Blogging vs Podcasting for Your Business
Blogging vs Podcasting: Which Should You Start?
Creating content for your business - whether that's through blogging or podcasting - is an important way to engage with your audience, build trust, get visitors to your site, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
If you're planning your marketing strategy, there's no doubt that blogging or podcasting should be a part of it. Both channels are hugely beneficial for businesses of all sizes, but if you've only got the resource for one, then should you start a podcast or a blog?
In this guide, we'll focus on blogging vs podcasting - taking a look at the differences between the two and the benefits of each. By the end, you should have a better idea of which channel is best for you to pursue. So let's dive straight in!
What's the difference between a blog and a podcast?
The obvious difference between blogs and podcasts is their medium. Blogs provide your audience with written content (and additional visual aspects), usually answering questions or solving common problems that your audience faces.
Podcasts, on the other hand, are audio-based, and while their purpose is still often to educate and inform, they're usually designed to entertain too.
Both blogs and podcasts are brilliant for getting your message out there, but the two mediums involve different skills, equipment and approaches. To make the differences between blogs and podcasts as clear as possible, let's take a look at the benefits and challenges of both.
The benefits of blogging
You don't need to spend money on expensive equipment like microphones and editing software to start a blog. All you need is a computer and a website - which chances are, you already have!
Blogs are great for SEO (helping you to rank on search engines like Google). And once your article starts to rank, this will help drive traffic to your site, which you can then convert into leads. According to Orbit Media, 80% of bloggers report that blogging drives results.
Thanks largely to SEO, a blog helps businesses to reach a wider audience. It builds awareness about your brand, and over time helps to generate new customers.
You can use blogs to support every stage of the funnel, from the awareness stage, through consideration, to conversion.
Unlike podcasts, which are audio only, you can add images, videos, and other forms of media to your blog posts to make them interactive, engaging, and appealing to different types of audience.
The challenges of blogging
With so much competition - as of 2022 there were more than 600 million blogs out there - it can be hard to cut through the noise. It takes time to build up your blog, and for it to rank and bring in traffic and revenue.
Blog posts need to be well-written and genuinely useful to the reader. And to come across as authoritative and trustworthy, it's important that there are no typos or grammatical errors. If you're not a natural writer then this can be tricky, so you might need to hire a copywriter to do the job for you. Which leads us on to our next point...
Managing a blog and posting regular content takes time and requires resources. As well as copywriters, you might need to hire designers and developers too.
A podcast is better for building relationships and trust with your audience, as by hearing a voice, they feel like they know you. A blog, by comparison, can feel much less personal.
The benefits of podcasting
Through podcasting, your audience can get to know you on a more personal level, which builds brand awareness and trust.
By interviewing industry experts, you become a reliable source of information, which builds trust and credibility.
Not everyone enjoys reading, and podcasting appeals to those who prefer to digest content audibly. In many ways, podcasts are also more accessible, as they're easier to digest hands-free and on the go. People can put them on and listen to them when they're commuting, driving, exercising, or running errands.
By 2024, the number of monthly podcast listeners worldwide is predicted to hit 504.9 million. That's a big market to tap into!
Once you've recorded your podcast, it's easy to repurpose it into soundbites and written quotes for social media. Get a podcast transcription, and you can even turn it into a blog post!
Most podcast episodes are 20-40 minutes long, and more than half of podcast consumers listen to the entire episode, while an additional 41% listen to most of it. Compare that to blogs - where the average session duration is just 37 seconds - and podcasts are clearly better at keeping people engaged for longer.
The challenges of podcasting
Starting a podcast is typically more expensive than setting up a blog, as it requires additional equipment like a microphone and headphones. That said, you don't have to break the bank - find out more about podcast equipment for beginners.
Every episode takes a lot of time to produce. From researching and recording to editing and distributing, the entire process can take hours.
Unlike blogs, which grow your audience organically, you'll have to promote your podcast fairly heavily to reach a new audience. Podcasts are generally better for nurturing your existing audience than expanding it.
Unlike blogs, which are hosted on your website and can have direct CTAs, podcasts are usually listened to on a streaming platform. And while you can discuss your products and services in your podcast, it's more effort for users to navigate to your website, which means there's more friction when it comes to converting them.
Should you start a podcast or a blog?
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. To help you decide, think about your target audience, your preferences, your budget and resource, and the topic of the content you're going to be created - as you may find it naturally lends itself better to a visual format than audio, or vice versa.
Truth be told, in an ideal world you'd start both! The two mediums complement one another and can be used to promote each other.
For example, you could create a podcast and then use a transcription service to convert your audio to text. Simply upload your podcast to Transcribe and you'll get a written version of your podcast, which you can then turn into a blog post.
Or looking at it the other way around, you could write a blog post, and then use your podcast to expand on the topic and direct listeners to the post, where they'll then be more likely to convert.
Some businesses do run a blog and a podcast, but don't underestimate the thought, time, and commitment it takes to keep both running. You'd be better off starting with one first and getting into the habit of producing regular content there before you launch the other.
Ultimately, so long as you're creating truly valuable content that's easy to consume and suited to your target audience, you're destined to see results, no matter the medium.
For more information about starting a podcast, check out our other podcast guides.
Written By Katie Garrett and Irina Serdyukovskaya