Chapter 11

Podcasts are essentially a vehicle for many other types of media that individual and businesses can in realm of social networking. Podcasts allow you to add music, digital photos, animated company logos, or colorful videos. A podcast is an audio or video recording that a person can subscribe to, receive, download, listen to, or watch using a personal computer, iPod or iPhone. A podcast is similar to a television program or radio show, but easier to create and distribute. The process of audio sharing requires that you first create an audio file and then make it known and available. One of the ways you can make it known it is available is distributing it on iTunes.

iTunes is used for playing, organizing, downloading , and publishing audio and video files. iTunes enables users to connect to the iTunes Store through the Internet, where they can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, along with buying apps for iPhones and iPods. iTunes allows you to create playlists, edit file information, and record CDs, copy files to digital audio or video players, essentially allowing to become an artist or an advertising straight from your personal computer.

Podbean opened in 2006 providing podcast publishing tools for users to begin creating professional podcasts. It allows them to do so in a short amount of time, with a bloglike environment that requires no technical knowledge, you can manage, publish, and promote podcasts from your computer. Podbean is used in a variety of ways such as for education, religion, music, etc. while allowing users to personalize with selecting themes or “skins”. The most important feature of Podbean is its ability to measure the website traffic, allowing you to know how you are performing. Measuring Internet traffic is one of the best features of online advertising.

Podcast is the social media that I know the least about so far, so I was intrigued when there was a second chapter describing audio podcasting and how they can be used in iTunes and Podbean. I think this chapter successfully continued the main idea from Chapter 10. The definitions and histories of podcasting, iTunes, and Podbean are important to get started, but if you don’t know how to effectively use them and distribute your audio podcasts to where consumers know they are available, then you efforts won’t be worthwhile. Creating your new podcast is one thing, but making it available to your customers, prospects, and employees is what will make it successful. This point goes back to all of the social media options we have discussed so far, it can be simple, but if you don’t use it up to it’s potential then you are not using it correctly.