• Make a new blog post for each episode. At minimum, re-post the show description you embed in the MP3 (you do that right?). Even better, add as much information (and as many tags) as you can. The ideal situation is a summary of the show’s contents broken down by when in the episode they appear, followed by a full transcript of the entire show (if you go this far, place the transcript after the blog’s “more” tag so it only appears if people view the entire post).
• If at all possible, add a picture to each blog post — and don’t take it yourself. Do a search for Creative Commons licensed images, or look for appropriately-licensed photos on Flickr. Tell the image’s creator that you used it, even if the license doesn’t require it — they may be flattered enough to tell others. Whenever you use a photo, add a comment to the image on Flickr (or wherever it came from) letting other viewers know that you used it. This will let new people know about your show indirectly, and look good for the photographer.
• Name your blog and show appropriately: Either give the blog the same name as the show/podcast, or make a category on your blog that matches the name of the show. Ideally, you would have the URL, name of the show, and name of the blog be the same.
• Put prominent links to your RSS feed and your iTunes store URL (found by right-clicking the image in your iTunes listing) in the sidebar of your blog, and consider putting them at the end of each post as well.
• Embed individual episode players in each episode’s post. In addition, provide direct links to the MP3 download for each episode in that episode’s blog post.
• Optionally, put a direct link to your podcast’s RSS feed, but replace “http://” with “itpc://” this will immediately subscribe anyone who clicks it to your show in iTunes, rather than just bring them to your iTunes listing.
• Add links to your social networking profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in the sidebar. This will get you more friends and followers — AKA people you can easily tell about your future episodes.
• Use a service like Feedburner to provide an email-based subscription to your RSS feed. This will appeal to less tech-savvy members of the audience.
• Make sure your blog allows easy sharing of your posts to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. You want people to be able to click a button and re-post an episode easily. If your blog doesn’t currently support this, look for a plugin that adds it — they’re everywhere.
• If you have the technical ability, make a 30-second audio promo for your show, and ask others to play it. Include a link to the MP3 of you promo on your site, and encourage visitors to share it.
• Always make sure that comments are enabled on every post on your blog. You want people to be able to discuss the episodes where they find them. If people comment, reply promptly — you want your audience to feel like you care about them.

That’s actually a really good question to be asking if you aren’t used to using all of these sites every day. Not “Where so I start?” or “How do I get into it?” but — especially if you are only doing it to further your business — “What, specifically, are these tools for, and how do I use them to my benefit?”

So, for those of us you who want a roadmap before you run out into traffic, I’ll try to explain a few of the big sites people are excited about right now. The goal isn’t to get you to use all of these, but to help you understand the tools in a basic way that allows you to decide whether or not to try them.

Twitter

Twitter asks “What are you doing?” right at the top of their site. It was originally designed as a way to let your friends know what you were up to in short, easy-to-share portions (”I’m about to get a drink at Starbucks on Washington St. if anyone wants to join me.”). It quickly morphed into a public forum where anyone can talk to anyone — and everyone — else about what interests them.

Now, you can easily send messages to a few different groups through Twitter:

• People who are interested in what you, personally, have to say (your followers).
• People who are interested in a specific topic (through hashtags or Twitter Search).
• Any individual you want to send a specific message to, or you want to ask a question of (using the “@” sign and their Twitter name, e.g. @AdamWeiss).

Twitter is good for connecting with like-minded people, or for keeping up on the absolute latest news in a particular area. In a mundane example, you could track all mentions of “MBTA” to get a feel for what is happening on Boston’s public transit system. While that is mainly just a curiosity for most, if you are a PR person for the agency, it could be quite useful information. If you have a brand — or just a concept that is very important  to your business — Twitter can provide a window into the latest news, attitudes, and happenings in any field.

Oh, and putting your recent Twitter updates on your website is a great way to always have fresh information for visitors.

Facebook

Facebook is the current 800-pound gorilla in the social networking world. It is a place to connect with people you know, both personally and professionally. You set up a profile, with your picture, work and education vitals, interests, and basic contact information. You then find friends, colleagues, and old classmates and ask to be their “friend.” This lets you both keep current on what the other is doing and exchange messages.

Whenever you publicly do something new on Facebook (add a friend, comment on a photo), everyone you know is able to see that and decide whether to check out the profile, website, or photo that you just visited. This can be a bit disconcerting at first, with everyone seemingly “stalking” your online life. However, it is really a way for you to spread your influence quickly and efficiently. If you post a news article you found about your industry on Facebook, everyone you know will have the opportunity to see it if they visit your page. If one of your friends likes it enough to post it themselves, all of their friends will see it was well.

