Quick Takeaways from Podcast MidAtlantic

Patience is a gentle version of courage - Kathy Kelly Special Mouse Podcast

Podcasting Changes Live - Jeff Bradburry and Scott Swanson

Watch other Media Types - Jeff Bradburry and Anythony Minaya

Tell great stories - everyone

Being Creative is fun.

Podcasting Changes Lives

I'm definitely having Jeff on my show in the future. The great thing that happened this weekend is person after person would share a "because of my podcast" story and I need to have them on the show. Jeff does the teachercast, and he helps educators (as a teacher himself) utilize technology in the classroom. He was great to hang out with, and he mentioned that if you help a student that's great (1 person), if you help a teacher that might impact 20 students, if you help a superintendent, that could impact thousands.

Scott from Muppetcast shared a story (I need to have him on the show) where a Jr High boy was getting beat up at school because he loved the Muppets. Scott's show showed him that he's not a freak, and it's OK to like the Muppets.

What Podcaster's Can Learn from Johnny Manzel

I live in Cleveland, Ohio. Out sports teams are not good. We have tremendously talented people like LeBron James and Johnny Manzel, but still we can't win. Last year out football team the Cleveland Browns draft Johnny Manzel with their first round pick. Johnny rubbed his fingers together in a way to say, "I'm going to get paid." It became his signature. It appeared in Johnny's mind that he had achieved his goal. He had maid it to the NFL. The bad news is that is not THE goal of a football player. THE GOAL is to win the Super Bowl.

Johnny had a reputation as being a person who was more interested in parties than play books. He always seemed a bit unprepared. This was his first year, but Johnny was now a professional football player. In this league you either carry your weight, or you are traded. As more and more stories of Johnny (more or less) goofing off came to the surface (welcome to being famous), it really appeared that this kid had his priorities out of whack.

Paul Colligan has an episode where he said, "Starting A Podcast To Hit iTunes “New And Notable” Is Like Launching A Business To Get Into The Phone Book." This is a classic, and it ties into this analogy. The goal of a podcaster is not to be in New Noteworthy, the goal is to impact your audience. Your goal is to bring value. For some, the goal is to create revenue streams that help supplement their income. When I wrote my book "More Podcast Money" getting it into Amazon was not the goal, the goal was to help people set realistic financial goals with their podcast. Amazon is a tool to help me do that.

The 8 Week Myth About iTunes New and Noteworthy

8 Week Lie

In the book Podcast Launch (by John Lee Dumas) a very unfortunate paragraph states that you "Have a mere 8 weeks to be featured within the best podcast advertising real estate on the planet." This needs tweaked. It should read, "You can only be considered NEW for 8 weeks, you can be considered Noteworthy any time." Because of this unfortunate paragraph people are spending all their and effort focusing on getting into New and Noteworthy. This is very much like Johnny Manzel focusing on getting into the NFL. It's not the goal, it's a milestone. In the same way that being drafted into the NFL equals success (as many people get cut, and many first round draft picks never measure up to their potential).

You can get into iTunes (I outline the 27 steps here), and to get into New and Noteworthy you pretty much need a pulse.

Legal Podcast Music

I was told about a new service from Mike Stewart that features a large group of music cleared to be used on your podcast. I play some clips on my show today, and you can find out more at their website. The package contains 150 – 60 second royalty free music themes with license to prove to YouTube or anyone you have my permission to use my music for your videos and podcasts. All the music tracks organized by tempo, feeling and emotion to make underscoring a breeze and easy to fit the them to your video. The music is the product of Mike Stewart (the Internet Audio Guy). he is also a musician with a Gold Record to prove it.

I purchased this package as I am familiar with Mike who had a service for a while where you would get 5 themes a month. I've used Mike's music in my podcast for years. There are lots of different genres from Country, Easy Listening, Rock, Holiday, etc. Most of the tracks I enjoyed. The rock themes (not all, but some), are a bit dated sounding to me (like they could be on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack). When you purchase a package, you know they aren't all going to be winners.

Doing the math on this, by just breezing through the different genres I would say I would use 70% of these. There are 150 tracks so that means I would use 105 tracks. The music is $37 for all 150 tracks so that would be ($27/105) 35 cents a track which is much less expensive than the .99 you will pay at Amazon.com (aff link). If you used all 150 track the price would drop to 25 cents a track.