​Starting a podcast: how are you going to publish it?

​Starting a podcast: how are you going to publish it?

Happy Friday one and all. I hope you've had a good week. This is the last post in this Starting A Podcast series, so I hope that you've found some of what I've written useful.

When a podcast is commissioned the finished episodes are published on the broadcaster's platform, like BBC Sounds etc. If, however, you are publishing your podcast yourself there's an almost overwhelming amount of choice of podcast hosts, with everything from free to expensively priced tiers.

Once you've decided on your podcast provider, it doesn't stop there. Most podcast hosts will push your podcast episodes out to other providers, but it's worth checking that they do, and if not, set them up yourself using your podcast's RSS feed url. It's really not an exact science, and with Apple still the largest provider by far, you'll want to make sure it's been accepted by them. This means following their guidelines for artwork, quality and ratings even before you've published an episode. The benefit to Apple accepting your podcast is that the Google gremlins will pick up your podcast from there really easily, making it more discoverable.

Anyway, back to the podcast provider. This is the centre of your podcast universe. Here you'll be able to upload episodes with artwork and show notes (make sure you include links to your website!), and examine the stats once you're up and running. I've been using Buzzsprout for a little while now so I can recommend that, but it would be definitely worth a search online for podcast host comparisons.

A little tip here: choose a day and time to publish your podcast and stick to it. It doesn't matter too much if it's on Monday at 10am or Friday at 10pm, just be consistent. Your audience will expect it at least on a certain day of the week and will happily hit the unsubscribe button if you're being inconsistent.

If you have any questions or comments about anything mentioned in the Starting A Podcast blog series, I'd be happy to talk.

Have a great weekend and happy podcasting!

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