Four Podcasting Tools Reviewed
Today we have a few tools to peak at. One allows you to record your podcast or go live, the other allows you to add your Blab.im sessions to your Wordpress website, Ray Edwards will teach you how to write better pages, and the last one allows you to book guests.
Spreaker has been around a while, and if you are looking to do live streaming this is a great platform. They also are great if you don't want to go live. Their new Spreaker Studio software enables them to move away from the Web Based version they had before that relied on flash technology (which was not compatible with iPads, iPhones, etc). They have had Spreaker Studio apps for a while (also impressive) and now there are desktop versions to go along.
Connect More Than One USB Microphone With EASE.
This has been a problem that wasn't easy to solve in the past. Now if you have multiple hosts with two USB microphones you can easily connect up to three USB microphones into ONE computer. It's pretty amazing and easy to setup.
It also integrates with Skype. This takes adding some additional software, but it takes just a few minutes and it worked like a charm. The best part is there is plenty of documentation so you don't have to guess what to do.
You can create playlists (great for people doing podcasts of music), you can fade from one song to the next, there are buttons that you can assign sound effects to (again with plenty of documentation and tutorials).
If you are person who does their show live, you also have a chat system right in the software.
The only thing you need is a Spreaker account to get it to fly.
You can get a free month of spreaker media hosting using the coupon code sopfree.
Right now Blab.im is HOT. This is a FREE platform that makes it super easy to create a live show and have guests pop in and out. It's new and in beta, but it has promise. Hani from Simple Podcast Press (a great plugin for podcasters looking to build their e-mail list) has come up with an easy way to have your videos from Blab.im import into your Wordpress site.
You can set it so you have to approve them before they are put on your website or have them automatically posted. You can add buttons again to grow your email list, your followers on blab, and more. The best thing is Hani. He is open to suggestions as the plugin has been out less than a week. My request would be to allow me to replace the blab.im video with a YouTube version later (to build my views on YouTube).
For more information go to www.simplelivepress.com Here is a quick video I created showing off how easy it is.
There are tons of services like Appointlet, and Schedule Once for managing bookings. Most of these have a monthly fee (around $10). I discovered the Bookly plugin and it is super powerful. It ties in with you Google Calendar, and you can control every. This includes the color, your services, your staff, you payment options, your hours of availability, holidays and more. Here is a quick video
I'm a HUGE Ray Edwards fan, and he is giving away a ton of free content on how to write better text on your blog. This could be to grow your business, or to grow your audience. He is a MASTER, and I always walk away feeling smarter after listening to him. To check out Ray's free tutorials go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/rayedwards
There are people on the Internet who are saying "If you launch with 8 episodes (or 3, or 5) you get 8 downloads when someone subscribes. This is absolutely false. Once a person is subscribed, they need to go into the Podcasts App (or iTunes or Overcast.fm) and manually download you back catalog. As podcasting gets hotter and hotter, there will be more people jumping into the space that may not giving great advice.
Speaking of Blab, they recently purchased Podclear.com and today we get some behind the scenes insight into Blab from Hanah. For more information go to www.blab.im