“In today’s world, just about anybody can record their message, whether it’s educational, entertaining, or whatever, and get it disseminated to millions and millions of people at almost no cost,” said KFC Blanchette of Podchick.com and Skydivergirls.com.

Podcasting.  It seems easy enough, but WebProNews wanted to give you a few helpful tips of how to start a Podcast.  So how hard could it be, right?  Well there are some basic key elements to think about when looking into creating a Podcast.

We talked with SEO Expert from NEO1SEO.com, David Brown about what you should concentrate on first.

“You know there are a lot of times that you think you can talk about a subject forever and ever, yet when it comes times to put the episodes together, you start to run out of show ideas and people to interview and things of that nature. So definitely having a topic that you can talk on in great length helps,” said David Brown.

We also talked with Chief Technology Officer of ToolBarn.com, Brian Mark about some of the disadvantages of Podcasting.  The only thing he could think of that would be considered a downfall is the “bandwidth used for Podcasting.”  But he did mention that Podcasting could do wonders for branding and marketing. So if you are looking for ways to get your name out there in the World Wide Web, perhaps a Podcast is one of the best ways to do so.

President of Podfactory.net and Creator of the Podcast, YogAmazing, Chaz Rough told WebProNews that you should be creative and have great content.

He said, “You’ve got to be consistent and you have to be doing this for real. Now you can just do this for fun if you want, but remember don’t expect great things, if you’re not planning on being consistent.”

When you’re consistent with your product, the audience will respond, which takes us into another key element.  Before you start to think about a Podcast, you really need to know who your target audience is.  What is your niche audience and how can you reach them?  Aside from finding your targeted audience, you need to convince them that you are someone that’s valuable to listen too.  Are you an expert? If not, how do you become one?

Both are invaluable questions you should ask yourself.  And the answers are simple.  You need to be an expert in order for people to listen to you, and in order to do that you should start interacting with the current experts.

By associating your name with these familiar names, you gain credit and learn the information you need to become an expert yourself.

Rough also said this to us, “Podcasting is still in it’s infancy stage,” meaning that there are new things being developed for Podcasting and it still has a lot of room and time for growth.

So the good news is, it’s not too late to hop on the Podcasting train and start rolling!

For more details and more helpful tips on Podcasting, you can watch the video available right here on WebProNews.

The session, simply titled "Shopping Search Tactics," featured presentations from analyst Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com, and from Brian Mark, chief technical officer at Toolbarn.com.

Smith opened his portion with a gloomy warning: This will not be as easy as Google AdWords. If you’re submitting your product information to a shopping engine, read the directions carefully – each engine has its own guidelines for data feed submissions.

There’s no optimal automated XML solution (though some circles are pushing for an open standard), so for each feed, you’ll have to hand key the information, adding as much as possible in the spaces provided. 

There are lots of engines to submit a feed to, but an important one is Google Base. "There is an amazing opportunity to get a lot of sales through Google Base," said Smith, "because if you get to the top of these results you appear in Google’s main results."

But also, he teases, Google Base offers custom attributes, and the Mountain View, Calif.-based company "is going to announce something very soon that will make this more advantageous."

Until then, Smith gives this nutshell full of advice:

There is an opportunity to do great SEO work through your data feed. Look at the data feeds for blank fields.

If you don’t have a title that is unique you are in trouble. Make titles that are more specific for search engines. There is an opportunity to really get out there and show the user what they are searching for.

No matter what people say search engine optimization is still about the content on the page. Make sure your product pages have good content.

Don’t use image links with the shopping engines.

Say exactly what you sell in the one-line description in your data feeds.

Just how important is it to establish your presence in the shopping search engines? Brian Mark says it’s about 40 proof worth of important.

"The shopping engines can offset drops from organic search results," said Mark. "We are getting over 20% of our customers from shopping engines. From AdWords, 4%; MSN, 6%; Yahoo, 9%; and 22% of our customers are repeat customers at toolbarn.com."