Hi, my name is Andrew, and I’m a few weeks into the Podcasting for Beginners course and have learnt masses already. I thought it would be useful to others to understand someone’s journey into the world of Podcasting. I’ve made notes along the way, but you probably want to hear my honest thoughts as well. So here goes.

Looking back through my old emails I just noticed that I signed up on Christmas Day, how embarrassing! My wife and I had a quiet day together, daughters elsewhere, our celebration day will be the 26th this year.

I didn’t do anything during the Christmas week, so my week 1 starts conveniently on the calendar week 1. I’ve accepted the invite to contribute to the Podcasting for Beginners blog, that was unexpected, wonder what happens there. Better keep my head down for a while on that front.

Module 1 completed this week, so what did I learn from Georgina?

• I need a theme that supports Podcasting most likely Twenty Twenty or Spearhead, but that one looks to be if you are only doing Podcasts and don’t want a blog as well. I’m using the Rowling theme; do I really have to change themes? Something to investigate later. 
• Georgina is in presentation style with the speaker in the bottom right corner of the screen in a circle with a non-distracting background. Make a note of that one for when I eventually migrate to creating training courses.
• iPod + Broadcast = Podcast
• A podcast has episodes they may be built around a season. Episodes can be downloaded or streamed. It doesn’t have to be every week (good, I’m not sure I could crank it out every week). Perhaps I could manage one episode / week, with a season being 4 or 5 weeks. A second series might start one month later, to give me a break and to start the planning for the next series. Six series per year, total 24-30 episodes in a year. That sounds a good target, but I guess it depends on how long the episode is.
• All Podcasts and Blog Posts need to be tagged with keywords so that search engines will find them. For me this might be IBM Maximo, EAM, CMMS, Maximo training, Maximo 7.6.1.2, Maximo user guide, perhaps. I use Categories on my blog, is that the same thing? I use a hashtag on LinkedIn when I am posting, are these keywords that search engines will find? Need to check this all out.
• There are different types of podcasts
  • Solo – Easy Editing but requires a lot of energy (acting)
  • Interview – Requires question preparation
  • Chat Show – Difficult to schedule, needs moderation, varying audio quality
  • Conversational 
  • Narrative (fiction or non-fiction) – Story based. Investigative journalism.
•  The idea I’ve got for a podcast would be the Solo type. Interview seems to me to be a giant step into the unknown. Let’s face it Andrew, you don’t speak to people about Maximo that often anymore. The non-fiction narrative would work for my big idea.
• Some podcasts have a consistent music intro and a consistent ending to establish a brand. Hmm, what sort of music would suit?
• Some podcasts identify the sponsors per episode. Well, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?
• Content curation is clearly establishing the Title (5 words max), Description (4000 characters max), the objective and value that the listener will gain from their time spent listening.
• Create a Content Calendar (example downloaded). This helps in organisation/planning. Publishing dates should be consistent. I will probably need to record all episodes of a series before publishing the first then, any day I might get assigned onto a bid, and then the day job bleeds into the evening and sometimes weekends as well.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. Did I know that? Why did you make a note of it then?
• Spotify will include the title and description; others may be just a title. That needs researching. 

That was an easy introduction, four things to check out. Good job Georgina. Onward to module 2 then.