An effective website is key to any podcast’s success, drawing in listeners, growing audiences and encouraging visitors to subscribe or download episodes as well as sign up for your mailing list.
Squarespace websites come equipped with everything needed to host your own podcast, including an RSS feed and Audio Blocks that let you upload mp3 files up to 160 MB in size.
Create a Blog Page
Squarespace is an excellent platform for hosting and creating podcasts, offering intuitive tools that make managing them straightforward. Not only can Squarespace host your show but you can even set up a blog page specifically dedicated to it so your show notes can be quickly found by your listeners.
To create a blog page for your podcast, navigate to Pages and select Create Page. Give your new page a name and select Blog as the type – customizing its layout by dragging and dropping various blocks from the left-hand sidebar is also an option! After creating your page for your podcast’s blog episodes can begin being uploaded via its frontend editor; click “Publish” when ready or “Save” instead if saving as draft is preferred.
Once your first podcast episode is published, linking your podcast to websites and platforms becomes much simpler. To do this, your RSS feed must be connected. To do this, click the Gear icon that appears when hovering over blog pages and choose Settings; from here, select Feed Settings where you can customize how often posts show up as RSS feed entries; change formats if necessary or even create custom feed URLs!
As your podcast grows, so must its RSS feed. To do this, navigate to your home page, then Pages, then Blogs. Identify which blog contains your episodes and enable podcasting by clicking its podcasting icon.
Next time you create a podcast episode, click the Podcasting icon in your blogging section and insert an Audio Block. When the pop-up window opens up, enter information such as title, description, artist and cover image into it – as well as whether or not to allow visitors to download audio file(s). Note: the Audio Block supports MP3 and M4A files under 160 MB in size.
Add an Audio Block
Before beginning to create your podcast, there are a few essentials you’ll need to put into place first. First and foremost is choosing an RSS feed for it; an RSS feed enables listeners to locate and subscribe to your show through directories as well as social media; it also informs them when new episodes are ready for download and consumption.
Once you’ve decided on an RSS feed, the next step in creating your podcast should be creating a page specifically dedicated to it. This page can serve as the hub of all of your episodes while expanding your audience. Squarespace offers several template pages or you could make custom ones specifically tailored to your podcast; whatever way you go with, ensure it contains links directly back to the RSS feed you chose!
All Squarespace templates include two features necessary for hosting a podcast: a blog and audio block. If you choose one with these already integrated, you’ll be ready to begin creating your show immediately!
The Audio block is an ideal way to present music files and podcasts on your website. You can upload mp3 or m4a files that do not exceed 160 MB in size, and multiple episodes of a podcast can either all be added together or on separate pages using this block.
An alternative way of embedding your podcast is using a Third Party Tool. Third-party tools provide convenient management of all aspects of podcasting under one umbrella and offer options to customize its settings as well.
Once your podcast has been added to your website, it’s important to spread its reach by promoting it across social media and other platforms. Use existing accounts or create brand new ones dedicated to promoting it – you could also submit your podcast directly into a directory for maximum exposure!
Add an RSS Feed
If you’re serious about podcasting, using a website builder with an RSS feed hosting service could be the way forward. Doing this would enable you to add additional content that might otherwise not be possible using one of the many free site hosts; such as videos, behind-the-scenes stories and photos which give your show more personal warmth; it could even allow listeners to leave feedback which will engage your listeners even further!
Squarespace provides an RSS feed that you can use to link directly to blog posts, but you can also create a specific feed just for podcast episodes. This enables you to submit them directly to Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify where new listeners will discover your show while also making sure your website-wide feed only contains episodes instead of other blog content which could cause confusion with listeners.
Your RSS feed can easily be created with a free online tool like FeedBurner or an open-source program such as RSS Builder. Once created, ensure it works by testing for errors before publishing it – there are various free validators such as W3C’s online validation tool that you can utilize to do this.
Once your RSS feed is set up, you can add podcasts to your Squarespace website by adding an Audio Block to any page or blog post on your site. Or create a new blog post and select Audio Block from the Content Editor toolbar when adding content for that blog post.
Fill in all available fields within the Audio Block, such as title, description and tags to make it easier for listeners to find and subscribe to your show. After creating your podcast, make sure that it gets promoted across social media networks as well as other marketing avenues in order to expand its audience base.
Add an Episode Page
If you have an extensive backlog or plan to post more frequently, an Episode Page on your website could make finding and navigating your content much simpler for listeners. By organizing all podcast episodes into separate folders on one page, your listeners may have a simpler time finding what they need quickly and easily.
To create an Episode Page, first head to your Podcast tab and select “Add New Episode”. This will open a window that allows you to enter your episode title and show notes – these written descriptions of your episode provide the opportunity to promote additional resources or programs your target audience might enjoy.
Next, decide whether or not you would like to enable the Create Clip feature for this episode (it is strongly suggested). When enabled, this feature enables your audience to share segments from your podcast with their friends and followers on Facebook, potentially expanding your reach and amplifying its impact.
Once your episode details are in order, click Publish to publish them and view analytics for your podcast on your Podcasts page. Here you will be able to see an overview of who is listening as well as their locations and devices used. Additionally, use Distribution as well as Publishing tabs to set up distribution feeds so your podcast appears in other directories/apps such as Apple Podcasts.
If you would like to provide transcripts for your episodes, the Episode Page editor makes this easy by clicking the Edit Transcript button. Transcripts provide written versions of podcast audio that help hearing impaired audiences as well as search engines understand what each episode covers.
As you can see, using Squarespace to host your podcast is an easy process. With some careful planning, you can set up an RSS feed, create episode pages and track audience and performance on social media – turning your podcast into an effective marketing tool to foster relationships and gain new listeners.
