Podcast Mysteries Unraveled: 12 Steps to Your First Podcast

 There are a lot of reasons to start a podcast, you may want to connect to your existing audience in a more personal way. You may not have an audience but would like to build one. Podcasting is a great way to build a new audience. You may want to become a recognized expert in your chosen niche. Podcasting is a great way to get your message out to the masses. Spencer Haws of Niche Pursuits has a great article about what podcasts are not good for, but he does add that they are great for branding and relationship building.
Whatever your motivation, podcasts are a great way to get your voice and message heard, but getting started can be a bit overwhelming. In this article, we break podcasting down into 12 simple steps to get your show on iTunes and have your voice heard. From a big picture perspective, you can break podcasting down into four parts plan, produce, publish and promote.

Planning Your Podcast

This is probably one of the most fun parts. You get to decide what your show is about. This is where you get to be creative and decide on the name of the show, the tone and message you want to portray, the format such as having co-hosts or guest interviews, and how long the shows will be and how often you will podcast. You also get to decide fun things like the branding, podcast music, logos and cover art that you will be using. The planning stage is a great time to be creative and weigh your creative options while still taking the time to iron out the nitty gritty details.

Planning Stage

• Discover your topic, podcast title, and description
• Decide on your format, podcast length, frequency and editorial calendar

• Develop your branding such as your cover art, logo, music, and script

Producing Your Podcast

This is the part where you get to record your podcast. This is another fun part of your podcast journey. This is where you get to gather up all of your podcast equipment and decide on the type of software you are going to use for recording and editing your show.

This is where you get to record and maybe re-record your first show. This is where you develop your microphone technique and your speaking and interview skills. This is where you get to hear what your voice really sounds like. This is the part you will revisit over and over and really develop to grow your brand and voice.

Producing Stage

• Record your show using your microphone and headphones
• Get your recording into a mp3 format using audio software and your computer
• Edit your mp3 file - take out ums, pauses and mistakes. Then add your music, intros, outros and advertising if any.

Publishing Your Podcast

Publishing your podcast is a three step approach. You need to make your recorded podcast files readily available for your listeners. This involves finding a media host. A media host is similar to a web host, but it is an affordable way to have your audio files always available with no downtime or bandwidth restrictions. Libsyn and Blubrry are two of the most popular media hosts.
You can also get a podcast feed from your media host. A podcast feed is similar to a blogging RSS feed, but it has all of the information for your podcast. Once you have your feed, you can use it to publish your podcast to podcast directories such as iTunes without doing any additional work other than uploading your new shows to the media host. The feed will automatically update the directories with your new information each time a new episode is added.
You will also want a way to interact with your podcast listeners. Publishing your podcast on your existing blog or website or creating one just for the podcast is a good idea. You can create a post for each new episode. On that post, you can have a podcast player with the episode, a link for your listener to subscribe to iTunes, show notes with a summary of that day’s topic and any links mentioned, and a call to action or a way to continue interacting with each listener that visits your site. The content can also help with SEO.
You will also want to publish your feed in iTunes. The biggest podcast directory in the world and where many of your new listeners will come from. There are quite a few requirements for publishing in iTunes, but the main things you will need is the validated feed from your media host, the cover image, the podcast title, description, categories, and tags.

Publishing Stage

• Sign up for a media host to submit files and create a feed
• Create a category on your blog or website to publish each episode and show notes
• Submit your podcast to iTunes using your podcast feed, title, description, and image

Promote Your Podcast

After all of the work you want to get as many listeners as possible. Like any online endeavor, promotion is one of the best ways to do that. As you hone your craft and build your content library, you want to promote along the way. The most common ways to promote your podcast is through an established website or mailing list that you already have. You can also grow your audience by interacting with the audience of other podcasters by being a guest or interviewing other podcasters and bloggers. You can also leverage social media using your accounts or your guest's accounts. These are the most common methods, but don’t be afraid to think outside the box. There are a number of steps to get started podcasting, but broken down they are not that overwhelming.

