Beginner Podcast Mistakes 2 Charles Wilson

As Podcast producers, we create content for others to hear. So, we love to hear hear what people's comments about what we create, but we need to make it easy for listeners to get in touch! Be specific why YOU want your listeners to share their ideas with you and others. Do you want someone to stroke your ego, or are you looking for your listeners to engage and enhance what you are sharing?

In this podcast, I interview Yannis Vatis from The Crossroads Podcast to talk about their struggle to engage listeners and we brainstorm ways to get their audience talking, such as:

* Participating in online forums that reference their niche
* Create a Google Hangout Live (although this would be hard in the Beijing time zone)
* Join a life-hacking podcast directory website (or, as Yannis said- make one!) (11:04)
* Display a "contact us" form right on the main page (12:11)
* Tackle a controversial topic  (13:50)

Before the interview, I browsed through the past 32 episodes they have completed. This podcast has a very wide range of topics- they discuss what we can learn about Anime to extreme retirement savings and even share their tips on traveling. They even discuss how to overcome writer's block and become someone who is known as a DOer of life. Here is my plug- if you like a productive life and want to hear a solid hour of people discussing it, subscribe to The Crossroads Podcast in iTunes,  visit their site TXRpodcast.com or get in touch @TXRpodcast.

Intro music by Cosmic Analog Ensemble

Too many times beginner podcasters have interesting things to share but they are never published. In this episode, I share my podcasting mistakes and give you tips to get you started quickly:

* Submit your podcast into iTunes as fast as you can- it takes several days for iTunes to approve podcasts, so the sooner they have approved, the sooner you can start sharing your content.
* Don't worry too much about equipment for now. This episode was recorded using a Guitar Hero USB microphone you can buy at a local used XBox game store for $10.

Submitting your podcast
It takes several days for iTunes to approve Podcasts, so the sooner they have approved, the sooner you can start sharing your content. Take a tip from the Reply All podcast- they created a small test podcast episode and submitted the podcast to iTunes. When it came time to officially launch, iTunes had already approved them and they were able to release their show on time.
Don't worry about equipment (for now)
Early on, I spent days and days learning about obscure audio recording methods in my attempt to find the best recording gear. "Clothes don't make the man" and gear doesn't make you good.