How to Check that your Podcast meets the iTunes RSS Specifications

When it comes to promoting your podcasts, iTunes is an easy place to do it. Subscribing is rather straight-forward, and with ipods being all the craze these days, iTunes is still a pretty popular spot for people to look up music and podcasts. Before you can submit your podcast, you need to make sure everything is properly created and filled out so that your RSS feed fits the iTunes technical specifications.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• your podcast mp3 files on a server
• a created RSS feed and URL for your podcast
• a computer
• internet connection
• iTunes

1. To upload your podcast, first you need to make sure that the audio recordings are in one of iTunes' supported formats. The file formats that work for iTunes include .m4a, .mp3, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, and .pdf.

2. Then you need to post your episode files on a server with a publicly accessible URL.

3. 

   Create an RSS feed, which is an XML file, and make sure it conforms to the RSS 2.0 specifications.

4. Include the recommended iTunes RSS tags.

5. Make sure your RSS feed contains pointers to your episodes.

6. Then, you must post the RSS file on your server and submit the URL for your RSS feed to iTunes to get it approved.

7. 

   As the last step, you should test your feed to make sure it works on iTunes. To do this, go to the iTunes toolbar and find Advanced/Subscribe to Podcast. Enter your feed URL and click OK. If you can download it and listen to it yourself, it should be find. If there is an error, an "i" in a black circle will appear. Don't submit it until you have checked that everything is up to par.

Tips & Warnings

• Make your title specific, so people who search for it on iTunes will know exactly what it is when they see it.
• The summary is something you should take time to fill out carefully. This is your chance to sell your podcast so that people will be intrigued and want to find out more. Provide them for all the relevent and essential information. Look at other podcasts, think about what is helpful about their summaries and what you want to convey to your listeners.