Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 8. T‐Minus Five Episodes . . .

In This Practice

• Using a blog to promote your podcast

• Putting together your first five episodes

• Assessing the work involved in creating your show

It's so exciting when you come up with that idea for a podcast. You could be driving home from a workshop on how to podcast, working out at the gym, or just enjoying some quality time at the playground with your kid, and suddenly the idea strikes you — and whether it's in your iRiver, on a cocktail napkin, or on the back of an envelope, you start jotting down what you want to rant about. Your message is beginning to take shape, and you want to share your idea with the world.

Now you decide to start telling friends, acquaintances, and other podcasters that yes, you have a show in the works, and you cannot wait to get things underway. The questions “How often will it post?” and “How long will the show be?” start filtering in, and then you sit down to record the premiere episode…

…and this is when you discover that the real work has begun.

The Blog: Your Personal Hype Machine

There is nothing wrong with a little bit of hype. Hype is what gets people talking, and it can make incredible things happen. The force‐of‐nature in podcasting that is Scott Sigler proved that by generating incredible hype for the release of his book, Ancestor, using his feed (and others' feeds) to distribute a digital version of the book. That hype was instrumental in taking Ancestor to the top of Amazon's Science Fiction and Horror charts, ...