So I had started my podcast a few months ago, and was wondering if anyone was actually listening.

I then got a couple very nice messages from my blog visitors, each of which mentioned how much they loved my podcast. Thank you for inspiring me to keep going.

A few people have also written about how to get the “listen to this post” feature working on their own sites.

I wrote up a quick tutorial for how you can get audio on your site.

You will need a sound recorder. I use Audacity. It is free, and open source. You can get that here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

If you want to export your recordings into .mp3 format, which I recommend, you will need to add one additional item to Audacity- the lame_enc.dll file in order to export recordings as .mp3. You can get that here:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?lame_enc

You will need a microphone to record to your computer. I have used both headset based microphones as well as free-standing USB ones.

Here is my current favorite

Plantronics DSP 400

So the process is that you record the audio and save it. Then export as .mp3. You will FTP it to your site, and note the exact location, because you’ll need it for the next step.

To get your audio linked to your WordPress blog post, you’ll need the podcasting plugin. You can get that here:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podcasting/

While I am not an audio whiz by any means, this system works well and is easy to work with.

If your sound quality is not as good as you hoped, you may need to update sound drivers for your computer. I read that sometimes helps. Also, if you plug directly into your computer sound card with the built in-jacks, that can also improve sound quality.

To remain relevant and active in social media, it is important to offer your content in as many forms as you comfortably can support. I’m glad that people are enjoying my audios and I plan to create more of them.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and use it to get audio up on your blog.