Summary: Today we have we some great tips about getting your guest ready to appear on your show, we have a quick podcast promotion tip, we hear what stitcher.com is doing good, and what Spreaker.com is doing very, very, bad (reminds of the days of Podshow), and I talk about getting ready for 2014. Spreaker.com Hijacking RSS Feeds And Erasing Your Brand [4:50] I wrote about this on previous blog (http://schoolofpodcasting.com/why-spreakers-rss-importer-is-a-bad-idea/). Spreaker.com keeps adding features, however you need to look long and hard at what they are doing to your file and your feed. It's not good. Stitcher Updates Their Backend [16:22] Stitcher.com continues to invest in their platform that is continuing to gain ground. Rob Walch from Libsyn.com states that on the Android platform it is the top way people consume podcasts. Stitcher also is now available in certain cars (cool!). Now they have added the feature where podcasters can change what RSS feed is being used to populate Stitcher. It also has access to stats that show 10 million people are recommending podcasts to other people on their platform every day. The average Stitcher user listens to 8 hours of podcasts a month. Speed Up Playback on Stitcher One of the things I LOVE about Stitcher (and you can do this on the Podcasts app by Apple) is the ability to speed up the playback of a podcast. The other thing I LOVE about Stitcher is they have a web based player. This allows me to dial into all my favorite shows on the web, and pick up right where I left off. The bad news (or so I thought) was there was no way to speed up the playback on the web. Well one quick email to Stitcher and I found out you can use the number keys to speed things up to 3X and use the space bar as a pause button. COOL! The Stitcher awards are open until December 24th. If you haven't nominated your favorite shows go to http://stitcher.promotw.com/ (http://stitcher.promotw.com/) (I would love to have "Ask the Podcast Coach" in the best new show category). Quick Tip To Initiate Communications [22:00] When you are adding the ID3 tags to your audio put your phone number at the end. So my line might reading "Thinning the Heard - Call in and Comment: 888-563-3228" This wouldn't be on the website title, but just for your audio title. Some players actually make this field scroll. Getting Your Guest Ready [23:45] On this week's "Ask the Podcast Coach" show (where you can call in Live for free podcast consulting) my co-host Jim Collison was stating how they do a pre interview and setup with their guest. This takes all the guesswork out of the situation, and in some cases they will actually ship their guest an Audio Technica 2100 microphone as this microphone is typically around $40 or less (the price fluctuates). It costs about $10 to $15 to ship (more or less) and it ensures that the person has great audio on their side. Thinning the Heard - Taking the Noise Removal Tool To Your Life [29:17] The old saying is failure to plan, is planning to fail. It makes a great bumper sticker but there is more to it than that. In a world of non stop stimulation, we can very easily be pulled into a million different directions that all sound good at the time. So today I'm taking a slight tangent to talk about planning. I spoke about this last week, but today I want to sharpen the axe some more. This year (being a teacher) I wanted to invest in myself and continue to grow. I decided to dive deep into what makes great content. I studied different blogs, books, and signed up for some courses. After all knowledge is power. Well knowledge is power only if its acted upon. It turns out that in between doing audio editing for clients, doing consulting calls, and recording my own podcasts that I wasn't doing anything with the content. In many cases I had sniffed it, but never digested it. So over the next few weeks I'm going to look at all the classes I'm taking, all the materials, newsletters,