So, when you say “I just met with my client ________, and we talked about their new great service,” you are broadcasting your expertise and your client’s work to a large number of people. Better yet, if one of your friends makes a comment as simple as “Congratulations!” on something you’ve posted, all of their friends will see that note, along with the information you posted to get the praise. If two friends respond to you, you will have reached twice as many people without doing much work at all.

There are many more things you can do with Facebook (create pages for your business, become a fan of your favorite TV show, post Twitter-like “status updates,” etc.), but the above is where you should start. You’ll be surprised at the number of friends you’ll have just after you sign up — my mom recently created an account completely by accident, and she had 50 friends by the end of the week!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn, when taken rather simplistically, can be considered “Facebook for Business.” It is a place where you can connect with people you have professional relationships with, get references and job referrals, and ask the experts in your contact list questions about their industries. It is also a good “mini-resume” and an automatically-updated Rolodex for people you do business with.

In my opinion, the one place where LinkedIn really shines is in its ability to help you find connections with the people you want to be talking to. If there is a particular expert or prospect who you want to get in touch with, a LinkedIn search will tell you who you know that knows them — and give you the option to ask for an introduction.

At this point, many people are using Facebook for a good number of the things LinkedIn is designed for, so — unless you know that a lot of people you want to interact with are already on LinkedIn and not on Facebook — I would recommend choosing Facebook over LinkedIn if you only want to sign up for just one of the two.

Delicious

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site. That may be a bit of an odd concept, but it is a useful one. Delicious is like the bookmarks feature of your web browser, posted online. There are a lot of cool things that can be done with delicious, but the “beginner” version is pretty simple: you can bookmark sites that you like, organize them, and share them with other people in your field.

Adding a link to your delicious bookmarks on your website (or embedding the actual list there) can instantly turn you into an industry resource. If your opinions are respected by others in your field, they will want to see what you are reading online. Delicious is a simple way to do that without much effort at all.

Digg

Digg is based on a very simple but powerful concept: people want to look at the stuff other people like. If there is something you like online, you can submit a link to Digg, and millions of people will have the chance to vote on whether to put it on the front page of the site. If a link makes it onto the front page, it could get hundreds of thousands of clicks.

Digg ignores one of the best things about the web — the ability to find what is useful to you, regardless of whether it is popular — but getting noticed there can get you more attention than you can handle (servers routinely crash if a site gets “Dugg”). If you have a strong interest in one of the categories of sites Digg covers, you can find great information every day. Also, if you produce great information, submitting it to Digg gives you a shot at being seen by millions.

YouTube

Everyone has heard of YouTube, and almost everyone has used it at this point. Millions of videos are watched every day on the Google-owned site, so if you are producing videos for any reason, they should probably be there. YouTube is also a great resource for your blog or website — it is extremely simple to put a YouTube video that is relevant to your work on your site using the “embed” info next to YouTube’s player. This gives you access to great content for free, and allows your video to easily spread throught the web — something I just experienced when my GV Mobile demo got 60,000 views in just a few days.

YouTube is just the search and delivery system for the videos; you have to have one to put it up. You can go the “quick and sloppy” route and use your webcam, or you can work with a producer or videographer to put up some really high-quality footage using YouTube’s HD playback feature.

Video can add a lot to a website, but it can also detract. The merits of the medium is beyond the scope of this post, but if you are going to be making video, put it on YouTube.

If this overview was useful to you, use it to try out some of the technologies I talked about: Tweet a link to it on Twitter, post it on your Facebook profile, save it on delicious, submit it to Digg, or even make a video about it for YouTube. The great thing about all of these tools is that they are easy to try, and it won’t really hurt anything if you decide not to get involved and delete your account. So, if one — or all — of these sites sounds good, give them a try!

For those of you who missed it, the most recent set of new features for the iPhone included the ability to download podcasts directly to your device’s iPod app without connecting to the computer. Essentially, they have provided a pre-formatted list of all of your available episodes — accompanied by “download” buttons that add those files right to the official player app on the iPhone and iPod touch. That’s way more functionality than you can provide in a mobile version, and it’s all set up for you already.

