Hello, hello. Welcome to another edition of Flash Briefing February. This is where we bring you the skill sets the mindset of the marketing to build a better briefing and hopefully you've been following us during the course of the last couple of three weeks. Me Peter Stewart, as you can see, and also together with Susan Cooper. We're broadcasting professionals here. Kind of Yeah, we are broadcast professionals here in the United Kingdom. Working just outside London, I work for a big, big British Broadcasting Company, and doing all sorts of of media and video and radio and written several books on it all as well. And Suze's Introduce yourself before we crack on with today's topic, which is hosting.

It is. So I'm Susan Cooper. I am a broadcast journalist as well. I work for a radio station here in Kent, reading the news mainly. And I also read news for the London Evening Standard for the Google News that can be heard over in the US on the Google Assistant and I work with vixen labs as well, which is a voice consultancy based over in London building skills and actions for big brands and businesses around the world. So between the two of us, we've certainly got some knowledge and know how that we would absolutely love to pass on to you guys. And that's what Flash Briefing febri has been all about. So yes, today we are talking all about hosting services, and how to choose one because there are absolutely loads of them out there. Peter on there, how do we pick which one to use?

Absolutely. So just to remind you, your Flash Briefing is a little piece of audio. So pretty much like a podcast but it can only be heard on the device by Amazon Echo. It can be heard on other devices, but as a podcast. Now, there are lots of places where you can upload your podcast to you could actually use your own websites to host your audio file. And that would mean that when you ask Alexa to to play Flash Briefing, she would scurry away and find the address where is hosted that you have given her already as the as the provider as the content producer of that audio. And, as I said, we have said previously on the course, could actually be on your own website, that kind of slows things down my mean that you've got to know a little bit of technicalities and things like that much easier to use a podcast host, which is also a Flash Briefing host if you like so you need somewhere to upload all of your audio, that audio will then potentially be stored up there forever. And they are pretty cheap as well. So let's go into some of these details of some of the things that you may want to be looking for. So first of all, I would say it's got to be one of the reasonable big players. You know what there are dozens and dozens of podcast hosts out there. And some of them are brand new startups, some of them do really original, really different things. Have a look around will give you a bit of a guide here, but usually the most reliable ones are going to be one of the big players. So I wouldn't look down a list of, you know, to the 30s and 40s of podcasts, I'd look certainly in the top dozen or so. And these are the kind of things you need to look out for one that has fast and reliable service. Because the last thing you want when someone asks Alexa to play your Flash Briefing, the last thing you want is for your audio to to start and to judge or not being able to be played at all because if your audio isn't being played and people will, very, very quickly will just simply unsubscribe. And it's very, very difficult to get them back. Okay, that's my top tip number one in this battle of the podcast host. So let's move over to Suze's Come on top that.

So one of the things that you really need to think about is kind of future proofing yourself how much stories in storage is your podcast is going to allow you to have how many episodes are they going to allow you To upload before they either start kind of knocking them off the back so you can upload more or before they're going to start charging you because cost is obviously going to be something that is going to be a factor in your choice. Now, lots of these different platforms and the ones were, you know, kind of thinking of here, there there is this spreaker, a cast pod, bean Lipson, there's all kinds of different ones out there. And most of them, if not all of them have a free tier level way to kind of get you going and get you started. But it's really important to look at that free tier level and just see how long you're actually going to be able to use it for free and how much it's going to be if you do want to or need to move on to the next level. So I think I'm right in saying that the cost generally is around 15 to 20 pounds dollars a month, which isn't a huge outlay, however, again, you do want to be thinking that if you're going to try and do this over a certain number of months, it's gonna rack up and it is going to cost you that kind of annual blood Some of the podcast hosts will actually give you a discount if you sign up for a year rather than just going month by month. However, if like me, you want to kind of try it out first, which is absolutely what I did. I went month by month for a few months and then thought, No, this is okay, I'm into the routine of it, I'm finding the content, I'm getting the lessons, I'll dive straight in and go for a yearly plan, which will save me 25%. So that's my my first tip for choosing your podcast host.

And you made a really good point there because one of my Flash Briefings is an event guide. So obviously, that there's no reason for me want to keep all of the event guides from from last month, no one will ever want to listen to them. So what I can do is I can use a service, which allows a certain amount of content to be saved to be archived. And then I just delete them from the bottom, the oldest states first and then just add some more onto the top. So really good tip there. From Suze's obviously as you would expect, okay. I'm going to raise you one. Now, it's got to be easy. It's got to be straightforward. It's got to be able to save you time, it's got to have a nice interface for you to use. And it's got to have some nice support. I'm throwing a whole load in on this one, but essentially, straightforward, clean interface. Nice a user experience both for you and also people who may want to hear your Flash Briefing as a podcast and to go to the site to hear it rather than to hear it as a Flash Briefing. And don't forget the value of support. Now, I used to use a podcast host, which is actually closed down, it's been bought out by another one paper. I don't know them up. They've gone now really, really great, superb contacts and help desk they were there at all times of day and night. And they were really useful and that saved me an awful lot of perspiration and frustration and also spreaker r us as well now, and they are good as well. So I'm sure the others are too. But do consider how easy it is, what the support is like. Because after all, you want to save time when you're doing all this, you're uploading something for every single day of the year, hopefully. So look out for something that's going to save you time and save you frustration. Okay, back to Suze's.

So the other thing you might want to think about is actually where the podcast host that you're uploading to then syndicates your audio to. And this is really quite important in terms of people who might want to listen to it as a podcast because I'm certainly on Alexa, you can't actually listen directly to podcast, you need that to be fed through something like Spotify or Intune at the moment. And so you need to make sure that really your Flash Briefing is still hitting those main players and it is on Spotify. You know, it's making sure it's on iTunes, all those kinds of things and lots of these podcasts hosts, it's as easy as connecting your account to that That other hosts account and kind of linking the two and it will send out your briefing your audio out to Spotify out to to, to the other big players that are out there. And that's really quite important. Another thing that you might want to consider is the analytics and making sure that you know which analytics you're going to want, and how they might be useful to you in the future, I think possibly, Peter, I'd say the main one really is how many listens you're getting, because that might be an area where you may be able to monetize in future if if you've got those stats. That's right, isn't it?

Absolutely. So all sorts of analytics or how many people are listening. Also, perhaps where they are listening, what country how long they listen for, before perhaps they stopped playing that kind of thing. Some analytics as we've said before, you can actually get from your Amazon dashboard for your actual account when you set up your flash briefly. We'll come to that in in a few days time. But other analytics as we've said before, will be on your podcast host because what Alex will do is your pool the audio from there, then cash it herself in case other people want to hear it. So you need to put together the analytics both from your podcast host number one, number two from your Alexa developer account. And number three, potentially also go to Google podcasts and Apple podcast and Spotify as well to see how many plays work through that server as well. Okay, one more thing. And that's everything else, all sorts of other features, because some podcast hosts will also give you other features like a custom domain, a kind of mini website page, allow you to embed the audio, take a code and embed the audio on your own website, perhaps audiograms Dental audiograms acids will explain that in a couple of days time. So all sorts of things that you need to be looking out for. Don't just go for the biggest name and the biggest price.

Follow Peter on Twitter @TweeterStewart
Follow Suze on Twitter @BigTentSocial