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If you are an internet marketing novice, you are probably facing the seemingly impossible and somewhat daunting task of trying to get your site listed on the first page of the search engines. You probably have no idea how to improve your ranking. For the purposes of this discussion, we will outline the procedures you should follow to climb steadily to the top of the search engines, while still making sure that you attract qualified traffic that will actually be receptive to the products or services that your website offers.

The first thing you need to understand is that your search engine ranking will not improve overnight. There are quite a few charlatans in cyberspace who work as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants. They will charge you an arm and a leg for their services, sometimes as much as $2,000 per month or more. They often make dubious claims that they can get you ranked on the first page of the search engines within a few months, and if not, they will kindly refund your money.

However, there is a catch. Once you pay the initial deposit and the SEO company begins working on your website, they will often optimize your website in such a manner so that you will be able to quickly rise to the top of the rankings for a keyword that is either not significant or will not attract any real traffic to your website.

For example, if your website provides auto insurance quotes, any SEO consultant knows that it will be impossible to expediently get your website ranked on the first page of Google for a highly competitive phrase such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES. So, instead, they will pick a variation of that phrase, such as AUTO INSURANCE QUOTES FAST, for which there is no competition, and you will quickly rise to the top. The only problem is no one will ever actually use that precise phrase when searching for auto insurance quotes, so even though the SEO company delivered on its promise to improve your ranking, you will still not get any visitors to your website because you will be ranked high for a keyword that no one will ever use when searching for auto insurance quotes.

So, you need to use a different approach if you want to not only improve your ranking, but also attract qualified traffic to your website. The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer. For example, if you sell vitamins, you would want to improve your ranking for the phrases BUY VITAMINS or BUY VITAMINS ONLINE. To optimize your website for your chosen keywords, you should either hire a web designer that has experience optimizing websites, or you should purchase search engine optimization software that will show you how to tweak your website and how to change your HTML code so that your site is properly optimized. You should also try to have a decent amount of free content on your website that relates to the keywords or phrases for which you want to be ranked higher.

The next step is to submit your site to the search engines, if you have not already done so. It seems silly to mention this considering that we are talking about search engines anyway, but some people actually forget to submit their website to the engines, or only submit their site to a couple of search engines and then quit. There are hundreds of legitimate search engines and directories in cyberspace, and you should submit to all them. I recommend that you look for search engine submission companies on Google and pick one that charges a small monthly fee to submit your site to the search engines once per month.

The last step, and probably the most important component of getting ranked higher on the search engines, is increasing your link popularity. The more websites that are linking to your site, the higher your ranking will be. To increase your link popularity, you will need to submit your website to link exchange directories so that you can swap links with other websites (they will link to you if you agree to link to them). Also, you can write articles and submit them to article submission directories. At the bottom of each article you write, you are allowed to include a link to your website. As the articles you write are put into circulation and are published on other websites, your link popularity will increase.

If you employ each of the strategies outlined in this article, you should be able to improve your search engine ranking while at the same time garnering the kind of traffic that you want. No website can improve its ranking overnight, but if you are persistent, your efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

Your company is expanding to foreign markets and you've been chosen to oversee the localization of your company's web site. You built the web site and you know all about it: every page, each navigation button; scripting, coding, applets, cascading style sheets, etc. But you don't have a clue about the translation process. At this point, you are doing some research about translation and localization and may seek some guidance. You need a plan - identifying possible challenges and implementing the most cost-effective processes.

1. Do not translate your web site only because everybody is doing it. Carefully evaluate your business needs and establish performance indicators to measure your success (or lack thereof). Most managers these days demand return investment on all marketing activities. It will be to your advantage to be able to show bottom line improvements (i.e. online sales in Germany increased 20% or support calls dropped by 10% after we launched the German web site).

2. Identify which section of the web site needs to be translated and define a handoff process to your translation vendor. Some of the web pages are simple HTML files which can be easily opened and translated. But with anything non-HTML, the text often has to be extracted. This category includes all the graphics that contain text, Flash files, and PDF files.

3. Try to provide your translator with all of the source files from the very beginning (such as cost estimating). Do not copy and paste every page of your web site in a Word file. It is not necessary and can be time consuming. Even though your translator can download all the files from your web site, it is still a much better practice to hand over all the files relating to the web site. Word count and cost estimates can be very inaccurate if the translator doesn't have all of the files to work with. Actually, if you have a dynamic web site, the word counting could be off by a long shot because of the unnecessary repetitions.

