For the past few months, Simplecast has been working diligently with a third-party auditing firm to achieve IAB Podcast Measurement Certification. While our Audience Insights are IAB compliant all the way back to June 2017, we didn’t yet have the IAB Tech Lab’s stamp of approval. Well, we’re proud to announce that Simplecast and the IAB have made it official–starting today, all Audience metrics have been audited, approved and certified by the IAB (we even got a seal)! 🍾 💌

As a company that has always obsessed over creators’ success, data and measurement standardization is a huge piece of that. Not only do you want to know those downloads are a legitimate listener but, even more so, held to a widely accepted system of accountability and measurement. …

At Simplecast, we’re always looking to help creators get ahead and find new audiences. Starting this week, you’ll now be able to easily distribute your shows and direct your listeners to Radio.com and Deezer.

Meeting listeners where they are is a big part of growing your audience, which is why we’re so excited to make it easy for you to reach Deezer’s 14 million monthly active users across 180 continents. You can find Deezer and Radio.com in your Distribution page, and add their subscription links to your website and player, so no matter where your audience is coming from, they can stick with you!

Want to know more? Here’s what you need to know about publishing your podcast on Deezer and publishing your podcast on Radio.com.

Still have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support team!

Originally published at https://blog.simplecast.com on August 12, 2019.

We love the chance to connect with podcasters across the world-that’s why we’re so happy to be sponsoring Podcast Movement for the third year in a row! Here’s where we’ll be-make sure to say hi!

New Attendee Orientation

Tuesday, August 13th
Session 1: 9:00–11:00am
Session 2: 3:00–5:00pm

Whether you’re a first timer at Podcast Movement, or just looking to get back into the swing of things, this session is for you!The morning before Podcast Movement officially kicks off, you’ll have the chance to learn from PM veterans the best way to make the most out of Podcast Movement 2019…plus meet a few hundred podcasters a day early to boot!Podcast Movement, with over 100 sessions and 200 speakers, can be very intimidating. …

Missed out on our webinar for Simplecast customers last week? No worries! Tanner Campbell from PortlandPod joined the Simplecast team to go over the nuts and bolts of podcast production, and why things like planning and location are just as important as recording and equipment.

Planning Stage

Like any campaign, product rollout, or initiative, a podcast requires planning. If this is you or your team’s first time producing a show, you might feel the urge to just sit down in front of a microphone and start recording. Take it from us, and the other podcasters we’ve worked with: the planning phase is just as important as recording, and crucial for smooth podcast production. Do all of the legwork you’d do for any project: what’s the purpose? Who’s your audience? What are you trying to deliver? This lays the groundwork for who your guests are, how your show is structured, and what you marketing looks like. …

In June of 2019 at the World Wide Developers Conference, Apple announced a major update coming soon to podcast categories and sub-categories.

Categories are how shows are categorized and organized in Apple Podcasts (currently the largest podcast directory). Categories and subcategories are added to your RSS Feed with tags such as </itunes: category> and used by Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps to organize and categorize content by topic to help your show get found. The new Enhanced Apple Podcasts Categories will effect most podcasters who have a show listed in the Apple Podcasts directory. …

On June 27, “An Extraordinary Evening for Podcasters of Color” took a powerful swing at shaping the culture of podcasting. Jay Connor (@deathtoadverbs), founder of Extraordinary Ideas and co-host and producer of “The Extraordinary Negroes” podcast, presented the evening and moderated an insightful panel with a single goal: to ignite a discussion about the wholesale changes necessary to achieve equitable treatment within the podcasting industry.

This second event of this series, hosted at the YouTube Space-Los Angeles, invited podcasters to mix & mingle, and then engage in highly-relevant programming that featured female voices from underrepresented communities in the growing ubiquity of podcast creators. …

Here at Simplecast, we do weekly webinars for Simplecast members-but we know sometimes life can get in the way of attendance, so we like to post the highlights to our blog! In last week’s webinar, Aaron and Addy discussed affiliate link strategies to enhance earnings potential as a podcaster, without relying on the traditional model used by major advertisers. Read on to learn more!

Why affiliate marketing?

Beginner podcast creators looking to monetize may find themselves bumping up against a few roadblocks-the main being that they don’t quite hit the download threshold for traditional sponsorships. You may see advertisers talking about CPM, or Cost Per Mille, which represents the return per thousand views/hits. Major companies can require an industry-standard 10,000 podcast downloads before considering a direct sponsorship of your show. But don’t worry! …

At Simplecast, we’re always striving to help podcasters succeed, and make podcasting more accessible. That’s why we’re super excited to roll out a feature that will help you do both! Simplecast customers now have the ability to add transcripts directly to their episode pages on a podcast’s Simplecast Site.

As we’ve said in the past, podcast transcription is a best-practice, and essential for growing your audience. Transcription can help your search engine ranking and make your podcast more discoverable-after all, most search engines can’t listen to your podcast, but they can crawl your transcripts! But transcriptions don’t just benefit you-they also help D/deaf and hard of hearing subscribers, as well as listeners who are learning the language your podcast is in, and people with audio processing issues. …