There’s been a lot of buzz in the techno-press about them and I had even tried my hand at downloading a couple to my “Brand X” media player successfully. But still, the whole iPod concept, to me at least, seemed to inhabit the hazy realm of tattooed body piercers dancing with their shadows in those Apple TV spots. The other image I had was of people who like to hear themselves talk, but weren’t interesting enough to have their own “real” radio show.
I hadn’t really thought much more about them until the November 2005 TV sweeps, when one of the local stations did a story on podcasting. They talked about what a podcast was and how easy they were to do. They interviewed a number of people who were doing them out of their livingrooms, blasments and backyards. One “Einstein” was ever recording his show from his car. (And they say talking on the cell phone is a distraction for drivers!)
A podcast, to put in as non-technogeek-ish terms as possible, is a radio show posted on the Internet. You can listen to it on your computer, or if you have an iPod like device, its software will automatically go out and look where you tell it to find the podcasts to which you have subscribed.
To back up a little, the word “podcast” comes from the now borderline-ubiquitous (semi-biquitous?) iPod from Apple. There are a number of other brands out there, but their sales pale in comparison with Steve Jobs new little money factory. It’s a small device about the size of a pack of cigarettes and about half as thick. There are new ones, the Apple Nano and Shuffle, that are about the size of two Zippo lighters (keeping with the tobacco motif) one on-top-of the other.
You can also go to podcasting search engines (www.podcasting.net) and enter a term that describes what you are interested in and the search engine will go out and find podcasts that match those criteria. For example, “parks”. Click on whichever one that interests you, and you will be taken to their site.
The latest generations of iPods not only play MP3 audio files, but videos too. According to USA Today, 32 million iPods were sold in 2005 with 14 million of them flying off the shelves during the holiday shopping season alone. (No, I didn’t get one either!)
After seeing the TV news show, I had a “eureka!” moment. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and most importantly - it’s an efficient way to get our message to the public. I bought a couple of books on Podcasting and within a couple of weeks, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had its first podcast posted on our website.
I am in the boat and water safety unit of our department and am always trying to figure out new ways to get people to pay attention to our water safety message, whether it is in the summer or winter. Of course, when you mention the word “safety”, people run screaming for the hills.
Instead, I asked a local pro-angler, Terry Tuma, to come in to talk about ice fishing. (A sport where we in the snowbelt stare at a hole cut in the ice for hours, don’t catch much, but are still happy as flash-frozen clams.)
We are fortunate to have Steve Carroll on staff who has worked in TV news and sports, has “The Voice”, and terrific interview skills. I asked him to interview Terry and me in our little recording booth about ice fishing. Terry talked about ice fishing. At appropriate times I would jump in with my safety schtick. Dale Newton, our AV guy recorded us and converted the file to a 30 minute long MP3 file. I then brought the CD to our web guru and he had it up on our website a short time later.
Was it worth it? We checked with our web person as to how many people actually downloaded it. The podcast / audio file was downloaded 3,114 times in December. I suspect most of those downloads were listened to on home computers rather than portable devices but the actual pod link was hit 807 times - those are actual times the file was scanned by people's “podcatcher” software.
Our web folks tell us that these are very good numbers, especially for a first try with something with such a low cost for the department (several hours of staff time and the cup of coffee I bought for our fishing pro) to produce and post on the web. If you have a quiet place to record that isn’t too echo prone, a decent microphone, and a computer with recording software (we use the free “Audacity” program www.audacity.sourceforge.net) and a book on Podcasting you can do this. I found “Podcasting the do-it-yourself Guide” and “Podcasting for Dummies” (very appropriate in my case!) very helpful.
Since we started in 2005, we have recorded many more “how to catch more fish” shows, “how to get more ducks” shows and other topics interesting to outdoors enthusiasts where I put in my two bits about boating safety!
Your web person will be able to help you get your MP3 on your agency’s website and you will learn in the books how to submit your podcast to search engines which will help people find you. We also did a couple of press releases and since it was a slow news cycle we got some very good positive coverage which I am sure helped boost our “ratings”. That and the fact that 13 million people got an iPod for Christmas!
You can listen to the podcasts we have posted on an MP3 player or any just about home computer connected to the internet at www.mndnr.gov, go to "newsroom" and click on DNR Podcasts!