Promotion Stage

• Use your website and mailing list
• Leverage the audience of guests or bloggers you interact with
• Find a way to leverage social media for your podcast and potential audience

How to Multitask on an iPad

The update to iOS 9 includes three new forms of multitasking: Slide Over, Split View and Picture in Picture. However, you will need a newer iPad to enjoy these new features. Slide Over multitasking requires at least an iPad Air or an iPad Mini 2, and if you want to use Split View to essentially split your screen in two or use the Picture in a Picture feature, you will need at least an iPad Air 2.
As you might expect, Apple has made multitasking very simple. In fact, they may have made it too simple.
Slide Over View. Multitasking starts with the Slide Over View. You can open an app in Slide Over View by sliding your finger from the far right edge of the screen towards the middle of the screen. A new column of app icons will slide into place on the right side of the screen. You can flick up and down to scroll through the list of apps and simply tap the one you want to launch. Remember: you will need to be inside of an app for this to work. If you are on the Home Screen, sliding your finger from the right side of the screen will just take you to a new page of apps.
Split View. As its name suggests, Split View carves the screen in half and dedicates an app to each half of the screen. But both apps must be enabled for Split View, so it won't always be available. Also, your must have at least an iPad Air 2 to run apps in Split View.
The iPad must be in landscape mode for Split View multitasking. If the apps are capable of running in Split View, you will see a small line between the right-side column and the app. You can enter Split View by touching this line and sliding your finger to the middle of the screen without lifting it from the screen. Be careful not to slide your finger all the way to the left side of the screen, otherwise the app in the column will launch in full-screen mode.
Learn about Multitasking Gestures
Picture in Picture. This is definitely the coolest way to multitask on the iPad. You can launch Picture in Picture any time you are watching a video in a supported app. In the Videos app, the button is located in the bottom-right corner of the screen and it looks like a square with an arrow pointing to a smaller square. As you might surmise, tapping the button puts the iPad in a mode similar to your TV's Picture in a Picture mode, with the video running in a small area on top of any other app you choose to launch.
While in Picture in Picture mode, you can resize the video by pinching in or out with your fingers (similar to zooming in and out of a webpage or photo), you can move it to any of the four corners of the screen by simply tapping and dragging, and you can launch back into full screen by tapping the video and then tapping the full-screen button, which looks similar to the button that launched into Picture in Picture mode. You can also pause or exit the video from this menu, and depending the app, you may have other app-specific features available.
The Best iPad Apps for Streaming Movies
Is Multitasking Too Simple? Many of us have become quite skilled at flipping through pages in a book or photos in an album by flicking our finger from right to left on the screen, but with these new multitasking features working by sliding our finger from the far right edge of the screen, we may accidentally enable them when we are just hoping to see the next picture or read the next page. No doubt, this will be a little annoying at first, but eventually, we'll correct the way we swipe through pages. Until then, we'll wish for a quick-and-easy way to turn multitasking off while we read.
Confused? It may take a little practice getting used to the new multitasking capabilities of the iPad, but soon enough, we'll wonder how we ever did without it. Before that day comes, we'll take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions about multitasking in iOS 9.

Why aren't all of my apps in the list? While Slide Over multitasking works in almost any app, you can only launch apps that have enabled the feature into the right column.

Apple introduced a new way of allowing apps to adjust to different screen and window sizes, and this feature must be adopted by the app for it to work with the new split-screen multitasking features.

I've launched an app. How do I get back to the list of apps? If you look at the very top of the column where the Slide Over app is running, you will notice a small gray line right at the edge of the screen. You can get back to the list of apps by touching this line and sliding your finger down without lifting it from the screen.
OK, now I'm multitasking, how do I stop it? You can end Split View and Slide Over View by tapping your finger at the intersection of where both apps meet and then sliding your finger to the right edge of the screen.

I can launch an app in Slide Over mode, but now my main app is disabled...? Slide Over mode does just what the name implies: your new app slides over the old app, allowing you to work with the new app. If you need to do something in your original app, you can slide the app back off the screen as explained in the previous question.

When you are ready to work inside the app again, just slide your finger from the right edge of the screen towards the middle and the app will reappear.

If both apps support Split View multitasking (and your iPad is capable of it!), you can enable a mode where Slide Over allows you to work with both apps independently of each other by entering Split View and then moving back into Slide Over View by tapping the middle of the screen, sliding your finger to the right and lifting it before it reaches the edge. In this mode, you can operate both the main window and the app in the right-side column at the same time.

Should You Buy an iPad Pro?

