Podcasts are becoming more and more popular. Most of them are free and they are a great way to share your knowledge and expertise with people everywhere. There are many other benefits as well. If your podcast is popular enough you may be able to charge a subscription fee to everyone who wants to download your podcast. If you have developed your own teaching materials or compositions you can promote these through your podcast. You may even reach some new students through your podcast.
There are lots of formats for podcasts. You could create a series of informative podcasts about your instrument, answer questions submitted live, perform your own music or share the music of your students (with their permission).
But, how do you create a podcast? There are lots of posts on the web that will tell you in great detail how to create a podcast step by step, but I’ve discovered a site that takes all of the hard work out of creating a podcast and makes it really simple. Its called TalkShoe. As an extra bonus, you can even produce a live talk cast. People can call in and ask you questions about the topic or subject you are discussing. TalkShoe will pay you a few cents for every live caller and download or your podcast. Its not much, but it can add up.
Simply go to www.talkshoe.com and register, you will need to download the talkshoe software. Then click create to get started. You will describe your new podcast and create a schedule. Next record the podcast. You can either do that live with the talkshoe software, or you can record the podcast with a software like Garageband (which comes standard with most Macs) or Audacity and upload the mp3 file to your talkshoe account.
Your podcast is then available to the listening audience at talkshoe.com, but with a few simple clicks you can list it on itunes, google, yahoo, newsgator and many more podcast listings. You can create an archive for your web page as well. There are easy to follow instructions on TalkShoe so I won’t reinvent the wheel.
Next week I will talk about how to plan your podcast.
