4 Steps to Improving Your iTunes U Presence

1. Create a good description for your show.
2. Make sure you have quality metadata on each track.
3. Link back to Vanderbilt and your website.
4. Customize your badge.

1. Create a good description for your show.

Provide a few sentences describing your content. Aside from the obvious usefulness of this information, it will also improve search results. To edit the description:

1. Navigate to your show. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show. Under "Description" click the pencil icon. Enter your description.
2. Click "End Editing" in the tools box.

2. Make sure you have quality metadata on each track.
Metadata is the descriptive information attached to every podcast. Is your metadata accurate and useful? Is it consistent?

Suggestions for metadata fields:

- NAME: Unique title or description for that individual show.

- ARTIST: Names of individuals or department who produced the podcast(s).

- ALBUM: Name of the show (consistent with the main title you chose)

- GENRE: This should always be "Vanderbilt University." This will ensure that our audience knows where the podcast came from. How to update your metadata:

NOTE: iTunes U does not allow you to change metadata once a track has been uploaded. You will need to fix locally and re-upload.

1. Navigate to your show.Select 'Get Tracks' to download all tracks (or use existing local copies)Once downlo Hint: Save time by selecting multiple tracks when fixing Artist and Album info.
2. Get Info > Info tab), using the suggestions above.Re-upload to iTunes U.
3. elete the old tracks.

Hint: Save time by selecting multiple tracks when fixing Artist and Album info.

3. Link back to Vanderbilt and your website.

As an editor, you can add links to relevant websites. Every show should have a link back to the main Vanderbilt homepage, in addition to a department-specific link.

To add links:

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show.
3. In the links box (located under the tools box) click the '+' button.
4. Fill out the title and URL fields for your link.
5. Click "End Editing" from the tools box.

4. Customize your badge.

Customizing the badge allows you to brand your show and draws attention to it when people are navigating iTunes U.

The only requirements we have for badges is that they are square, and ideally 300 pixels by 300 pixels. They should also contain some sort of Vanderbilt theme or branding, if possible.

To change your badge:

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show.
3. On the existing badge, find and click the up-arrow button.
4. On the upload screen, browse to the badge you want to use and upload it.
5. iTunes U will refresh with the new badge. Click "End Editing".

Miscellaneous Style and Usability Tips

Read Apple's "Creating Content for iPod + iTunes" document.

Visit Apple's Content Creators support forum.

Don't create too many tabs. This makes content hard to navigate, and since subscriptions are tab-specific it makes the subscription process more difficult

Make sure there's no missing values in the default metadata fields: Name, Artist, Album

Content courtesy of Penn State University.