bandwidth usage as well, so you need to check that out before choosing a host.

For those of you that podcast on Talkshoe, you get the best of all worlds because Talkshoe offers free unlimited storage and no bandwidth costs and you can easily upload a pre-recorded podcast anytime you like and it will be available virtually right away for consumption.

So there you have it. Some basic history of podcasting and a little insight on how to record a podcast using Audacity. Now, let’s look at some more basics that might interest you!

For the novice or beginner podcaster, this can be a scary or frightening hobby as many people don’t like how they sound on a recording. However, once you get over your “stage fright” then you can actually start enjoying the benefits that podcasting has to offer.

For the novice or beginner podcaster, here are some things that you should have to get yourself ready to start podcasting.

First, and foremost, a topic. Without a topic, it will be difficult at best to have good content, unless you are planning a podcast that will involve listeners and make it an “open mic” affair. In any event, you should have a topic and it should be something that you are either an expert on or at least have some knowledge about.

Take this show, for example. When I started Podcaster Training, it was called So You Want To Host Your Own Talkcast? At the time, Talkshoe was young and had little to no support, with the exception of Tommy Vallier, as many of you are already familiar with. I was hosting about 6 other shows at the time and was getting questions about Talkshoe on most of these shows, like “How did you get your audio to work over VOIP?” or “How can I use Gizmo to call into Talkshoe for free?” and I would answer these questions, as I already knew how to do this, so that part was easy. After fielding these questions almost daily, I approached Dave Nelson, the CEO of Talkshoe and asked him if he would object if I hosted a show supporting Talkshoe. He readily agreed and so on with the show! I now had a topic and had some of the knowledge necessary to host the show with. Tommy Vallier came in on the very first episode and offered to come onto the show weekly and answer questions and he eventually joined the show as my Co-Host until his departure from Talkshoe.

So having a topic is key, especially a topic you are familiar with. Next, you need to have a “working title” for your podcast. A working title is a title that best describes what your podcast is about, in as few of words as possible. Take this show again, my first working title said it all! So You Want To Host Your Own Talkcast? In those days, the live shows were called Talkcasts, now they are Community Calls. No matter, my title still said it all. When I changed formats, I chose Podcaster Training, again, the title says it all.

After you have your topic and working title, you should setup a blog using Wordpress.com or Blogspot, your choice, and then get an appropriate domain name that points to your blog. Dot Com domain names are cheap by today’s pricing standards. Depending on your topic and genre of your podcast, you may want to opt for a Dot ME or DOT Org or even a Dot Info domain name. Again, your choice.

If you are pre-recording your podcasts, setup an account with a podcast host or setup an account with Talkshoe and now you have the basics for a great podcast.

Remember, you may think that it’s all been said already. Don’t be fooled for a second. What you have to say is just as important, if not more so, than what’s already been said. And, you may even say something that no one has heard before!

In the coming weeks, I will cover more on promoting and monetizing your podcasts. Next week, we will move on to Phase 2: Prepping for your podcast. We will discuss what happens before the record button is hit to insure you have everything ready for a great podcast!

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