Understanding the Role of RSS Feeds in Podcasting

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the how to start a podcast series. I'm Craig Hewitt from Kastos. And in this video, we're going to talk through what an RSS feed is, why you might should care, and why it is the thing that powers your podcast to platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So at a basic level, an RSS feed is a link or a website, a URL if you will. It is a link that contains all of the information about your show in two different ways. One is at a category level, kind of meta level, the title of your podcast, the COVID image that you create, that little thumbnail. We'll talk much more about that in a future video. The description, the categories that's going to be in you as the host, or if you have a co host, and then every episode is appended to that in order. You can define kind of which order that is, whether it's kind of as you release them, or if you want them to be in a specific order. And those items, if you will, in an RSS feed have things like a title of an episode and a description of an episode. And most importantly, the link to the media file URL, which is the thing that somebody downloads or streams on their phone or in podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So the RSS feed really is the thing in air quotes that that defines what a podcast is. And without an RSS feed, you don't have a podcast.

[00:01:16] An RSS feed is also the thing that is submitted to podcast directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and all of the others to show your podcast on those platforms. So it becomes discoverable to new listeners. When we subscribe to a podcast on our phone, we're actually subscribing to that RSS feed directly. So it really is the connection between you and your content and your listeners. And so how do you create an RSS feed? It's really a large reason why you have a podcast hosting platform like castos is to create and maintain that RSS feed. Otherwise, you'd have to kind of code this manually, figure out how to store the media files, all this kind of stuff. And your podcast hosting platform like Acastos will give you the RSS feed also gives you analytics about who's listening, stores and delivers those files. And that's kind of the goal or the purpose of a podcast hosting platform like acastos. So as you're creating your podcast, just a couple of gotchas to be aware of. Your RSS feed will need a couple of items to be considered valid in the eyes of platforms like Apple podcasts and Spotify. Not an exhaustive list, but you need a title, you need a description, you need a cover image, you need a category for it to appear in. You need your name as a host, and you need at least one episode published and live before you can submit your podcast to places like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

[00:02:37] All of that you do within your podcast hosting platform. Again, like a castos.

[00:02:43] So just a real brief overview of what an RSS feed is, why you should care how to put one together, what the value of a podcast hosting platform is, and why you really need one to run a show. And in our next video, we're going to talk through how to think about planning your podcast content so you can start recording content and get your show live here real quick. For more information about what we do, head to Castos.com to learn more.

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