Podcasting is an extremely powerful tool that should be in every information marketer's toolkit. It can help build your reputation while it attracts traffic to your site. It can provide information to your customers while it helps to position your products.

But it can be frightening. And every once in a while I'll get questions from people who want to run a podcast but are afraid.

One of the most common questions is "What's the best advice for podcasting?" And I must admit to being hard pressed to pick a single piece of advice as the best. There is so much advice possible and so much of it is good and important. However, here are the top five in my opinion from bottom to top.

5. Fix it in the edit room. All too often new podcasters think they have to be perfect. But it just isn't so. In fact, the audience will relate to you better if you make the occasional flub. In fact, the hardest job for the editor isn't fixing your mistakes. It's deciding what mistakes to leave in. As for the rest of your mistakes, remember that your podcast isn't live. It's recorded. That means the audio editor (remember him?) can correct your mistakes. The result could be (but shouldn't be) a perfect podcast. No matter how many mistakes you made!

4. Record podcasts in a batch. Podcasts are a repeating product. You are going to need many of them. It's far more efficient to record them in a batch than it is to record them one at a time. For example if you are producing a podcast once per week, recording one podcast per week is inefficient. You would be better off recording a month's worth of podcasts on one day.

3. Stand up and walk around when you are recording. It sounds odd but there is a good reason for it. Standing up changes your lungs. Simply put you get more air and therefore you can speak better. Walking helps you to put more energy into your speaking. And that passion and energy will be heard by your audience.

2. Smile. If stand up and walk sounded odd, this advice will sound downright silly. But it's true. Your audience can hear you smile. And a smile changes your attitude as well. So always smile when recording your podcast.

And the best advice of all is... (drum roll please!)

1. Be prepared. If you were ever a Scout you heard this phrase time and time again. But it applies to podcasters every bit as much as it does to campers in bear country. But rather than bringing coffee cups and can openers (ever tried to open a can with a sharp stick?) instead you need to plan. You need to plan the audience you want to attract. You need to plan your format to meet their needs. You need to design (aka script) your podcast's columns.

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