After months of speculation and over a year of rumors, Apple finally unveiled the "iPad Pro", a laptop-sized version of their popular iPad tablet. But the iPad Pro isn't just a bigger iPad, it is a "better" iPad, with a faster processor, higher resolution and new features like (gasp!) a keyboard and a stylus. So how does it all stack up? Should you run out and buy one?
It depends.
The iPad Pro is clearly designed with the enterprise in mind, a fact never more apparent than when Microsoft walked out onto Apple's stage to preview Microsoft Office on the new tablet.

And it didn't take long to see how well the iPad Pro will perform in a work environment. The Split View multitasking, which will also be available on the iPad Air 2, makes working in multiple Office apps as seamless as it is on the PC. With a tap on one side of the screen and a tap on the other side of the display, you can take a chart from Excel and easily paste it into Word or PowerPoint.

Taking that a step further, you can use your finger or the new Apple Pencil stylus to either draw markups on the screen when editing, or draw rough symbols like an arrow sign that will be translated into sharp clipart without ever having to browse a clipart library. And the seamless marriage between the touch interface and the multitasking capabilities was really on display when Adobe demonstrated how easy it is to draw a page layout, insert a photo using extensibility, and then move into side-by-side multitasking to touch up the photo.

Let's Get to the Good Stuff: iPad Pro Specs

As you might expect, the iPad Pro comes with more power under the hood. The A9X tri-core processor is 1.8 times faster than the A8X in the iPad Air 2, which makes it faster than many laptops.

In fact, Apple claimed it ran faster than 90% of the current PC laptops being sold, though this won't be actually verified until we are able to do some benchmarks on it.  The iPad Pro also ups the amount of RAM available to applications from 2 GB in the iPad Air 2 to 4 GB in the iPad Pro.

The iPad Pro also sports a 12.9-inch display with a 2,734 x 2,048 resolution.

To put that in perspective, the nearest MacBook equivalent is the MacBook Retina (2015), which has a 12-inch display and a screen resolution of 2,304 x 1,440.  This puts the iPad Pro slightly ahead in both departments.  The iPad Pro's display is also designed to use less power when there is less activity on the screen, which helps it maintain that legendary 10-hour battery life.  

Apple also introduced a 4-speaker audio system that detects how the iPad is being held and equalizes the sound accordingly. It has an 8 MP iSight camera, similar to the iPad Air 2, and includes the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. But what really puts the bullseye on the laptop market are two new accessories: an attachable keyboard and a stylus.
The Smart Keyboard is connected using a new three-dot port on the side of the iPad Pro. This means the keyboard won't use Bluetooth to communicate with the keyboard, so no need to pair the two, which is required when using a wireless keyboard with your iPad Air. The iPad also supplies power to the keyboard, negating the need to charge it. The keyboard doesn't have a touchpad, but it does have cursor keys and shortcut keys that will facilitate operations like copy and paste.
Unfortunately, the Smart Keyboard comes in at $169, so you may just want to buy a cheap wireless keyboard instead. (Or even plug in an old wired keyboard you may have lying around the house.)
And if you like drawing on the iPad, you are going to love Apple Pencil. Essentially, it is a stylus that has been given the Apple touch. Inside the tip of the stylus are complex electronics that will both detect how hard you are pressing and if you are pressing straight down or at an angle. This information is passed to the iPad Pro, which can then use the signal to change the type of brush stroke, if used inside a drawing app, or carry out other operations depending on the app.

So who should buy an iPad Pro?

The iPad Pro is positioned for the enterprise, but it is also aimed squarely at those who would love to dump their laptop. The new tablet is as powerful as most laptops on the market, and when you include the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, it will give you just as much control as a laptop. In fact, the iPad can actually do a lot of things the traditional laptop cannot, so the iPad Pro may leave your old PC in the dust.
But the key here is really in the software. Now that Microsoft is jumping on the iPad bandwagon by delivering an excellent version of Office, it has become easier to dump the laptop for the iPad. But if you have a Windows-specific piece of software that you absolutely must use, you may be tied to your laptop for a little bit longer. (Or, you could always just control your PC with your iPad, allowing you to at least feel like you've left it behind.)
The iPad Pro is priced at $799 for the 32 GB model, $949 for the 128 GB model and $1079 for the 128 GB model that includes cellular data.