The 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is exactly what it says it is, a daily podcast about…astronomy.
365 Days of Astronomy is a compelling podcast for that is sure to please amateur and professional astronomers alike. The daily podcasts are consistently detailed, with researchers either hosting episodes or being interviewed. The content varies in technicality and complexity but almost all 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts are understandable to listeners with an interest in the stars and beyond.
Here’s an official description:
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is a project that will publish one podcast per day, for all 365 days of 2009. The podcast episodes are written, recorded and produced by people around the world.
Each episode runs about 5 to 10 minutes long and the posts that contain the podcasts feature descriptions, host bios, and even transcripts! The podcasts themselves are available in the posts via .mp3 download or streaming audio.
The site also features a pretty cool calendar of astronomical events.
365 Days of Astronomy is a great daily podcast and whether you’re an astronomer or someone with a slight interest in astronomy, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Check it out! 365 Days of Astronomy
Podcast Loot has an article called ‘5 Tips to Have a Successful Podcast.’ You should really check out the tips offered. Here is my take on the great tips offered.
- Plan your podcast - Having your materials ready keeps you focused and on track. I briefly talked about this before, but it certainly warrants further discussion.
- Be Original – Is your podcast the same as every other one in your niche? What makes people choose yours over the rest?
- Be Time Efficient – This links to planning out the program. Keep focused and don’t add trivial fluff. It is very easy to add in trivial fluff.
- Timeless – People will be going back and checking your old podcasts. If possible, it’s great to have them actually be still relevant. Be careful with things such as stock tips, daily news, and new releases. When somebody listens to your podcast in 5 years, will it matter?
- Articulation – Speak loud enough for the microphone to pick up your voice, and clear enough for the listeners to pick out your words. Record in a place where you won’t feel self conscience.
I hope these tips help you improve your podcasts! Like most things experience will provide some great tips and insight, so get out there and start podcasting!
In order to maximize your podcast’s success, it’s essential to make it available on a variety of channels other than your blog. Listing your podcast on iTunes is a great way to share your podcast with the world.
You may not need to have your podcast listed on iTunes, especially if your site already has a large amount of loyal readers that will become listeners. It definitely does help though and like I said, it is a great way to get your podcast out to the world and legitimize it.
Not having a podcast listed on iTunes is like selling a litter of puppies without taking out a classified ad in the local paper. Sure, if you know the right people it can be done, but chances are, you’ll have a much harder time finding loving homes for those puppies. Sorry, that’s a goofy analogy but replace “puppies” with “podcast”, “classified ad” with “iTunes” (which is 100% free by the way), and “loving homes” with “loving listeners”, and you get the point. 
Here’s all you have to do:
Visit the iTunes Store and click on “Podcast” in the upper left sidebar navigation menu. Scroll to the bottom of iTunes’ Podcast page and in the bottom left, click “Submit a Podcast”.
Type or copy/paste your podcast’s feed into the “Podcast Feed” field.
iTunes will review your submission (to make sure you’re legit) and then it’s a success!
Record the intro to your podcast. Listen to it and decide you don’t like it. Delete it. Record it again. This time you don’t even have to listen to it before you delete it, because you already know that you messed up. Try again. Things go much better, then you listen to it. You decide that you weren’t dynamic enough. Rinse and repeat enough, and now you suddenly have gone through enough iterations that you are ready to scrap the whole project. The laughter is clearly forced and the jokes don’t have any character anymore.
Podcasting should be fun, exactly the opposite of the tedious chore it has become. How do you breath life back into the recordings?
All of my answers essentially lead down the same path… do it in less takes.
- 1) Make some notes – A little prep work beforehand goes a LONG way and can help keep you from rambling.
- 2) Take a break – If you don’t get things right in two takes, force yourself to go do something else for a while. Get away from your computer! Come back with a vengeance.
- 3) Chop Stop – When you mess up, finish your thought before you get frustrated about it. Chances are it’s not that bad. If you absolutely can’t go on with it as it is, only go to right before you messed up and take off running from there.
