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Google in its mysterious wisdom has decided to make us top search for “podcast tips” so I suppose I had better write a few to justify this exalted and almost accidental position.

Let’s start with some of the things you can do with iTunes to prepare your sound file for podcast. iTunes is really Apple’s software for accessing its music store, but it also has lots of useful functions for podcast publishers.

1. Before doing anything else, set up your “preferences”. This is iTunes buried secret. If you know this, the rest is easy. Find it under “Edit/Preferences/Advanced”. Here you can choose how iTunes will organise your podcast files after you have filled in the “info” tabs later on. It can hide it away inside a maze of folders and sub-folders, so take note of this. If you want to use iTunes to encode your files into MP3s, fill in the appropriate settings under “importing”. I use MP3 and “good sound quality”.
2. Add the file you want to publish into the iTunes Library. Click on “File” in top left Corner, and then “add file to library.
3. Once your file is in the Library, you can add ID3 Tags to it. This will give it a nice file name (good for SEO I think) and add bits of information that will look good in the iTunes directory. To do this, right click on the file in your library, and select “get info”. Fill in the various fields as you see fit. Filling in these fields will also relocate your file on your computer, perhaps in a Russian Doll type organisation of directories (see point 1 above).
4. If your file is in “WAV” or some other format, you can use iTunes to compress it into an MP3 files, friendly to podcasting and downloading. If you have set your preferences as per point 1, you will have an option by right-clicking the file to convert its format.
5. Finally you can finese it with an equaliser preset under info-options. I preset for voice. You should also be able to drag and drop some artwork, but I’ve never quite cracked how to load this onto the web so that it’s downloaded with the sound file. If anyone has a tip, please add to comments.

All in all, iTunes is a useful tool for podcasters, and it’s free. Those ID3 tags are pretty important, and it gives you a comprehensive list of options – more so than other tools I believe.