4. Make sure that your translator uses a translation memory (TM) tool. A TM tool keeps all the translated material in a database and makes it available for any future updates. Using a TM tool can help you save money, improve consistency, and speed up turnaround. In addition, working within a TM tool, tags and script code are recognized and protected during content translation. Provide your translator with any available reference material such as translation guidelines, previous translations and glossaries. The guidelines can address issues such as what terms should be left in English, punctuation, adaptation of date/time format, addresses, symbols, and measurement systems. A glossary is a multilingual terminology list that defines how abbreviations, product names, or industry specific terms should be translated. If the translator is using a translation memory tool, these glossaries can be imported to ensure consistency.

5. Provide your translation vendor with original graphic files including navigation buttons, Flash objects, textual graphics, and PDF files. These will have to be localized as well. It's in your best interest to send the native PhotoShop and Illustrator files that were used to create the GIFs and JPEGs on your web site! Also, some languages such as French and Spanish are often longer than English. So, you should keep this text expansion in mind when you create your initial graphics to allow for longer text. The desktop publishing specialist at your localization company will keep the background image and will reconstruct the layers containing text and merge them to make the target language images for web.

6. Do some testing after the initial localization is done to make sure that the site looks good and works properly. Check the visuals first. Then do some functionality testing (such as creating and filling out a test form) to see if any function was lost during the translation process. Check to make sure that all necessary pages have been uploaded and translated, all the links are working, and that the translated text can be viewed properly (your developer should change the character encoding according to the target language).

In addition, you should perform testing to ensure that your web site works well on different platforms, operating systems and browsers at this phase. Make sure that the translator or agency understands how browsers work with special characters (diacritics). If your localizer is working or making revisions on the translated text in HTML mode, be careful to never enter characters with accents into the code itself. Certain browsers could display the web page incorrectly.

7. Some translators will try to differentiate the localized files from the source files by adding a distinguishing extension for each language (the French file for home.html will be named home_fr.html). When this happens, every link reference in every file will need to be renamed to point to the right link. This will be time consuming and it will increase the possibility of creating errors. Instead of doing this, it is better to store each language version in its own folder.

8. Almost every target language requires localization of measurement systems, date format, punctuation, the thousands/decimal system, and colours. Everyone involved in the localization process should have cultural sensitivity to avoid offensive content.

9. Pay attention to web site layout when localizing in a language like Arabic or Hebrew. Because these are right to left languages, it is most likely necessary to redesign the layout (especially when your web site has navigation bars on the left).

10. If you want to optimize your multilingual site you should be aware that not all major search engines are working properly with foreign pages and your web site may not be listed in many of them. Also, the terminology your translators prefer (however correct or appropriate) might be VERY different from what your customers are using to find you. You must understand how your customers search online to effectively achieve high rankings and good online results. You should do research on what the major local search engines are and what your competition is doing.

Google announced in a corporate blog that it has officially begun beta testing its Audio Ads marketing platform. Earlier this year, the company acquired dMarc Broadcasting as part of its plans to crossover into radio advertising.

Google has made waves in recent months in its efforts to expand beyond the online marketplace into traditional advertising platforms such as print and radio. The strategy, bold to be sure, has been met with both praise and skepticism from industry analysts and prominent bloggers alike.

At the Inside Adwords Blog, a member of the Audio Ads team gives a little more elaboration on the company's vision for the project:

"Over the last year, we've been partnering with both terrestrial and satellite radio stations across the U.S. so that our advertisers have many options for broadcasting their ads -- whether it's a Country station in Tyler, Texas or an Adult Contemporary station in New York City."

"Currently, there are hundreds of stations to choose from and we hope to grow the list over the coming year. Our broadcast partners are looking forward to making their ad inventories available to thousands of new advertisers, especially since they aren't easily accessible today."

Whether for business or personal use, before there can be a website, there must be a domain name, and one of the most important steps of a search engine optimization plan is to pick the right one.

So what IS a domain name? A domain name is that thing that people give you when you ask for their website. anything.com, for example, is a domain name.