- 4) Radio Style – Pretend like you are going live on broadcast radio. You’ve only got one take, so make it count. Then once you have it, release it! Don’t look back!
Speaking of radio style, if you can try getting onto the radio airwaves. Many college stations just beg for people to fill up the time slots. Sometimes they aren’t the greatest shift times, but volunteering for these live shows is a great way to boost your confidence.
Get your podcast done. Get it done before it turns into work. If it is not perfect, then you will have another chance next week when you release your next episode.
Hopefully your recordings will be many and your takes few. Now get out there and start Podcasting!
Podcasting has been around for a couple of years now, and it is still growing. If you don’t have a podcast of your own yet, don’t worry: there is still room for growth. Right now the people who already have a podcast have a leg up, but with some determination and a little direction you can not only catch up, but shoot past the incumbents.
You can create a podcast about pretty much anything and get it listed through iTunes for free. Your users have a few other options for downloading as well. They could get the episodes automatically from a number of other programs or manually from your web site.
Choosing a niche topic could be a hurdle. If you are doing it for your business or website, you most likely already have a topic that could be expanded upon. If you want to do one for fun, make sure you choose something that will last. I can’t tell you how many times I have subscribed to a new podcast only to be waiting months for another episode before sadly giving up on what could have been a great series.
If you are not sure why you would want to have a podcast, let me tell you why you NEED a podcast.
Become a recognized expert in the topic
Anyone can start a website or a blog about a topic, but that doesn’t make them an expert. Anybody with enough money or credit can open up a business, regardless of if they actually care about what they are selling or doing. Adding a podcast screams passion for your business, your hobby, and your niche.
If you take the time to make a podcast, you develop a reputation and a voice for your industry. If you know what you are talking about and do a decent production job, then you could easily be THE voice of your industry. When somebody needs to know about buying purple elephant guns, who are they going to turn to: the person with a minuscule website that instructs users to stop into the store but hasn’t been updated since 2003, or the person who has a one hundred page site with 89 separate audio reviews about different purple elephant guns?
I’m going to give my business to the person who keeps their information current, demonstrating a passion for their industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re painting houses, cooking, or manufacturing rubber chickens – if you are passionate, it will show. Even if you don’t consider yourself an expert yet, pick something you love and go for it. You will gain more experience and knowledge the more you podcast, and eventually you will be guru of your topic.
Minimal costs to produce and deliver
Do you know how much it costs to make a podcast? The answer can vary, but you could have one up today basically for free. You can make a podcast with the cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer. It will sound like a cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer, but you can do it.
You can grab a microphone for around twenty five bucks that will sound okay, or you can go all out! The sky is the limit. However, studio grade equipment might be a waste for a podcast recorded in a high traffic area with inherent background noise. The most expensive equipment won’t always give you a better sound.
Bandwidth is cheap. Storage on the internet is cheap. Domain names are cheap. Recording software is cheap. A decent headset and microphone is cheap.
If you already have a website, it’s simply a matter of getting a microphone and installing some free software.
Humanize your image
Listening to a passionate voice filled with inflection and emotion is so much more persuasive than text alone. Knowing there is a real person involved creates a connection for your audience. Beyond simply sharing an interest in the topic, listeners will feel like they know you, even if you don’t ever get a chance to meet them. I have bought products created or written by people who I have this connection with. I trust the person, not their companies.
Steve Jobs is a human, and Steve Jobs is also Apple. Bill Gates is a human, but Bill Gates is certainly not Microsoft. He may have started Microsoft and perhaps was at one time the company’s face but who is the human image of Microsoft now? It’s John Hodgman, the “and I’m a PC” guy from Apple’s commercials. In Job’s somewhat healthier days, he would give the keynote addresses and introduce new products and services. Steve was the spokesperson for Apple, and made Apple more than another Silicon Valley technology company. Bill Gates would have to spend a lot more to get the same results.
