In a private forum recently, someone asked if they should start their podcast first or the blog first.

That’s a good question. My advise would be, blog first. For several reasons:

• Search engines are text based. It may change some point in the future but for now, text is the champion. I suspect text will always lead in many ways. Look around us. Despite the many different mediums today, books are still being printed, we still read a lot. So, a blog will give you a leg up with the search engines.
• You can have your podcast transcribed and the contents entered into your blog to satisfy the search engines. That’s a great idea, but transcriptions have a cost to it even if you do it yourself. You could do a textual excerpt, a little extra work and there in lies the key. You’ll have to decide if you’re OK with that.
• It’s difficult for a new podcast to gain listenership because people don’t know you. People don’t know what you’re all about. By blogging first, you can quickly gain a small following who could better appreciate your podcast later.
• Keeping up a blog takes a bit of work. A podcast takes a little bit more work than a blog – unless you want to podcast on the fly and not worry about all the mistakes you make and sounding funny. If all this is new to you, going with a blog first will give you a chance to see if you can keep up with it.

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