The Maui Website Traffic School

There are many different ways to generate interest and drive traffic to a website, and podcasting is my favorite. I love the idea of being able to convey my ideas with my voice. Not because I have a melodic way of communicating my message, but because I believe it gives my listener an opportunity to get to know me in a way that cannot be conveyed using the written word alone.

I enjoy podcasting so much that I’ve created three separate websites that are podcast based. The first is the Recognized Expert Marketing Show where I interview and record best selling marketing authors from around the world. The second is a video based podcast where I teach visitors how to create a blog using Google Blogger. And the third is a similar site where I teach visitors how to build a free website using a service from Weebly.com.

If you’re not familiar with podcasting, take a moment before you read any further to listen to one or more of the podcasts. I think you’ll agree, podcasting gives a website a completely different feel.

If you want to learn how to create your own podcast, there is a lot of great products available to show you how it’s done. One of our favorites is The School of Podcasting. All you need is a computer, a microphone and free audio software available on the Internet. Once you’ve recorded your audio, you can upload it to the Internet using a technique I teach in this How to Add Audio to Your Blog podcast. It is so much simpler to podcast today than it was just a few years ago, especially if you own a Macintosh with Garage Band.

How to you generate traffic to your website with a podcast?

There are millions of people who listen to podcasts every day and they all listen to shows on subjects they find interesting. When I want to find a podcast on marketing or space or current events, I go to sites like Podcast.net or Apple iTunes or Podcast Alley. There are dozens of sites like these that list thousands of podcasts from all over the world.

If I’m really interested in a podcast, I can subscribe to it using an RSS reader like iTunes or Odeo and have new podcasts sent to me automatically.

So if you want to generate traffic to your website using a Podcast there are a few requirements you must follow.

First the technical requirements.

You are going to need a place to host (or store) the audio. There are several free services available like archive.org and Google Pages but they are highly restrictive and can make it impossible for you to distribute your podcast to the masses. You need a fast, reliable, high limit service to host your audio. I recommend Hostmonster for beginners. The cost is minimal and the service is outstanding.

Next you will need to create an RSS/Podcast feed. There are several platforms that can create a podcast feed for you. If you prefer to use a blog platform like Blogger or WordPress, you can use FeedBurner to convert your feed into a valid podcast feed. You will need to submit this feed to every podcast directory you can find (iTunes and Podcast Alley for example) for maximum exposure.

Now the marketing stuff.

It’s important to mention the name of your website throughout your podcast. The people listening to your podcast may not be on your website when they hear to your show. They may be listening to it through iTunes or on one of a hundred other sites that redistributes feeds, or on their friends iPod! So make sure that you saturate your listeners memory with the name of your website. Offer them special deals, content that can only be found on your website, free ebooks or additional audio programs, newsletters and everything you can to get them to come back to your website!

Podcasting can be unbelievably powerful, and now with the speed of YouTube and Google Video, video casting is becoming even more popular! More on that videocasting in a future post. In the meantime, use as many outlets as you can and don’t be afraid to podcast.

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