Chances are good that you'll get most of your subscribers from the larger directory services if you're diligent about listing your podcast. However, that's not the only way to get subscribers. Quite a few may find your Web page via a search engine, particularly if your topic is unique. In this case, it's important to showcase your podcast on your Web page. You want visitors to know in a split second that your Web page is more than just a blog. You want them to see that you have a podcast and that they can subscribe with a single, easy-to-find button.
Until recently, the problem was that there was no single universally accepted icon to indicate that a podcast was available. Different sites used different icons and different colors. Some folks took the original RSS icon, which was a small orange box with the letters "RSS" in white, and substituted the letters "POD." The good people at the Mozilla Foundation decided it would be best if a standardized icon were developed. The logic behind the development was that the icon should not include any abbreviations or acronyms, because people wouldn't necessarily understand what XML or RSS stood for, nor should they have to. They came up with the orange icon shown in Figure 1 (shown here in grayscale, obviously).
As with most things in the world of podcasting, the icon was loved by some and hated by others. There was plenty of lively discussion, which was pretty much brought to a halt when Microsoft decided to use the same icon for its upcoming Internet Explorer 7.0 release. Although you'll probably still see mavericks out there using their own iconography, most people will gravitate toward the Firefox/IE icon, and it will become the de facto standard.
| Note | The Mozilla Foundation has publicized usage guidelines for feed icons here: www.mozilla.org/foundation/feed-icon-guidelines/ |
In most cases, you'll want the RSS icon to link to your RSS feed. However, for those folks who subscribe to podcasts using iTunes, you can make their subscription easier by posting a link to your feed via the iTunes store. For example, the link to subscribe to the Dawn and Drew Show on iTunes looks like this:
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73331700
When you click this link, it automatically opens iTunes and subscribes you to the Dawn and Drew show, with just one click. To find out what the direct link to your podcast in iTunes is, just Ctrl+click (right-click in Windows) the image you uploaded for your show. This opens a little window that lets you copy the URL for your show for linking purposes.
Now that you have the iTunes direct link, the question is what icon should you use to link to it? You don't want to use the standard RSS icon, because it doesn't work for folks who don't use iTunes to listen to podcasts. You want some way of letting people know that the link is specifically for iTunes users. Unfortunately, there's no right answer here. Folks have designed their own icons for this purpose, and there is no Apple-approved version.
Of course, if you're offering a special button for iTunes listeners, you may also want to offer a button for folks who use Yahoo! Podcasts, Odeo, Google, or any other number of podcast subscription services. And if you're offering your podcast in a number of different formats, you need to have an RSS feed for each format and ideally some sort of icon for each one. Again, there are no standards here. Peter Forret has created a nice set of icons that use a miniaturized version of the RSS feed icon along with wording indicating what the buttons specifically do. You can see his icons here:
web.forret.com/tools/podicons.asp
| Note | If you want to tweak what Peter has done, he's kind and modest enough to admit that he used a cool online tool to create his buttons, and you can too — the Brilliant Button Maker: www.lucazappa.com/brilliantMaker/buttonImage.php |
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