Podcast promotion: fighting the big boys
Published by on January 20th, 2006
The introduction of podcasting into iTunes is starting to demonstrate my prediction: a wider audience but a more blinkered one.
As yesterday’s Guardian four page spread ‘all about’ podcasting demonstrates, why bother move outside iTunes when you have everything you could ever want. Journalist (whatisname) certainly didn’t attempt to research beyond the iTunes top 25 podcast list.
The ‘top five’ consisted of a list promoting their association with Gervais’ podcast then with increasingly derogatory comments about the others in the iTunes top 5.
So how can the lowly podcaster compete for an audience to get noticed against this blinkered attitude?
There really isn’t much they can do except create great content, get mentioned on the Daily Source Code and keep making great content so word gets around.
As all our download stats testify, itunes is a big player. My own stats show over 75% of my download requests coming from iTunes - that’s a figure which cannot be ignored. But without reaching the prominence of itunes’ front page, or one of the Top lists, it is difficult for a Podcaster to promote their work to a wider audience.
The good news is that once someone adds a podcast feed to their RSS reader of choice (be it itunes or otherwise) they frequently never get around to removing it again.
I have visited some podcast sites only to struggle to discover the RSS feed link for their podcast. So, my top tip for today is: make it very easy for anyone to find and subscribe to your RSS feed. There are no figures to back this up, but I suspect that many RSS subscriptions are instigated on impulse, during fleeting surfing sessions, with the intention of following up later. Use the mentality of the web surfer to the fullest and shove your RSS link in as prominent a position as possible.
Technorati Tags: itunes, podcasting, RSS
One Response to “Podcast promotion: fighting the big boys”
I reckon this is very good advice Neil.
There are so many websites that I visit where it is totally unclear what I, as a listener, need to do to subscribe or even listen to a show.
There is often a feed for the blog (text), as well as a feed for the podcasts, and unless these are CLEARLY distinguished it just adds to the confusion.
I recently put together a new blog for Podcastpaul, and drawing on this experience I made a point of clearly identifying ‘My podcast feeds’ and ‘My blog feed’ in the right hand panel.
Another tip would be NOT to bury the link somewhere at the bottom of the page - don;t make the user search for it - they probably won’t be prepared to spend too long doing so.
http://www.adrianpegg.co.uk
I reckon this is very good advice Neil.
There are so many websites that I visit where it is totally unclear what I, as a listener, need to do to subscribe or even listen to a show.
There is often a feed for the blog (text), as well as a feed for the podcasts, and unless these are CLEARLY distinguished it just adds to the confusion.
I recently put together a new blog for Podcastpaul, and drawing on this experience I made a point of clearly identifying ‘My podcast feeds’ and ‘My blog feed’ in the right hand panel.
Another tip would be NOT to bury the link somewhere at the bottom of the page - don;t make the user search for it - they probably won’t be prepared to spend too long doing so.
http://www.adrianpegg.co.uk