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.

As a follow up to my earlier post on how to create your own wordpress widget, I have compiled a list of wordpress plugins that everyone should have. You don't necessarily have to use them all the time; however, they should be installed and ready to go. The list is in no particular order.

1. WP Google Analytics - Easily integrate your Google Analytics code into your wordpress blog and start gaining insights into your traffic.
2. FeedBurner FeedSmith - Easily redirect all your feed traffic to your feedburner account.
3. WP-Polls - Add polls to your sidebar or any post with this easy to use poll plugin.
4. WP-PostRatings - Allow readers to vote on and rate your posts. Easy to use and integrate ajax implementation.
5. WP-PostViews - Track and display how many times your post has been viewed.
6. Sociable - Allow readers to add your post to the major social networks in the click of a button.
7. Google Sitemaps Generator - Recommended for serious bloggers. This plugin generates sitemaps to Google's specifications for better SEO.
8. CForms - Great contact form; easily allows visitors to contact you through a form instead of an email address.
9. Search-Highlighter - Seeing my search keyword highlighted in a post makes my life a lot easier.
10. All in One SEO Pack - This is the most advanced plugin on the list. It helps get your SEO rankings higher, but may take a little tweaking.

[poll id="4"]

What plugins do you use and find helpful? Let us know in the comments.

Having a regularly viewed website is a goal for most bloggers and websites on the internet. Driving traffic to your site is not always easy and even harder to maintain. The content needs to be fresh, relevant, and worth reading. Well, how do you know if your website/blog is gaining visitors or being viewed regularly?

Reporting Suite

• Google Analytics - Google is the best in so many categories, and I believe Google Analytics is the best free reporting tool available on the web. It tracks so many aspects of website traffic and allows you to analyze the data and make useful information, like charts, graphs, and other reports, out of it. Having all the data in the world doesn't do you any good, if you can’t understand what you are seeing. Google takes the data and reports it as information through dashboards, graphs, and charts, taking the data to the next level. This is a great tool, and it is free!
• Alexa - Alexa is a graphical tool for comparing website ranks and statistics. It provide site overviews, traffic details, and related links. This is one of the best site comparison tools out there because of its easy to use and nice to look at interface. They offer a toolbar for faster tracking as well as other free and premium services.
• Compete - Compete is similar to Alexa in that it too provides graphical ranks, statistics, and information for one or more websites. Compete offers search analysis statistics as well.
• FeedBurner - This is a full suite of reporting and tracking tools for your RSS/Atom feeds. The free tools are more than enough for starting out and there is a pro-version available as well.

Link Popularity

• popuri.us - This is a fast and easy tool for checking backlinks, Google PageRank, del.icio.us, Alexa rank, and more.
• UrlTrends - This is another tool for checking search engine ranks and backlinks, and also provides more graphical results as charts and graphs.
• Xinu Returns - I have no idea how to say this website’s name, but it is one of the cooler websites I've used to check my website rankings and backlinks.

How do you track your website rank, backlinks, and statistics? Let everyone know by posting your favorite apps in the comments.

Update

• AWStats - This is a great tool that I neglected to add to the original post. AWStats needs to be installed and configured on your server to track statistics. It provides a lot of the same type of information that Google Analytics does.

Whenever a new technology comes out, there is always a lag for adoption and implementation. In my case, when RSS/Atom feeds came out, I too did not adopt them immediately. Before Google Reader came along, I didn't use feeds, let alone implement them into my own sites. After researching what an RSS feed really was, I realized that I didn't only have to learn RSS, I needed to learn XML. I continued to put it off until I realized exactly how much information I obtained through Google Reader, I thought: "I haven't actually viewed most of these websites in several weeks or maybe longer.” This was the beginning of my crash course in RSS and XML.

When you really take a look at how much information is published through feeds, you can see the need for implementing them into your own site. I, as well as many others, I presume, no longer go searching on the internet for news and website updates; I wait for them to come to me through feeds. As a Christian webmaster for a local church, my intent for having a feed isn't to drive visitors to the site in hopes to sell more adds; I am not saying that blogging for business is wrong. I just see feeds related to church and ministry’s sites as a way to keep the church community engaged and aware of what is happening in the church. The ultimate goal of an online presence is to keep people connected outside of the church walls; RSS feeds are a great way to help.

The number of sites using feeds to keep their visitors up-to-date and connected with their site is growing exponentially. FeedBurner, for example, claims that it tracks 934,797 publishers of 1,657,885 feeds. That's right; they track over a million and a half feeds. That is just one site! There are other websites like FeedBurner that have statistics that are just as incredible.

The need for RSS/Atom feeds definitely exists. It is highly recommended that you take the initiative to implement feeds to keep your visitors connected. I have listed some helpful resources below. As always, comments are encouraged.

Resources

• Feed 101
• RSS Specifications
• Step-by-Step: Make RSS Feeds
• FEED Validator