Last Saturday I gave a presentation at the Nevada Interactive Media Summit at the Reynolds School of Jounralism at UNR in Reno. It was a beautiful bluebird day and while I really wanted to attend more of the conference, the powder was calling. Thankfully they switched my time from 11:30 to 4:15 so I was able to get out with my sisters and make some tracks up at incline peak before heading in to give a talk on podcasting. It went really well! There were a lot of people interested in online storytelling. Thanks to Mike, Bryan, Drew, Guy, Charlotte, John and Elisa for sitting in. Great to have friendly faces in the crowd!
What is a podcast?
Almost everyone is familiar with online video, but a podcast, whether audio or video, is more than that. Podcasting is even more on-demand, and mobile than streaming video because you don’t need an internet connection to watch it, and you can take it with you and consume the content in smaller segments returning to view more later. The key thing here is that you can consume podcast content while driving through the middle of Nevada or on an airplane where you have no connectivity.
Great Podcasts
Since I got the digital converter box for my TV, which brings web quality streaming video and more infomercials into the home, I’ve appreciated and watched video podcast more and more. And with all the bike commuting and road tripping i do, audio podcasts have been a favorite of mine for quite a while. Here are some of my favorites:
Video
MidWest Teen Sex Show: A hilariously funny show intended as an educational resource to communicate sex ed topics to teens. It’s smart, clever, creative, and incredibly entertaining.
Slate V: A short news and entertainment show with varied content from Slate Magazine. It’s a quick little bite of info and perfect for the podcast format.
Freeskier: A great podcast, if infrequently published. They show reviews, athlete interviews and full on ski movies made by independent filmmakers. There is some AWESOME ski content there. Check out the “44 days” episode from October, 2008.
Alpine Meadows: This is a podcast that we at Twelve Horses have produced for Apline Meadows Ski Resort. It is meant as a way to communicate the marketing messages of the resort, while providing high quality, exciting ski footage to communicate the SkiAlpine experience and entertain viewers.
Audio
The Moth: True stories told live without notes before an audience. This is the perfect content for an audio podcast. The stories are great and the format is cool.
NPR: Most emailed and shuffle: My mom sends me links to the stories she hears on NPR that she thinks I’ll like. She’s usually right, but you can’t download them until they get on the Most Emailed Podcast. So it works for me! Shuffle is a random selection of stories every day.
Dirtbag Diaries: Stories and interviews about climbing, skiing and mountaineering from Fitz Cahall. A great podcast if you’re into adventure, and a great model for a business (Patagonia) sponsoring content that resonates with their brand and customers (dirtbags).
Ritmo Latino: Basically this podcast is anything that it’s producer, Neil Hohman, thinks sounds latin. It’s great and features everything from “boogaloo and beyond,” as he says, which means accordion Mexican ballads to progressive latino hip hop.
Dishy Mix: A great and eclectic podcast from Susan Bratton on entrepreneurship in media and the internet, featuring interviews from high power business execs.
How do i start Podcasting?
The web isn’t a 5 star restaurant. You don’t have to find a sport jacket to get in, and you don’t have to drop mad coin on a camera, microphone, and spend years learning the trade to get into it. The big thing is ideas, content and passion. So jump in and start creating and learn and improve as you go. If you’re a business looking to use podcasting as a way to enhance and extend your brand, you’ll want to be a little more deliberate.
Audio
You can record an audio podcast over the built-in microphone on your computer if that’s all you have. There are plenty of mics that plug into the mic port that do fine too. Or you can step it up an get a usb microphone and that should get you some primo sounding audio for interviews and monologues. The Snowball USB Microphone gets a lot of good reviews and is pretty damn cool looking, but there are others.
Once you have an audio file, you’ll need to cut it up, unless you’ve rehearsed and scripted really well. Audacity is the most recommended program out there and is free and fairly easy to use to cut in music, re-order clips and cut out spurious comments and unintended eff-bombs.
Video
There’s no way around the fact that creating a video podcast is WAY more involved than audio. The files are bigger and they’re more complex to record, edit and distribute. But video can be a far more powerful medium for storytelling and communication on the web, so if you have any interest at all I encourage you to jump in.
