Let’s face it. There are more than one ways to create your podcast feed.

There is an easy and hard — of for some of us, fun — way to do it.

Podcast feed comprises of elements, each with its own attributes. There are also specifications for all elements that is well defined in RSS 2.0 specification.

For some people, writing their own podcast RSS feed in a Notepad or any text editor is fun, although they have to spend hours to edit and re-edit.

I recommend against that though. If you are using podcast as a tool to reach your audience, either for marketing purpose or any other way, you will agree with me here.

Without touching the “hard and fun” part, let’s go with some ways to create podcast feed:

1. Using desktop or web RSS software - This is the program that will generate proper feed from the input you give. By far, using such program is the most primitive way I should expect you do in the era where Internet makes it possible to automate things even further.
2. Using a blog - Not all blog software support enclosures, but with a plug-in, they should handle it well. Podcast feed generation with this method is more or less automatic. You just specify the link to the podcast file you want to enclose, and all is automatically done for you. For iTunes compatible feed, you need to enter many other parameters.
3. Hosted podcast service - If you use any podcast hosting service that provides easy way to publish podcast, feed generation should be taken care of for you.

iTunes is the greatest podcast directory out there, so by all means you want to be in. Feed generation that is compatible with iTunes is very common with all above methods.

Creating podcast RSS feed can take a lot of time and bring headaches if you do it manually. For business and marketing purpose, let the computer do it. It gets rid of human error from the process.

What’s next? Read the comprehensive podcast tutorial.

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