As an iPhone user, this is great: it allows me to add a new podcast directly to my phone as soon as I hear about it — not to just start streaming it, but to actually store it for later listening, which duplicates the while “timeshifting” part of podcasting that you used to need the computer for. It also lets me add the latest episodes of a show to my phone without making a trip to my desk. When I’m traveling, this is essential, as my iPhone is synced with the iTunes library on my desktop computer, not my laptop.

As a podcast producer, it gets my content exactly where I want it: on the device that a potential listener is carrying with them right now, exactly when they are in the mood to listen to it. It removes the “I’ll listen later” mental excuse that people so often forget about, and it also provides the “media instant gratification” that iPhone users are now used to (for better or for worse).

I’ve set up Boston Behind the Scenes to do this, at least partially. I don’t have a browser-detection redirect set up, but I do have an “iPhone” link at the top of the page. I also have a mobile-friendly URL set up: http://bostonbts.com/iphone (on a computer, this link will just take you to the iTunes store — try it on your iPod or iPhone). Both lead directly to the iTunes app when clicked.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, do you like this setup? Would you prefer to have producers do this, make a mobile-specific site, or just leave their sites alone?

from Chris’s site:

This simple little web page parses your podcast’s XML feed and slaps it into a nice page designed to render well in Safari, which is the browser on which the iPhone operates. It also grabs your feed’s image and displays it as the icons.

I installed it in only a couple of minutes, giving me this iPhone-compatible version of Boston Behind the Scenes.

You can get the file here: [http://www.financialaidpodcast.com/iphone.zip], make a few simple modifications, then upload it to your webserver.

Read on for more specific instructions.

1. Download the Financial Aid Podcast iPhone Kit.
2. Unzip the folder (which should be called iphone) to your hard drive.
3. You”ll find a file called config.php in the iphone folder. Open this with a text editor like Notepad, BB Edit, etc. and replace Chris’s podcast info with your own. Here’s the contents of the file with what you need to change highlighted in red:
   
   <?php//iPhone configuration page
   // Created by Christopher S. Penn
   // Licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Non Commercial Use Only Sharealike 3.0 US License
   // Do not use any form of punctuation except periods, commas, or dashes

   // Enter the name of your podcast.
   $podcastname=”Financial Aid Podcast“;

   // Enter your blog/podcast homepage URL – NOT the RSS feed
   $podcastweb=”http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com“;

   // Enter your podcast RSS feed URL
   $rssfeed=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/studentfinancialaidnews“;

   // Enter your name or your company’s name – keep it short
   $author=”Christopher S. Penn“;

   // If your show has a call in number – and it should – put it here
   // This is a US format number – if you need a free call in line,
   // Try www.K7.net
   $callin=”206-350-1208“; // US format xxx-xxx-xxxx

   ?>

4. Upload the iphone folder and its now-modified contents to your web hosting provider. It doesn’t have to be on the same domain as you podcast, but I would think the best place to put it is http://www.yourpodcast.com/iphone/
5. Set the folder’s permissions to writeable (you may not need this step with some hosts).
6. Create a link to your iPhone-ready site from your podcast’s home page.
7. Be one of the first podcasters to have an iPhone ready show!

Chris has released the Financial Aid Podcast iPhone Kit under a Creative Commons License allowing you to adapt it and improve upon it — just make sure you give Chris credit if you do make it your own! I’d also like to know about any improvements so I can post them here.

Enjoy!

Before I get into what to do about that, here’s something to make you feel better:

As of April 30th, 2007, Feedburner is tracking the feeds of 106,270 podcasts. A few months ago, the company said that they were tracking about 6,200,000 people subscribed to those podcasts. If you put those two numbers together, you’ll see that the average podcast has about 60 subscribers. Since this is the average, and there are podcasts with tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers pulling that number way up, your little podcast may be doing better than you thought!

Of course, most people are aiming for more than 60 subscribers with their podcast, so I’ve compiled a list of ways to accomplish that:

1. Make Your Show Better

   Before you attempt to increase your listenership, your show has to be good. A rule you should always follow is “Every episode must be one you would want to listen to.” You can drive people to your site, but if the show they find isn’t compelling, they will listen once and never return. These tips will only work if your work is good enough to hold an audience.

2. Build a Blog for Your Show

   You do have a website for your podcast, right? If not, get one NOW. If you do have a site and it isn’t running on a blogging system like Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad, I would seriously recommend switching to a blogging platform for the site. This is because the search engines know what to do with blogs, and therefore index the content pretty reliably. Some also index anything that looks like a blog more often than other sites, giving you a leg up if you publish often. In addition, some of the later tips work better if you are using a blogging system for your site.

