How To Get Up And Running With Blog Talk Radio
by Tiffany Johnson

A few weeks ago a question was posed to me on my Facebook page:

How do you get up and running with blog talk radio?

Up until that point I hadn’t thought about taking you through the steps on getting setup. I’ve been recommending it as a way of practicing for your teleseminars, etc however the how to wasn’t included. Today’s issue is all about how to get setup with Blog Talk Radio and also a few fun tricks you may not have realized was possible with this tool.

First things first, determine what you want your show to be about. This will help when it’s time to create a title, description, and select keywords that best describe your subject matter.

You’ll also want a nice graphic to be included as it will be used each time your show airs. It’s also the image that comes up whenever the link to your Blog Talk Radio Show is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. You can also have a different graphic specific for each show.

It’s important to note this information can change over time. You may start off one way and decide to switch and that’s fine. It’s what happened to us as well. All previous episodes will feature the original information.

The updates will apply to any new episodes.

Here’s a short video on the setup process:

If for some reason you do not see the video please click here.

From here you want to step through your account and update your settings for your Profile, My Page, Content, Notifications, and Password if needed.

You can have notifications setup so a reminder is be sent to both you and your subscribers a few hours prior to your show. Get ready, get ready, it’s time to go live!

You’re all set! Until show time…

In order for your show to start, you must be physically present. This means you have to dial-in to the host line and put in your host pin code to get the show started.
Otherwise those who call in to your show will hear the Blog Talk Radio announcer until the show starts. You definitely do not want that.

One thing you may not realize is although you have to be physically present you do not actually have to say anything live. That’s right, you don’t even have to talk. I’m sure you’re wondering how is that possible?

The very first blog talk radio show I ever did was on July 21st 2011. I scheduled it as a result of a blog post. However, when the time came for the show I get EXTREMELY nervous when the Blog Talk Radio announcer came on and said:

“Your show will start in 5 minutes.”

“Your show will start in 2 mins 30 secs.”

“Your show will start in 1 min.”

“Your show will start in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1”

I was live, sweating, tongue tied and had no idea what to say. I went blank. I saw that someone had logged on to the chatroom to listen to the call which made me even more nervous. I didn’t know what to do so I clicked the big red button:

Yes, I killed the episode. I didn’t want it to be full of ‘ums and uhs’ for 15 minutes. I had to quickly regroup and figure out what to do. I had posted on Facebook that we were having our first show and I knew I had to record something for my blog post.

I rescheduled it for later that afternoon and get myself together. I was ready the second time around. From that point forward I was always prepared, but hated how nervous I got when hearing the announcer. I still get nervous, however I came up with a solution.

I learned that you can pre-record your show using just about any method of choice these days. A digital recorder, a recorder on your smartphone, Sound Cloud, Audacity, whatever method you prefer to record audio and get an MP3 file. For some systems you may have to convert your .wav file to MP3.

Blog Talk Radio will accept a .wav file, however I found it to be much larger than when I converted to MP3. One day the show was going to air in just minutes and I needed my audio to load much faster than it was, so I immediately converted it to MP3 using iTunes and it loaded in no time.

These days sometimes the shows are pre-recorded and sometimes they are actually me speaking live. Either way, I’m always there to press the button just like they do at the radio station. I even have intro music which I think is pretty cool and I like playing it before and after the show starts.

This video shows exactly where to go to upload your audio. It also goes into the studio to show where you control your show.

If for some reason you do not see the video please click here.

Once you’ve got your audio uploaded, you can control your entire show from your iPad. It’s important to note again you will have to be physically present to dial in to the show, but the rest can be done with the push of a button.

Also, if you’re interested in using the chat feature, you will need to be on a a newer iPad version that supports Flash.

Be sure and come back to let us know how your Blog Talk Radio show turned out.