Talk shows are nothing without the unique personalities providing a face for them. The jokes don’t tell themselves, and text transcripts of jokes are never as good as a solid delivery.
Expand your brand
The more ways people can consume your information, the more ways you can bring in interest. I have checked out many sites due to podcasts. I found them in iTunes and now swing by the sites from time to time.
Now I’ve got them on my radar. I will know about anything new that they do.
I wouldn’t have known that they even existed if they never produced that podcast.
From all of my projects, I have found that having other people watching and interested makes doing the work seem more like fun. It’s marketing but it is not quite the same as traditional marketing where you get out there and start beating on doors.
Very Targeted Consumers
While I haven’t checked out the scene for purple elephant guns lately, there are obscure and highly targeted niches that have more listeners than current podcasters are covering. If you start downloading podcasts, it is because you are interested in the topic. Beyond that you are interested enough to seek out, subscribe, download, and invest time listening to a very specific topic.
The only reason to go through the effort (it is a minimal effort, but it does take actions on the end users part) is because you care about a given topic.
If you produce a great podcast on a popular topic, you can gain quite a following. Even a mediocre podcast in a topic with less competition can gain quite a following. Not just a following, but people who actually care.
Start Today!
It is much cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to find a new one. This is one of the first things you learn in any business or marketing class. A podcast is a great feature to help you get a larger internet footprint.
Podcasting isn’t going away. People are out there downloading them every day. Every day new ones are being recorded. If you want to start, now is the best time to do so. Grab your mike, and get going! Those purple elephant guns aren’t going to talk about themselves.
“Podcast” is a term that’s being tossed around a lot and since medium continues to grow, it is important to know what exactly podcasts are and why they’re so important.
So, what is a podcast?
A podcast is a pre-recorded audio broadcast delivered via RSS feed and originally intended to be listened to on an iPod (hence the portmanteau word “podcast”, formed from “iPod” and “broadcast”).
Although the name suggests that the iPod component is necessary, it is not required. Podcasts are uploaded to an iPod through iTunes, which catches the podcast’s RSS feed. So, listeners can also choose to listen to a podcast on their PC through iTunes. There are other podcast feed catchers available and plugins for other media player applications as well. Podcasts can even be caught on mobile devices that have an internet connection.
Some podcasts are available for listening without ever having to be downloaded. Many websites offer streaming versions of podcasts so visitors can listen to them while in their web browsers.
Podcasts are often serialized so updates and new podcasts come in the form of episodes. Episodes can be a couple minutes long or a couple hours. A podcast can be about anything the podcaster wants to make it about. Common formats can range from showcasing music to being talk shows. The possibilities are limitless.
Though the podcast medium keeps growing and innovations continue to be made, the definition endures: a podcast is an audio broadcast delivered via RSS feed.
Okay, now’s the time to go cast some pods!!
In addition to standard audio podcasts, there are video podcasts. We’ll save that one for another time.
Podsixer is almost ready for launch and when it does, we’ll bring you all sorts of out-of-this-world cool podcasting tips, tricks, news and more. It’s going to be big — so much so we need six pods instead of one!
Here’s some of the awesome stuff we’ll have in store:
- About Podcasting – articles about the way things work, the future, & more
- Our Podcast – like it says, the official Pod6r Podcast is coming!!
- Our Products – useful resources and tools developed in-house
- Podcasting How To – guides, from the basics to advanced techniques
- Podcasting Resources – need intro music, software, and more?
- Great Podcasts – highlights of some of the best podcasts on the web
Podsixer is all about podcasting, so whether you’re a seasoned recording veteran or just someone who enjoys listening to podcasts, the site will cover all aspects of this fascinating medium. It’s going to rock so stay tuned for the latest & greatest updates coming your way.
Hey world!
Podcasting Networks? Bloging Groups? Another web design company? Or a giant spaceship that has most of the human population?
Anyways Pod6r is brewing up something!