Some things to consider in choosing a domain name are:

1. Keep it short and simple.
If your website is for your business, a short domain name has its advantages. Whether you want to print it on business cards or display it on a billboard, making the domain too long or too complicated may make it too hard for potential customers to catch in one reading or recall later, if they did not have a chance to write it down. An exception to this is if you can get a phrase which will be remembered into the domain name (Example: buytwogetonefree.com) ...which leads us to point number two.

2. Make it easy to remember.
Your customer won't always have a pen with them, or maybe they won't even think about your domain name or website until later. Short, simple, and easy to remember can be important, but you normally shouldn't just opt for something like qdipe.com, and we are about to tell you why.

3. Relate it to your business or organization.
If you sell bicycle parts, try to put "bicycle parts" in the domain name. This is not only for the eyes of internet surfers, but for the search engines as well. They use various factors to rank the pages they visit, and sometimes the words used in the domain can increase the rank of the page. This brings up another point.

4. Think about keywords.
Although we are not going to get into Meta tags in this article, keywords are important. Even if hardly any search engines look at the "keyword" Meta tag any more, they are still searching the content of your site for keywords found within the text of the body, "alt" tags on the images, and "title" tags on anchor text and other links. Taking number 3 and number 4 together, the best of both worlds is to have a business name that is a keyword or phrase relevant to the business and use that as the domain name.

5. Cute's nice, but...!
Some people try to make their domain name memorable by using puns, jokes, wordplay, or number combinations. Just be careful. A few years ago I needed a domain name for a weíght loss product. I went through all the "short" and "easy to remember" names I could think of, but they all were taken! I then came up with the domain name NoDiet4Me. It made perfect sense to me! I went to have a magnetic sign made for my car, and the lady read it this way..."No 'die' t 4 me" with a lot of stress on the word "die" and shook her head with a worried and confused look on her face! The site worked fine and got a lot of traffíc and made me a lot of monëy, but now I wonder if I lost any traffíc because of my domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash.
There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experiences, as I use both, but the consensus seems to be from my research that it is easier for a search engine to categorize and rank a site that has a hyphen than one where the words are run together. Example: chickensoup vs. chicken-soup.

There is one danger to be recognized if you choose to use the hyphen. You must make sure it is clearly shown in any printed advertising or representations, and if giving the domain name verbally, go to great lengths to make sure that your listener understands the hyphens MUST be inserted. Many people are not that internet savvy and will hear "bobs dash bicycles" and still type in "bobsbicycles".

7. Alphabet soup.
Ever wonder what's best? Should you get a .com or .net? Will it be okay to get a .bíz or .us? What the heck do those things mean anyways and does it matter? Well, in today's world, most people entering the internet world are familiar with .com and .net. After that, they tend to get confused. I will not get into country specific top level domains at the moment, as this article is primarily directed at those either doing business in the U.S. or those doing business worldwide with a generic type product where a country-specific domain name would not matter. So, in most cases, .tv, .ws, or .org will not matter one way or another. By the way, .tv is the top level domain for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and .ws is the top level domain for Samoa.

Just to continue this discussion on extensions for a moment. When passing someone your domain name whether verbally or in writing, make sure they see or hear the extension. To use my earlier example, simply saying, "My website is bobsbicycles", will probably cause people just to type in the .com on the end as that is what they are most used to hearing.

8. Branding.
In some cases, a domain name may be associated with an easily recognized, or branded, product. Wal-Mart and Ford do not have to worry THAT much about such niceties as keyword density or "easy to remember" names. However, if you are working with a product or company which has or is in the process of branding itself, some of the information given above about selecting domain names might not be relevant.

It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:

* How do they make their money?
* Who is their public or target audience?
* How can their public be promoted to?
* How can the web be used to help automate their business?

I'll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience.

Anybody looking to put up a website for business purposes needs to look at this. Too many business sites are very poorly thought out and underutilized. A good website is a lot more than good design. A good design and some content means only that a website is acting as a glorified brochure. Its better than nothing and any business today which does not at least have that really needs to get on the ball. However, beyond design, you can look at how the site will achieve the points above.

Now, a business which is all web-based is very straight-forward in this department. A web-based business is going to want to collect payments from customers via the web, so we're going to want a secure payment system on that website. We also want that website to be well-designed so that it does not confuse people and attracts the customers' eyes to those things which make the business money. We're also going to want to discuss how the web can be used to promote. A business which is not web-based would want to consider what they can provide on the web to extend their business. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses may have a storefront or may need to deal with clients in person, but what can they do on the web to extend their reach?