Chances are you have a point-and-shoot digital camera that has video capture capability. This is the easiest way to start since the video files are small and usually come in a format that is easy to upload and edit.
For the next level you can get a camcorder. I recommend something with HD capability or that captures at 720P or 1080i resolution. You may have seen those numbers on the box for your new HD television, so the videos from an HD camcorder will fill the screen and look great!
The videos we shoot @ Twelve Horses are shot with a Panasonic HVX200 ($3000) @ 720p. Most of my personal videos are shot with a Canon VIXIA HV30 ($599). We also shoot with a VIO Sport POV.1 helmet cam (which is AWESOME!).
In the end video quality is video quality and content is content. People watch videos for the content and good ideas will trump quality every time, so as you get started in video podcasting, focus on the ideas.
Tips to improve your video
Since most of us have grown up around television and movies, we can all recognize good video production from bad. But it’s not always clear what factors make for good shooting. Here are some tips.
Use a tripod. Remember the Blair Witch Project? Remember wanting to puke?
Scripts and shot lists: You don’t have to go so far as to line everything out and be rigid, but if you have a plan you’ll get better content and have more fun doing it.
Multiple takes: If you think it didn’t work, do it again. You won’t regret it.
Hold a static shot for 8 sec: It’ll be easier to edit in those establishing shots and landscapes if you have a good chunk of footage to work with.
Don’t run scenes together: If you’re doing multiple scenes, be sure to pause before and after. When you’re telling your subject that you’re recording, have them pause for a second or two before beginning. This will be easier to edit.
Don’t pan or zoom too much: It makes people sick.
Subscription management
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of almost every video player available, but an iTunes compatible feed is what you’re looking for to synchronize downloading of media do devices to make it available whether you’re online or not.
For an audio podcast you can just use a wordpress plugin like Podpress to create an iTunes compatible feed and upload the files to your server. If you run into storage or bandwidth issues, there are plenty of good options for syndicating your podcast elsewhere.
Video files are too big to host yourself for the most part. I recommend using blip.tv to host your iTunes video feed. just upload a video and follow the instructions in the dashboard.
Promoting your podcast
I get asked a lot which video hosting service is my favorite and which one I think is best for generating lots of views. The answer is Viddler, because of the cool commenting features, quality of the video player, “vidgets,” and the fact that I think Rob Sandie and the others @ Viddler are cool people who understand why people like me love creating communities around video content. But Vimeo is slicker than snot too, and since YouTube has HD, large files and longer video now I like it too! So the answer is all of them!
I use Tube Mogul to blast my videos out to as many sites as i can to get the most eyeballs on my content, and we do the same for our clients. (The dudes behind Tube Mogul are really cool too!) Tube Mogul also lets you upload to blip.tv which gives you an iTunes feed that you can submit to the iTunes directory.
Copywriting and Meta Data
The fact is that whatever channel you promote the most will get the most traffic. Your video is a needle and YouTube is a gigantic haystack. Viddler, Vimeo, Blip.tv et. al. are slightly smaller haystacks. So just posting something to the biggest video site isn’t going to get you anything special.
Before you blast the video out make sure you’ve written a good title, description, and tags for it. Once it’s posted, be sure to craft a good blog post about it that will draw people in from your feed or search results and get them to watch your video. Then follow it up with a really witty and enticing Tweet. Then Digg, stumble, post to facebook, rate favorite, send to friends, etc. Don’t be annoying, but don’t just set it and forget it. This isn’t a counter top rotisserie! You’ve got to stoke the FIRE!
Shameless Self Promotion
So I may say that podcasting is easy, but that’s because I enjoy it. I love the creative and the technical aspect of telling a story with words, pictures and people. But I don’t really care for running ski resorts, curating museum galleries or streamlining the manufacturing process, all things that our clients are really good at. If I can help you get a video podcast going, please drop me a line!
The web isn’t a 5 star restaurant. You don’t have to find a sport jacket to get in, and you don’t have to drop mad coin on a camera, microphone, and spend years learning the trade to get into it. The big thing is ideas, content and passion. So jump in and start creating and learn and improve as you go. If you’re a business looking to use podcasting as a way to enhance and extend your brand, you’ll want to be a little more deliberate.