Creating, promoting, and distributing your podcast to reach an online audience of millions is relatively easy. You can get your podcast online in about 5 - 10 minutes. It can help to increase the audience for your business. Podcasting is becoming more popular as many bloggers turn to the internet radio shows to get their music/message out.

[edit] Steps

Determine the nature of your podcast. What will the content be?
Record the audio for your podcast (a program like Audacity or garage band is good).
Save the audio file (in MP3 or iPod format) to your computer desktop. Do not use special characters (such as # or % or ?) in the file name.
Create your RSS podcast feed. The feed must meet all industry standards for a valid 2.0 feed with enclosures. Try using a complete solution and free service such as Podblaze or Podomatic (see the external links below). The easiest way to do it is to use a blog. So hop on over to Blogger.com and start a blog with the title of your podcast. Don't make any posts just yet.
Put your RSS podcast feed on the Internet. Go to Feedburner and type in the URL of your blog and click "I am a podcaster!". In the next screen, configure the elements fo your podcast. These are the elements that directly relate to the podcast. your feedburner feed is your podcast.
Go to OurMedia.org and sign-up there (this may take a while). Then go to your files, and upload your MP3 file.
Make a post on your blog/website - the title of the post will be the title of that episode of the podcast, and the content will end up as the "Shownotes" or "Description". At the end of the post, put a link directly to your media file.
Wait a little. In a few minutes, feedburner should add this to your feed, and now you have an episode! You can submit it to iTunes or a number of other podcast directories to get it known. You may want to wait, however, until you have some experience, so that your podcast will be compared as a fifth episode to another's first.
Ping the appropriate podcast directories when a new show is updated.
Put the appropriate subscription buttons on your website so people can subscribe to the RSS podcast feed.

[edit] Tips

Make sure your audio is of good quality.
Make sure your audio is saved in mp3 or Ipod format.
Make sure your feed is iTunes valid.
Make sure your feed is in the directories.
Make sure you ping the appropriate services such as FreshPodcasts (see below) after you update your show.
If you wish for the RSS feed to work in Apple iTunes, you must add special fields.
You can use the popular social bookmarking tool del.icio.us to create and manage the RSS feed for your podcast. Once you have your mp3 files hosted somewhere on the internet, create a bookmark for each one on del.icio.us with a unique tag for your podcast. To acccess your del.icio.us podcast feed, visit http://del.icio.us/rss/username/my_podcast_tag+system:filetype:mp3, substituting username and my_podcast_tag for your appropriate information.
A co-host can be fun, but be sure that it doesn't sound too scattered, like none of you know what you're doing. Making it sound live is one thing, but making it sound like you have no idea what's going on, it's a completely different story.
If you're going to play music, make sure you have the rights to it. Even though they can't really crack down on podcasts for putting music in their show, if you don't have the rights to use the song, then you can be sued by individual artists
One of the most well known video sites around is YouTube. This is a great place to start podcasting with video.

[edit] Warnings

Make sure the RSS podcast feed is valid.
The bandwidth consumption can be astronomical. Make sure your podcast is hosted with a reliable server that can handle huge bandwidth spikes. Most cheap hosting services will not work for this.
Some podcasters delete episodes older than a certain length of time. People who have subscribed will still have the old episodes, but newer subscribers will only get the current ones. You may want to consider this.
People won't want to listen to boring, run-on podcasts, or podcasts that don't have anything interesting enough each show, so vary and edit your material.

[edit] Things You'll Need

Microphone
Audio recording software (You can download free, open source recording software such as Audacity or Wavepad from their respective websites. Download the software and install it on your desktop for easy access.)
Podcast Manager & Hosting
A computer
A webcam/camcorder (optional)

[edit] Related wikiHows

[edit] Sources and Citations

http://www.podstrike.com - PodStrike! Podcast Manager and Podcast Hosting (FREE Account Available).
http://www.podblaze.com - You can do the entire process for podcast creation & RSS feed creation (even for iTunes) at a web based service.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - Audacity recording software. Free and open source.
http://www.podcastalley.com - Podcast directory.
http://www.freshpodcasts.com - Podcast ping service.
http://blog.podblaze.com - Step by step instructions for recording and everything else required at these 6 podcast specific blogs.
AP on Yahoo "Podcasting Easy for Everyone" Story by the Associated Press.
http://www.feedvalidator.org - Verify that your RSS podcast feed is valid.
http://www.teenpodcasters.com - A great example of a network, start or join a network such as this.
http://del.icio.us - A social bookmarking tool with the ability to host podcast feeds.
http://blog.leveragedpromotion.com/public/blog/98977 - RSS, Syndication & Podcasting News & Tips Blog.
http://www.podblaze.com/podcasting-business-whitepaper.php - 20 Page Podcasting White Paper Explains All About Podcasting.
Podomatic
http://www.okaytoplay.com - Charts comparing podcast hosting, audio hardware, podcast advertising companies, etc.
http://www.podcastspot.com - complete podcast hosting service with unmetered bandwidth, unlimited storage, automatic media conversion, and much more!