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Podcasting Blog
8 step guide to podcast marketing
6/28/2008
Podcasting leader Christopher Penn has published a short PDF guide, 8 step guide to podcast marketing, that seeks to help you jump start how you’re marketing your own podcast. This is a very short PDF and covers topics that include whether your podcast is worthy of buzz, is easily found and how you’re measuring your success. The … Continue reading »
Publishing a Podcast with ExpressionEngine
6/24/2008
If you’re a user of the wonderful ExpressionEngine CMS (this site has been running on it for more than 2 years) and want to easily and efficiently publish a podcast with it, I just released a new screencast you might be interested in.
The latest episode of the ExpressionEngine Screencasts covers … Continue reading »
Voice Over Training
5/10/2008
One of the obvious aspects of podcasting is using your voice. And using it properly. If you’re looking for some more information about how to improve your voice technique in your podcast, I’d suggest checking out the Voice Over Experts Podcast from Voices.com.
Hardware Recommendations
- Kustom KM4 Mic with Cable
- Behringer XM8500 Microphone
- Shure SM58 Mic
- MXL MXL V63MBP Computer Desktop Recording Kit
Masthead
Contact
Ryan Irelan, Editor - listen@podcastfreeamerica.com
Introduction to Podcast Workflows
A beginner's guide to podcast workflows. What a workflow is, how to improve it and ideas for automation.
You’ve probably read many articles online that go on and on about setting up your podcast workflow. I know I’ve written about it before. It sounds complicated and full of flowcharts, diagrams and 3-hour meetings with upper management, but it’s actually very simple.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is a podcast workflow?
Simply put, a podcast workflow is the process you go through to produce an episode of your podcast. This can be everything from conceiving the idea to finalizing the mp3 file and uploading it to your web host or it can be a small part of that entire process. It really depends on how you work and which part of the podcast for which you’re responsible.
My workflow as an example.
Let’s unpack this a little more and use my podcast as an example. I consider my podcast workflow to be the production of my podcast: recording, editing, file preparation and publishing. That doesn’t mean I don’t do planning, brainstorming and writing. I do, but they’re not part of my production workflow.
- Record voice in SoundStudio
- Edit any mistakes or long pauses.
- Compress and gate for noise reduction and enhancement.
- Save as wav file.
- Run automation script that compresses the file to mp3, attaches intro and outro to main content mp3 file, adds ID3 tags, updates RSS feed and uploads to my server.
That is my podcast workflow. It’s nothing fancy, but it did take some trial and error to get the finer details hammered out and working flawlessly. A large part of that is the automated section (the last bullet point), which saves me a lot of time and manual work. In this case that’s my automated workflow, which a mini workflow inside of my larger podcast workflow. Got all that?
Automating your podcast workflow.
The technical aspects of automating your workflow are beyond the scope of this introductory article on podcasting workflows, but I do want to talk about how you can determine which parts of your podcast workflow you can automate. Here’s a simple that will help you comb through your workflow and make it more efficient:
- Identify areas where you repeat the same task every podcast episode
- What tasks do you perform that don’t require anything more than your hand to move the mouse or type the keyboard? Which tasks don’t require you to compute anything or make decisions?
- Are there any tasks that you just don’t like doing? Maybe they can be automated to make your podcast production experience better and more fun.
For my podcast workflow automation, I simply chose the tasks that I hated to do and that I knew could be automated. Those were: compressing the files to mp3, editing in the intro and outro audio, tagging the files and upload them to the server.
How much you can automate your podcast workflow will really depend on what kind of podcast you do, to what extent you have you to be involved manually and the tools you’re using. I’m fortunate that the tools I use can be automated easily through scripting.
The Take-Away
As you produce your podcasts, think about the steps you take, write them down and try to improve, streamline and, if possible, automate your workflow. Sometimes it just takes recognizing repeated tasks to make your podcast workflow go from difficult and time-consuming to more fun in less time.
For some more examples of podcaster workflows, check out the last section (titled “Your Workflow") of this wiki page or Podcast Academy’s series called Podcasting: Workflow Management (Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5)
I’ll be leading a session at the Podcast & New Media Expo at the end of September 2007. If you’re looking to learn more about podcasting, the expo is a great investment.
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