Podcasting 101
December 4, 2006 by Steve
Filed under Methods & Strategies, Technology
Over the last year, our church, Park Community Church in Chicago has made a huge commitment to growing our internet presence as an “on ramp” for many people who check out Park before ever stepping in our doors. We are also cognizant of all the people who may miss a week or want to hear a message a second time.One of our top priorities has been to provide our messages in many formats. We have upgraded our technology, our team, and our know-how, and have begun podcasting our Sunday messages. In October and November 2006, we had about 3,900 downloads of audio and video messages from our site and from I-Tunes — more than 64 downloads a day on average!
As I began to research how to do this last year and I went on the web, I thought it would be a straightforward process to podcast. We already had saved our messages on a CD in mp3 format, so I thought all I needed to do is Google the web, find a podcasting “how-to” site, and then let it rip. I didn’t find any great sites that would help me step by step to get our messages to show up in I-Tunes. If you are a church looking to podcast and already have a method to get your Sunday messages into mp3 format, here is my journey to get actual podcasting on I-Tunes up and running.
1. Open up a Blogger or WordPress account (they are free and easy to operate). For this example, I will use Blogger, which is where Park’s messages are linked at our Blogger website. A key step is when you are in Blogger setup, make sure you click that you want to display a links box under the message title.
2. Each week, insert a message title and insert the URL link to the message mp3 located on your website into your blogger entry. Also add the name of the speaker in the main blogging area.
3. Set up a free Feedburner account. Feedburner serves as the delivery mechanism to get your messages to I-Tunes for I-Tunes podcasting.
4. On Feedburner, add the link to your Blogger account, and fill in the I-Tunes information.
5. On I-Tunes, click on podcast, then click on SUBMIT YOUR PODCAST
6. Insert your Feedburner feed URL, then wait a week and you should be on I-Tunes
