How To Get More Zune Podcast Listeners
Aug 29th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, iPods & Portable Media Players, Podcasting 
With the launch of the Zune HD coming up September 15th, podcasters may be thinking about revisiting the Zune platform.
Microsoft podcasting guru Rob Greenlee offers these tips on how to get more Zune podcast listeners:
Here are a few things that you should do as a podcast content creator to reach as many Zune podcast users as possible.
- If your podcast is already in the directory then visit the below link and search by your podcast title to get link code and Zune icon to add a deep-link to your podcasts page in the Zune Marketplace software and to the podcasts page on our official Zune.net website at – Click here to get the link code
- If your podcast feed is not already in our catalog, then you can submit it to us on our web-based Zune podcast directory at http://www.zunepodcasts.com, it is a link that says “Submit a Podcastâ€. You could also create a “1-Click Zune Podcast Subscription†link for your podcast feed URL by following these directions – Click here
Got other ideas on how to get more Zune podcast subscribers? Leave a comment below!
I’ve submitted my podcast a few times and have yet to see it appear in the Zune Podcast directory. Zune Podcast directory has a lot of video and not much audio, I suspect they approve video podcasts promptly and don’t spend any time approving audio.
Angelo, Video and audio feeds are treated the same on the Zune podcast platform. Actually 75% of the podcasts in the Zune Podcast Catalog are audio only feeds. The podcast feed submission tools that have been provided to me do prioritize review for approval of podcast feeds based on the number of unique user times they have been submitted as a gauge of popularity and demand. This system was originally build to support audience needs first, so content providers that submit once often don’t rise to the top of the submission review que. This is the reason that it often takes time to get into the catalog. My advise is to get your audience to submit your podcast feed to Zune as a way to get into the catalog faster.
no matter how much I love my Zune, most of our audience doesn’t listen via Zune. most are iTunes users or people who follow via Firefox RSS or Google Reader. we are often the only ones submitting our feed into Zune. do the submission tools track by IP address or is it safe to just submit my podcast 3-4 times a day to make sure it gets submitted eventually. i understand popular podcasts getting added first but couldnt smaller ones get added eventually? dont you examine the pdocasts to see what kind of traffic they are getting? Also, originally I only heard of submitting a podcast via the Zune Marketplace. Though it is a small handful of people, the few Zune owners I know dont even view the Marketplace except maybe once when looking for podcasts early on. The only time I view the Marketplace tab is when I go to downloads to see what podcasts i am already subscribed to are downloading.
Mike, You can submit your feed via our website now – http://www.zunepodcasts.com and doing that multible times is fine with me. All will be added as long as the podcast feed has a 300×300 .jpg album art image linked to in the RSS feed (iTunes tags and RSS Image tags ok), good description text, content does not contain porno graphic or illegal content and is regularly updated.
That small handful of zune podcast users is in the 10’s of millions of podcast subscriptions active on the platform. I have been told by many popular podcasters that 20-25% of their downloads come from Zune, that is not all podcasts showing this kind of numbers. The other thing to keep in mind is that this 20% is not pulling away from iTunes, but would be adding new audience to your podcast.
FYI, the Zune Podcast Marketplace in the software and at http://www.zunepodcasts.com gets feature updates twice weekly.
honestly, it's a terrible system but now is revealed to me why i've been waiting over 3 months for it to show up… for a new podcaster with a small audience, i shouldn't have to rely on them to get listed. it's a catch-22. i need to get listed for new listeners to find me, but i can't be found without new listeners to submit it for me??
its all madness. zunepods and zunecasting are going to he huge in japan i think