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What about Blog Talk Radio?

January 15, 2009

Quite a few potential mom podcasters have been asking me about hosting a show on Blog Talk Radio as an easy option for producing a new show.

For those who aren’t familiar, Blog Talk Radio is a totally free live internet radio venue for people who would like to host their own show and even be able to take live calls.  They provide all the cool tools for your show and even generate an RSS feed of your recordings so that it is instantly podcasted.

There are some definite advantages to Blog Talk Radio.  Running a live show means no mixing and production work later.  The fun of taking live calls is a huge plus.  I love how your live listeners can hang out in a web chat and interact with each other and you too.

If you’re going to use BTR, even thought they do provide everything you need for an RSS feed – I advise you to still set up your own blog and post your show notes along with the mp3 link so that you can be in control of your own RSS feed.  You never know when you might want to make a change and it’s a terrible pain to deal with switching things out later.

I used BTR for Mom’s Morning Show for nine months.  The system wasn’t always reliable but we always understood that it was new and constantly being upgraded and improved.  And hey – you can’t complain about free, right?

I wanted to try BTR to see if having a show on their site would increase our exposure but to be honest, I didn’t see that happening.  Even when their Community Manager gave us some buzz on the blog and when we were featured on their main page, we didn’t see big listenership.  There are so many programs running all the time – just being there doesn’t draw attention.  Promoting your show is still up to you.  If you understand that going in, BTR is a great resource for you.

Some of the moms I talk to shy away from doing a live show for fear of things like flubs and dead air.  There’s a post on the Blog Talk Radio Blog about avoiding dead air that I think holds some excellent advice about that.

Last 5 posts by Kelly McCausey

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Written by Kelly McCausey · Filed Under Kelly McCausey 

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