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Everyone knows that November is NaNoWriMo, but did you know it is also National Podcast Post Month?
I was at a podcasting Meetup Monday evening when one of the hosts happened to mention that next month is the 12th annual NaPodPoMo. This month-long event is kinda like NaNoWriMo, except instead of writing a novel in thirty days, you publish a podcast episode every day for 30 days.
The goal, as I understand it, is to give new podcasters a reason to release a lot of episodes in a short period so they can make all the usual beginner mistakes and thus get better at podcasting. Everyone who sticks with the program will, by the end of the month, have a pretty good idea what the type of podcast they want to launch and how to produce it.
I for one only just heard about NaPodPoMo on Monday, and I wanted to make sure that you didn't miss this opportunity. I certainly won't pass it up.
As I mentioned in a recent blog post, for the past month or so 've been working on launching a podcast about web design called The Website in a Box Show. I am still months away from being ready to launch it, and I see NaPodPoMo as a great opportunity to speed up the schedule by making a lot of mistakes very quickly. (I am being realistic.)
I expect to learn a lot, but the other reason I am diving in is that the NaPodPoMo organizers are aggregating all participating podcasts into a single feed. That makes this a good opportunity not just to learn how to podcast but also to build an audience before I formally launch the podcast.
If you want to join the fun, I can offer moral support and a few tips about your website, but i don't really know much about podcasting yet. (That's not terribly helpful, I know, but I didn't want you to miss this opportunity!)
There are only nine days left until November, so there's really not enough time left to start a podcast from scratch. But if you already have an idea what you want to talk about on your podcast, I can point you in the right direction.
If you want to launch a podcast, you could either upload your episodes to a distributor or you cab publish them on a website.
If you want to go website-free, you should set up an account with BlogTalkRadio. This company will help you record episodes and distribute them, and it has a free tier where you can record a 15-minute podcast everyday.
I will be publishing my podcast episodes on my new site, but then again I am professionally inclined to start with a website if only because I can control it in ways that I can't control a BlogTalkRadio account.
If you also want a new site for your podcast, you could register a new site at Wordpress.com (it's free). Give it a name, and description, then fill out your profile on the site. Once you have recorded and edited your podcast episodes, you can embed them in a blog post and take advantage of the WP audio player feature. It's not a very sophisticated audio player, and WP.com has only limited storage, but this is enough for you to get started (and it will cost you nothing but your time).
If you want to add a podcast to your existing Wordpress site, I would suggest installing the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin. SSP is the plugin I am going to be using with my podcast, and it's what I will be recommending to my clients when asked. This free plugin adds the podcast as a separate section of your website (the podcast episodes won't get mixed in with your blog posts), and it includes all the necessary features such as subscribe links for Stitcher and other podcast services, automatic embedding of podcast episodes, etc.
Does that help?
If you have any questions, let me know!
P.S. My next couple newsletters will focus on income tax doe the self-employed and on how to set up your author profile on Amazon.com. Stay tuned!
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