For those of you that are new to podcasting, you should really jump on the bandwagon. Podcasting is a great way to keep people engaged and involved. Podcasting is just one of the many amazing resources available to companies, personal sites, and churches alike. Many churches (TRBC & Mars Hill) are now putting their sermons online for members and others to listen to.

• What is a podcast?
  • A podcast is basically taking a recording of some sort and posting it online. Once the recording is ready to be posted online, you put the information in a specific format (you can get the specs here from Apple). This Apple format is then able to be submitted to the iTunes directory and displayed through iTunes. iTunes users can then subscribe to updates and listen to your recordings directly through iTunes. How cool is that?!
• Why use a podcast?
  • Why wouldn’t you want to reach millions of people? I mean really… what better way to reach millions of people than through an incredible tool given to us by Apple. The hard work has already been done. Reaching a million people is not an easy task, but we have the opportunity to utilize the popularity and credentials that iTunes has already established. Why not allow people to use one of their favorite applications for your content as well?
• How do I create a podcast?
  • Great question! Thankfully there are many applications out there that will create podcasts for you; all you have to do is provide the content. You can use web applications like podOmatic, download and install your own web application like the Podcast Generator, or you can use the specs listed earlier from Apple to write your own RSS feed.
  • Once you have created your podcast and are ready to publish it to the iTunes store, you can follow the very simple instructions here on how to submit your podcast to iTunes.

What did you use to help create/learn podcasts? How were you able to implement podcasting for your site? Let us know in the comments.