Promotion is paramount to success in business and on the web. A website can perform any of many promotional tasks such as:

* Collecting sales leads by asking visitors to fill out a form. Perhaps give them some free, valuable content in exchange for their information.

* Collecting email addresses for use on a mailing list.

* Auto-responders sending targeted emails automatically based on customer's indicated interests on a form.

* Providing metrics on customer interest using landing pages and keyword advertising.

* Running polls and surveys to find out what your potential customers want.

* Running free articles which educate your customers on the subject matter of your business and get them interested.

A website is a footprint on the internet which is viewable worldwide. Depending on the nature of your business, visitors located well away from you may not be that useful in terms of potential clientele. However, there is no reason why you cannot still gather information from them to use with your local clientele. After all, if they arrived to your website, they were interested enough to come. They are a public for you regardless of their location. Perhaps you can even find a way to change your business model to include these people which are not located locally to your business.

In terms of automation, keep something in mind. A web server is simply a computer. Computers are great at doing repetitive tasks that humans either hate or would find a huge waste of time. For this reason, it is always a good idea to look over those business functions which are repetitive and see if your website can serve to make your life easier. For example:



Entireweb Newsletter * October 17, 2006 * ISSUE #275
If you can't see images, click here to view this newsletter online * Printer-friendly version

Integrating A Website With Your Business

It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:

* How do they make their money?
* Who is their public or target audience?
* How can their public be promoted to?
* How can the web be used to help automate their business?

I'll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience.


Anybody looking to put up a website for business purposes needs to look at this. Too many business sites are very poorly thought out and underutilized. A good website is a lot more than good design. A good design and some content means only that a website is acting as a glorified brochure. Its better than nothing and any business today which does not at least have that really needs to get on the ball. However, beyond design, you can look at how the site will achieve the points above.

Now, a business which is all web-based is very straight-forward in this department. A web-based business is going to want to collect payments from customers via the web, so we're going to want a secure payment system on that website. We also want that website to be well-designed so that it does not confuse people and attracts the customers' eyes to those things which make the business money. We're also going to want to discuss how the web can be used to promote. A business which is not web-based would want to consider what they can provide on the web to extend their business. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses may have a storefront or may need to deal with clients in person, but what can they do on the web to extend their reach?

Promotion is paramount to success in business and on the web. A website can perform any of many promotional tasks such as:

* Collecting sales leads by asking visitors to fill out a form. Perhaps give them some free, valuable content in exchange for their information.

* Collecting email addresses for use on a mailing list.

* Auto-responders sending targeted emails automatically based on customer's indicated interests on a form.

* Providing metrics on customer interest using landing pages and keyword advertising.

* Running polls and surveys to find out what your potential customers want.

* Running free articles which educate your customers on the subject matter of your business and get them interested.

A website is a footprint on the internet which is viewable worldwide. Depending on the nature of your business, visitors located well away from you may not be that useful in terms of potential clientele. However, there is no reason why you cannot still gather information from them to use with your local clientele. After all, if they arrived to your website, they were interested enough to come. They are a public for you regardless of their location. Perhaps you can even find a way to change your business model to include these people which are not located locally to your business.

In terms of automation, keep something in mind. A web server is simply a computer. Computers are great at doing repetitive tasks that humans either hate or would find a huge waste of time. For this reason, it is always a good idea to look over those business functions which are repetitive and see if your website can serve to make your life easier. For example:

* Sending your email newsletters could easily be done using your web server. Click a button and email your entire mailing list. Easy.

* Auto-responders can take care of automatically emailing your customers relevant information at regular intervals.

* Automatically compile sales statistics and email them to you each morning (if you do web sales).

* Export sales transactions directly into your accounting software to avoid typing them all in manually.

There are a number of ways a web server can be used to serve a very real business function and actually do some of the work for you.

A lot of this comes under the heading of programming. Design is design, however making the site actually DO something means it has to be programmed. So, if you are skilled in this area, you can do it yourself. Or perhaps you can hire it out to somebody. Before any of that, though, look over your entire business and the website you have and see how it can be utilized to make your business easier to manage or actually drive in business. Unless your website is personal in nature, then it is through the lens of business that your site needs to be evaluated.

Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P's of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C's, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4 P's; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.

CUSTOMER:

In this day and age, a company's marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It's about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. Its understanding why customers do what they do (or don't do),when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer. It's about focusing on the target customer first and then working back to the brand. It's imperative that companies have mindshare before focusing on market share.

CONSISTENCY:

Companies need to maintain consistency in their message; a practice called integrated marketing communications - from packaging and advertising to sales promotion and publicity. This will maintain and reinforce a brand's personality and image in a real life context and avoid doing something brainless like changing the distinctive color of the UPS truck to orange. I am sure it's been talked about.

CREATIVITY:

Creativity is imperative to attract attention in a world cluttered with thousands of messages. Creativity means laying aside the rules, and engages in out-of-box thinking so that marketers can reach beyond logic and structure and tap into their imaginations.

* Creativity Informs: Marketing's responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Creativity makes marketing more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers' thinking.

* Creativity Persuades: The ancients Greeks created legends and myths about gods and heroes -symbols for humankind's instinctive longings and fears - to influence human behavior and thought. Today's marketers are doing the same thing; they are creating new myths, heroes and symbols like Ronald McDonald, the "Can You Hear Me Now" guy from Verizon, and more recently the Gecko from Geico Insurance.

* Creativity Reminds: Imagine using the same invitation, without any creativity, to remind people to try a particular product everyday for a month. The invitation would become stale very quickly. Only creativity can transform boring reminders into interesting, entertaining marketing communications. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mention the company name or even spelled it out on the screen. Each communication told a story. And, the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was a single "swoosh" logo inscribed on the final scene.

CULTURE:

All marketing communications needs cross-cultural research to be able to succeed. It's simple to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like you and should understand what's so great about your product or service. Just reading about all the mistakes made by large corporations proves that even the most sizable and experienced marketers have made errors time and again.

One of the most famous examples is Coca Cola translating the name into Chinese without back-translating it ("bite the wax tadpole"), ultimately resulting in a horrible response from an insulted society. Marketing books are full of examples like these. As David Ogilvy, known as the Father of Advertising, states, "If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think".

COMMUNICATION:

This one is basic. Consumers don't want to be "marketed to". Rather, they want to be "communicated with". Good marketing communication creates value with target customers, speaks in their language and tells your story. It's about building long term, trustworthy, and profitable relationships with your customers. As Seth Godin states, it's about reinforcing the lies that consumers tell themselves everyday (i.e. I look much better in these jeans from Abercrombie; they make me look sexy).
CHANGE:

Marketing is not just a business function, but a process. There is a beginning, middle, but there is never an end. Marketers must constantly CHANGE as society changes. They should never be afraid to try something new. Marketing today is not what it was 2 - 5 - or even 20 years ago. Marketing needs to be an evolving process that considers change in the world, economy, market, consumers; as well as internal change within the organization.

Conclusion (not the 7th C)

So there it is; the 6 C's of marketing - Customer, Consistency - Creativity - Culture - Communication and Change. I am sure that these will be published in every text book in the country within the next ten years and I will be a rich, well known author. Yeah right!

Podcasting has leveled the playing field for people around the world. With just a few tools, you can quickly and easily set up your own talk show on the topic of your choice. All you need is a computer, a microphone, and a passion to share your knowledge with others. Whether you are a sports buff, a political guru, a part-time comedian, or a fitness professional, there is an audience waiting for your voice on the Internet.

As an online marketer, podcasting allows you to step into a market that is largely untapped. However, please don't take it for granted. A quality podcast can garner the attention of thousands of listeners.

By now you may be wondering how podcasting is different from radio. I am delighted to tell you that podcasting stands head and shoulders above radio by eliminating the many barriers found in traditional radio.

For example, through podcasting, any person with an MP3 player can choose from a huge number of talk shows and music varieties. One of the biggest differences is that they can listen to the content on their own schedule. It's like the Tivo for radio. In addition, as a podcaster, you don't have to worry about the FCC rules and regulatíons of radio. Simply plug in your microphone and go to town.

Podcasting is primed for growth, with many big names already entering the arena. Here are just a few of the voices you might be familiar with who are involved in the podcasting revolution.

