Using blogs and Web pages to raise your professional profile

July 27th, 2007 | Category: Heidi's Entries,How-to,Podcasting
written by: Heidi Cool

Audacity
Editing audio in Audacity

Yesterday Jeremy Smith and I gave a presentation to faculty entitled, "Using blogs and web pages to raise your professional profile." This was the final presentation in this year's UCITE summer seminar series on technology and information. For the convenience of those who couldn't attend, we recorded the presentation so that you can listen to the podcast at your convenience. I tried to clean up the audio a bit, but the quality varies. It may be hard to hear some of the questions, but you should be able to follow most of it.

You may also wish to review the slides and handout from my presentation and the slides from Jeremy's presentation. It probably won't surprise you to see that neither of us used PowerPoint. My presentation was done in Flash, while Jeremy's was done in HTML and javascript.

How the podcast was created

For those who want to learn a bit more about podcasting, here are the steps I took to create the podcast.

  1. Attach microphone to iPod, set iPod on table, press record. I used Belkin's TuneTalk™ Stereo for iPod®.
  2. Give presentation
  3. Press stop, remove microphone from iPod, return to office.
  4. Plug iPod into computer and upload voice memo to iTunes.
  5. Copy audio file from iTunes to podcasts folder on computer.
  6. Open file in Audacity.
  7. Listen to recording, adjusting volume and noise reduction as appropriate. Remove most unnecessary ums. (I had no idea how often I said "um" until I listened to this. Eeek!)
  8. Export file in .mp3 format.
  9. Import .mp3 file into iTunes.
  10. Listen to random parts of the file in iTunes to make sure it doesn't sound too horrible.
  11. With the file selected, choose "Get Info" from the iTunes file menu.
  12. Select the "Info" tab and add any necessary information such as the name of the podcast, the artist, etc. You can also add artwork using the "artwork" tab. Click O.K.
  13. Drag a copy of the newly edited .mp3 file back to your podcast folder.
  14. Upload this version of the file to your blog using the upload file feature (what you would use to upload an image or .pdf file)
  15. If this is your first podcast, go to the templates page of your blog and open the file named rss20.xml. <$MTEntryEnclosures$> should appear immediately following <item> in the file. If it is not already there, just paste it in, then save and rebuild the file.
  16. Create a new entry with a link to the .mp3 file. Once the entry has been saved users will be able to download or listen to the file from your site, through iTunes, or through other means.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Just remember to only include 1 podcastable item (audio, video or pdf) per entry. This method works reasonably well for small events. For larger or higher profile events, you can hire MediaVision to record the event with higher quality recording equipment, and pass microphones around to the audience during the question and answer period. For discussions or interviews between 2-3 people, you can use the sound studio in the Freedman Center. The Freedman Center also has audio and video equipment you can borrow for use outside the center.

P.S. As it happened, I had already subscribed to this blog in iTunes. Thus, after this posting was published, the .mp3 file was automatically downloaded to my iTunes podcast directory from which I could copy it back over to my iPod in it's final format. If I make additional podcasts from this blog, they'll all be stored together.

Bookmark & Share:
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • LinkedIn
  • FriendFeed
  • MySpace
  • email

    Share on Google Buzz

11 Comments »
  1. trying to download the podcast (save as) and all I get is a 4kb mp3 file called profile.mp3

    Comment by dave — July 27, 2007 @5:02 pm

  2. Is bandwidth an issue? If I create a 60 minute podcast encoded at 64kbps the file size would be around 28mb. Encoded at 128kbps the file size would be around 56mb. If I want to store the last 10 podcasts I could be using up to 560 mb of storage space plus all the bandwidth used to download. Just curious as to storage and bandwidth issues.

    Comment by dave — July 27, 2007 @5:09 pm

  3. Dave, Thanks for catching that problem. I created this on a Mac, and played it on a Windows machine, (Just clicked on the link and it played in the browser via quicktime) and it worked just fine. But now after seeing your message I tried downloading it on a PC and had the same problem. (Ctrl-click on a Mac downloads the whole 67.4 mb file in about 2 minutes on the Case network) It also downloaded far too quickly. It took a minute or two to post so it should have taken more time to download. Next, I tried opening it in Real Player and it said the format was incompatible with the file extension. I wonder if I chose some setting that isn't Windows friendly. I will try to fix it over the weekend. After all, it is rather bad form to proffer instructions then have it not work properly. According to Jeremy there are no space restrictions when it comes to uploading podcasts. If server space becomes tight, they'll revisit the issue, but for now, upload whatever you need.

    Comment by Heidi Cool — July 27, 2007 @5:33 pm

  4. Hi Heidi, Thanks for the tips. I'm going to check out MediaVision. :-)

    Comment by Edmund — July 29, 2007 @2:55 am

  5. Dave, I uploaded the file again and it seems to be working properly now. Please let me know if you have any other difficulties with it. -Heidi

    Comment by Heidi Cool — July 30, 2007 @10:22 am

  6. Heidi, it's working now. Thanks.

    Comment by Edmund — July 31, 2007 @1:38 pm

  7. The downside of using podcast is the size of the mp3. You see, profile.mp3 is almost 67.4 Mb, if we have a 100 downloading this mp3 the total bandwidth will be around 6.7GB, which is quite a lot for a normal website. The alternatives are using adobe flash (macromedia flash) to generate the streaming file. It works like youtube and for sure it's smaller in size thought the sound quality is not guaranteed.

    Comment by boxyad — August 5, 2007 @9:23 am

  8. Interesting point. I'm not sure how much bandwidth one would save with streaming. It depends on the format and the protocol. While a streaming audio or video file lets the user watch or listen before the download is complete, the original file must still contain the same data. I could have made a smaller file in any number of formats, including .mp3, but with the audio quality being inconsistent to begin with I didn't want to risk losing any more clarity. When choosing whether to stream or to podcast, I think I'd focus more on how the file will be used, and what is most convenient to the user. Here at Case we stream a lot of video through http://tv.case.edu and podcast files via the blogs. There are pros and cons to each, but I think a lot of it depends on the nature of the content. I consume far more audio and video content now that I have an iPod than I did a few years ago when I had to be online to view or listen to the material. For me the fact that I can download a file and play it later when and where it is convenient is very important. So too is the ability to subscribe. While that isn't so important with this file, since I don't podcast often, it is for a site that is presenting a series of lectures or programs on a regular basis. I'm subscribed to podcasts from a number of sources. New episodes will download to my computer whenever they are available and I can then listen later as I am available. If I had to go visit all these sites to watch or listen on line I would probably not catch every episode.

    Comment by Heidi Cool — August 5, 2007 @8:14 pm

  9. Hi, Thanks again for the tip. As soon as I am done at work, I am going to try this at home. I've been looking around to find that info. Thanks again,

    Comment by naoh — September 21, 2007 @4:15 pm

  10. Good idea. A blog to promote myself professionally would not be difficult to keep up with since I already write so much every day for my business. People would get to see that I have experience and do know what I am talking about. It would be even easier to upload an audio blog except I don't have an iPod yet.

    Comment by Faceman — January 20, 2008 @11:32 am

  11. 4 months ago I knew nothing about SEO,but I learned a lot of articles like this. It's a great help and beats paying someone thousands of $$. I did it to my photography site and from being not even in the top 1000 I got to the page 4 within 2 weeks!

    Comment by Toronto Wedding Photographer — April 1, 2008 @6:13 pm

Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URL