Spreaker Live Show #78 for Aug 24th, 2016

Our Topics This Week:
- How to Select a Podcast Name
- Tip of the Week “9 Steps To Making Great Podcast Cover Art”

Show Duration: 29 minutes

Host: Rob Greenlee, Head of Content, Spreaker @robgreenlee - rob(at)spreaker(dotcom)
Co-Host: Alex Exum, Spreaker Host of "The Exum Experience" and the "Spreaker Studio Review" shows at @AlexExum

We had some feedback from last weeks show #77:

THE X & Y SHOW from Spreaker.com:
Lot of good points. One thing is for Podcasters to never lose their confidence, and keep plugging away!! Like me, my show is in it's baby stages.... But I'm coming! ;o)

Gail Nobles from iOS:
It's nice to have listeners, but it's also good to know how well you are doing. You can get 60 views or listeners without anyone commenting or likes on your podcast. It's interesting to know what radio and podcasters aim for?

Spreaker Blog at http://Blog.Spreaker.com – Articles and Spreaker News

- I will be at the coming Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference in Philly - Sept 9-10
- Moderating Hall of Fame Panel and Sponsoring an awards event
- Live streaming at the event
- http://podcastmidatlantic.com

Our Tip of the Week is a Blog Post: 9 Steps To Making Great Podcast Cover Art

1. Follow iTunes’ requirements
iTunes is the largest podcast directory, and the most popular, so it’s important to make sure your artwork adheres to its requirements. As stated in iTunes’ help section, they require that Podcast feeds contain artwork that is a minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels, 72 dpi, in JPEG or PNG format with appropriate file extensions (.jpg, .png), and in the RGB colorspace. To optimize images for mobile devices, Apple recommends compressing your image files to 500K size max.

2. Design it for scalability
Even if iTunes requires min. 1400 x 1400 images, always remember that your cover art can get scaled down at any point, so it must remain legible even when its dimensions are really small. Starting creating your artwork with the smallest size first, like 600x600, 300x300, 125 x 125, 75x75 or 55 x 55. If it still looks good and you can clearly make out what’s there, it’s perfect! Podcasters: make sure your cover artwork looks great and is legible when scaled down.

3. Use high quality images or vector graphics
The last thing to keep in mind when it comes to sizes and pixels is that even if you’ve sized your artwork correctly, it will still look bad if the images aren’t high quality in the first place, and you’ll spoil the final product. You can find great, high quality pictures on the many free stock picture websites around, like pexels.com or istockphoto.com. You can also try creating cover artwork with vector graphics using Canva.com. If you’re comfortable with Adobe’s suite, you’ll also find some great readymade vector graphics on freepik.com.

4. Keep it consistent with your brand
Generally speaking, you should never underestimate the importance of brand consistency: you want to stay recognizable and familiar to your listeners no matter what they see. It’s why you should use the same logo, fonts, and general color scheme for your artwork on Spreaker, iTunes, and every other podcatcher, as well as your website, social network pages, and accounts. We recommend you create a template for episode images, so that you can distinguish episodes from each other, yet still keep them consistent with the show’s overall artwork.

5. Make it eye-catching
As listeners browse through shows on Spreaker, they’ll be deciding in a matter of seconds what to pass up based solely on who has attractive or unattractive images. So, consider creating artwork with bold contrast, and try to use images that will immediately convey what your podcast is about. The best podcast cover artwork is simple + iconographic. Keep to ONE logo (avoid network logos) to ensure legibility

6. Easily communicate what your podcast is about
Your show’s art is the first thing your listeners will see, even before listening to your podcast. That’s why it has to visually evoke the content of your show to your listeners. The question you should answer with your artwork is: what is my show about?

7. Use few words
There’s no time to read, not even a haiku! This is not the place to explain with words what your show is about. Save those syllables for your podcast description section! Daniel J. Lewis of The Audacity To Podcast gave this great advice: “The easiest word to remove from your cover art can be the word ‘podcast,’ as it’s really unnecessary in your title. Think of ‘podcast’ as the label for your distribution method (which it actually is, technically) and not part of your title unless necessary.”

8. Don’t use more than 2 fonts
Your artwork’s text needs to be legible, even at the tiniest dimensions, and the easiest way to do that is to use the right font. Another great tip from Daniel J. Lewis: Serif fonts (with “feet”), like Times New Roman, Garamond, or Bodoni, often have thin lines and small details that get lost or blurred at small sizes. Script fonts can be too ornate to be legible, unless they’re really big (and never put a script font in all-caps!). Sans serif fonts (“without feet”), like Arial, Myriad Pro, or Futura, work really well with thick or uniform-thickness lines, clear characters, and strong contrasts from the background.

9. Avoid overused images
Like the word “podcast”, try to avoid microphones, headsets, and other overused pictures of podcasting gear. Podcasting is the medium, just focus on the great content you’re sharing and make it eye-catching by following all our previous steps! (The only exceptions are podcasts about podcasting!)

Don’t be overwhelmed at all the steps we’ve listed above, it’s not as daunting as it seems! But if you really think it’s too much work or you’re not confident enough in your design skills, consider paying an artist who can quickly make high quality graphic designs for you. Discover how to get new images now, at this link.

Let’s Dive into our main topic this week “How to Select a Podcast Name”

- Should be short and sweet - single word names or short phrases are popular
- Longer names of name phrases are ok. Drive important search keywords is good for iTunes/Google
- Needs to fit square cover art image in bold font on image
- It is good have a show title that is obvious “What your podcast is about”
- Is it fun or have a word meaning association with your show concept
- Does it have words that can be easily misspelled or confused via verbal communications
- Check Google/iTunes for prior use of the show name ideas
- You should check the availability of a domain name

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