3. Run an Easy-to-Use Site

   Don’t let the first thing your visitors see be clutter. The top of the site should have a prominent title that gives people a good idea of what they are going to find there. At least one episode of your podcast (or post from your blog) should be immediately obvious when arriving at the page. You should also have large “subscribe” buttons for iTunes and your RSS feed — and they should be right near the top of the page so people don’t have to search for them. If your target audience is not that tech savvy (e.g. yours may be the first podcast they encounter), set up an email subscription system and feature it prominently on the site.

4. List Your Podcast in Podcasting and Blogging Directories

   Everyone should be listed with iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, Digg Podcasts, Technorati, and Podzinger. There are many other directories (you can find a good list here), but these are the ones I consider “Must Haves.” Why? Well, iTunes and Yahoo are the two most popular directories, Digg is a newcomer with the potential to bring in a huge number of listeners, and Technorati and Podzinger are two of the best ways for people to find your individual episodes through searching.

5. Tag Everything

   Another advantage of using a blogging platform is tagging. Tags are metadata — words and phrases that relate to the podcast or blog post they are associated with. Tags are especially important for podcasting, as the text associated with an episode may not include search terms that are relevant to the audio. I just had an example of this yesterday with the latest episode of Boston Behind the Scenes: the subject of the show has a strong connection to both the Boston Public Library and the MFA, but I didn’t specifically mention that in the blog post for the episode. By tagging the post “Boston Public Library,” I allow people to find the post with a search without cluttering up the page with extra text.

6. Contribute to Other Sites

   Let’s say you do a podcast about cars. There are tons of blogs, news sites, and discussion boards about cars. In fact, if you are enough of a car person to do a podcast about cars, you probably frequent many of those sites already. So, next time you go to one of your favorite car blogs, post a comment.

   Don’t just spam for you podcast, but write something useful. The magic is in the “URL” box on the comment form. Put your podcast site in that box, and you suddenly have a link from a major car site to your show. This will bring you a few more hits and will look good to Google/Technorati/etc. That second part is very important — it dictates where you show up in search results.

   Of course, you shouldn’t just stop at comments. Submit an article (with your link) to a prominent site. It can be about anything at all, but will be more successful if it is at least somewhat related to your podcast. If they accept it, you will get a bunch of traffic from that page, and you will look even better to Google. I did this with my Boston Behind the Scenes episode on the Boston Marathon: this story on Slashdot about an astronaut running the marathon brought in hundreds of visitors — some of whom are now subscribers.

7. Include Pictures in Your Posts

   This may sound more like a way to keep people at your site than to bring them there, but it can do double duty. The reason is that you need a source for your pictures. Of course, the world’s source for pictures over the last few years has been Flickr, and that’s where you should go as well. Always ask permission before using a picture (or at least notify the photographer via email if you found it in a Creative Commons search), and post a comment on the photo. Include a link back to your site in the comment, and you’ve made another connection!

   If you take your own pictures, post them on Flickr and link their descriptions back to your site. If the pictures you take (or select from other photographers) are interesting enough to generate a lot of views, you’ll have another source of hits to go with your boosted search engine ranking.

8. Make Connections When Referencing Other Sites

   If you mention anything from another site, be sure to include a link in your show notes. If the site you are citing supports trackbacks, use that to get another link to your site in the wild. If there is no way to comment or add a trackback, send an email to the site’s owner letting them know how you used their content. They will appreciate the notice, and may mention your site as a result.

9. Use Social Media Sites

   I wrote “social media” because I wanted to emphasize that I’m not just talking about MySpace here. If your audience is on MySpace, you should set up an account and post your episodes using their blogging tool. If your audience is more of a Gather crowd, post your episodes there (with links back to your site!). Set up a del.icio.us account and post your episodes there (with generous tagging). Post all of your episodes on PopCurrent and Digg (not just in the podcast category), then put buttons on your site to encourage your visitors to vote for your entries. Of course, if there are other such sites that your listeners frequent (craigslist? YouTube?), you should be there — with links.

The overall messages of this list should be clear: Be visible, be searchable, and get linked everywhere you can. And most of all, create something that is worth finding and linking to!

(Thanks to Performancing for the nugget of a couple of the ideas, and to femme fatal for asking the question that lead to this list.)