Tech Help for Churches — Podcast Names and RSS Feeds

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On today’s Tech Help for Churches, Podcast Names and RSS Feeds

Podcast Names
It actually matters what you name a podcast episode. You want a name that’s searchable, but there is extraneous information that might not be helpful. I’d try and add google keywords to the title so that it helps, steering clear of synonyms that are less-used.

Adding the date helps viewers to know if they’ve already consumed the content or not (for example if a episode happened before a certain date, they might not know that they’ve listened because of the title, but might know that they had listened to everything before June 2014).

Episode numbers aren’t as helpful. Here’s why. They mean different things to different people. Is episode 301 the 301st episode or is it the first episode of season 3? How many episodes are in a season if so? It might only a few, so 301 could be the 11th episode if it’s the first of season three and seasons one and two only had 5 episodes each. The podcaster might feel good about the number of episodes, but does it tell the audience member anything that looking at the episode list wouldn’t?

I normally name mine in this format: show abbreviation (THFC for this one), date (yymmdd format) and then the name.

RSS
Imagine that your spouse sends you a text and asks you to pick up some stuff at the store. Before you are done shopping, you get a message to pick up a few more. RSS is like a text message from the podcaster to your computer asking it to download the latest episodes.

RSS looks kind of scary if you’ve never seen it before, but it’s really just a bunch of labels that say what words mean. Each label surrounds the words it describes.

In the old days, we’d hand-code our RSS or use software to make it, but thankfully today, it’s done automatically with the system that runs a website.

I use a free wordpress plug-in called “powerpress” which makes my feed and also gives me a player for my site. There are other solutions for other content management systems, too so look for the one that goes with what you use.

This show is recorded live every Monday at 11a edt, 8a pdt, 3p utc on http://churchtechcast.com. Watch it live and join the chat then.

About this show:

Tech Help for Churches is a weekly podcast recorded live every Monday at 11a edt, 8a pdt, 3p utc on http://churchtechcast.com. Watch it live and join the chat then.

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