Business Week
Wall Street Journal
RealMoney Radio with Jim Cramer
Rich Dad Podcast by Robert Kiyosaki

Even colleges are getting involved. Duke Universíty gives all incoming freshmen an iPod preloaded with Duke-related content such as information about orientation and the academic calendar.

There is an unlímited variety of what you could do with your podcast. Whether you want to do expert interviews, tutorials, news broadcasting, sports commentary, or coaching and consulting, podcasting is an excellent platform for your marketing message.

Best of all, podcasting is simple enough for anyone to get involved. Here are the 5 basic steps to creating your own podcast.

1. Get the right equipment.
2. Produce and save your podcast.
3. Create an RSS feed.
4. Upload your podcast to your website.
5. Publicize your podcast.

So, let's dig in. If you want to create a quality radio station, you'll need some quality equipment. Although the built-in microphone in your computer will work, for better quality, you'll want to invest in a good microphone. I would suggest the following:

Audio Technica 3035 Microphone
If you're looking for something more portable, chëck out the Edirol R-9.

As far as software goes, Audacity is a great audio editor and recorder that you can download for frëe at http://audacity.sourceforge.net. Using this software you can record live audio, edit MP3 files, cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds.

However, if you want to go for higher-end recording software, try out Sound Forge Audio Studio software. This professional software offers advanced audio mixing, editing, and effects processing capabilities.

Now that you've got the right equipment, it's time to start recording your show.

This is the fun part, so let your creative juices flow. Have fun with it and your listeners are sure to enjoy.

If you want to add music intros to your podcast, you can find some Podsafe music at:

http://music.podshow.com
http://www.podsafeaudio.com
http://www.audiofeeds.org

These resources will help you to stay out of any lëgal trouble.

Once you've finished perfecting your recording, you'll need to export it as an MP3.

Keep in mind that your subscribers will be downloading your podcast from the Web. Therefore, you don't want your file size to be too large. You can save a lot of bandwidth by using the proper settings during your MP3 conversion.

For talk shows and audio books, I would recommend a bit rate of 48 - 56k Mono. However, if you are recording music or music/talk combinations, you'll want to choose between 63 - 96k Stereo. A high bit rate (around 160kbps) is great for music but overkill for a talk show.

Once you convert your audio file to MP3, you also need to edit the ID3 tags. These tags identify the artist, title, and genre.

Now it's time to upload your audio file to your web server.

Once you've done that, you must create an RSS file. This is a crucial step because it allows listeners to subscribe to your podcast and have it automatically synched to their MP3 players. This is the step that transforms your audio into a true podcast.

An RSS file is created in XML and will contain four main items: title, description, link, and enclosure. You can also use your RSS feed to provide your listeners with additional information, including file length, file size, file name, category, topics, and channels.

You can see an example of a podcast RSS feed at http://scottp.podomatic.com/rss2.xml.

If you don't want to write your RSS file from scratch, there are plenty of RSS file generators available. One of my favorites can be found at TDScripts.com.

However, if you are using Wordpress to distribute your blog's RSS feed, then turning your blog into a podcast station is quick and easy. Simply link an audio file (MP3) from your web server into one of your posts.

Once you have linked to the audio file from within your post, WordPress will automatically add the necessary enclosure tag to your RSS feed to make it useable as a podcast.

If you would like to provide your visitors with convenient play buttons for your podcast, you can do this using Odeo.com or Audible.com.

How to Publicize Your Podcast

A podcast isn't much use if no one is listening to it. Creating the podcast is just a small part of being a podcaster. To be truly successful, you must promote your podcast to an eager audience. You can do this in a number of ways.

First, you should tell your website visitors about your podcast. You can do this using a podcast chicklet. Create a custom chicklet at TwisterMc.com.

Next, complete the ping förm at http://audio.weblogs.com to get your podcast listed there.

Then, submit your podcast into iTunes. This alone can bring you a nice subscriber base.

However, you'll also want to get your podcast into all major and minor podcast directories. You can find a complete list of directories at: MasterNewMedia.org.

If you are persistent in your promotions, you should see your subscriber base rise fairly quickly.

Podcasting is one of the best ways to increase your online audience. If you do not keep up with these exciting changes, you will quickly get left behind and your online business will certainly suffer. Therefore, have fun and dig into what I expect to be a massive transition in the way we communicate online.