UPLOAD PODCAST EPISODES TO AMAZON S3
30 of March 2017
NoraOnce you’ve recorded your podcast, the a job isn’t done yet. There are quite a few bits and pieces that you have to remember to add before you upload new episodes to Amazon or wherever you host your podcast.
By now you should have already created your podcast cover art, but if you haven’t you can download the SOP for that here. Make sure that your cover art is ready to go before you upload your first episode to the servers.
GATHERING THE INFORMATION TO UPLOAD YOUR PODCAST
HollieBefore you upload your podcast, you need add your podcast information into iTunes. The information you need to add are things like the title, album artist and other metadata that will be pulled from the MP3 that you upload. This information will be seen by your listeners and subscribers of your podcast.
Most of you will also have a page on your website that contains information about your podcast. It’s important to keep the titles and other information the same on both so as not to confuse your listeners. If you’re interested in creating podcast show notes, you can take a look at our Podcast Show Notes Template.
If you’re using WordPress, you can use a plugin called “PowerPress” that will help you publish your podcast once you’ve uploaded it to your hosting server. This is simple plugin that also pulls the information you write in your blog post show notes into the iTunes description of your podcast.
NoraOne of the things you need to have prepared for uploading other than your podcasts cover art, is the MP3 file of your episode which should be 100 MB or less so that it doesn’t take your listeners a long time to download it. If your MP3 file is much larger than that, you should definitely consider shrinking it down so it’ll be easier for your audience to access it as well as take up less space on their phone.
Once you have the audio file in the correct size, you will edit some of the text content that appears in the information section of the files, such as the title of the podcast. This title should clearly explain what the current episode is about. Hollie and I have experimented with the titles of our podcast Two White Chicks in China and found that stating the topic directly is better than creating a clever title that sounds cool. People just want to know exactly what the content is instead of having a clever sounding title.
HollieAnother piece of content that you’ll need is the show name of your podcast. Make sure that you use the exact same show name for every episode. You may also want to include a brief description of the episode in your metadata. To be honest I don’t know where this shows up, but I imagine that it helps with the keyword search in iTunes so it’s best to just stick a few lines in there to take advantage of this space.
QUICK CHECKLIST FOR NECESSARY PODCAST INFO
- Title of the current podcast episode
- Episode number
- Shortened name of the podcast (example: Two White Chicks in China podcast would have a shortened name of “TWCC”)
- Creators of the podcast (this will appear as the artist/composer in the MP3’s metadata)
- Official show name of the podcast (this will appear as the “album name” in the MP3’s metadata)
- Episode summary (Write a few sentences to describe what topics are covered in this podcast)
- Podcast Cover Art
HollieYou can upload your podcast to any hosting server, but the instructions provided in this SOP will give you a clear step-by-step procedure for how you or your freelancer can upload episodes to the Amazon S3 server. You can modify this SOP if you are hosting somewhere else before passing it to your freelancer.