How to Choose Between Using Podcasts or Webinars for Your Business

Podcasts and webinars can give your content marketing strategy a boost. Using the two can help you make content easier to access while making your brand approachable and knowledgeable.

They allow you to connect and build a community around your topic of expertise.

But, which one should your business use?

This post offers key features that can help you choose between the two formats.

Let’s start with podcasts:

Podcasts

Podcasts are audio files your audience can stream or download and listen to them at their convenience. To create them, you need an interesting topic, a microphone (Read this article about at2020 vs at2035 to know which is better), and audio editing software.

What Are the Benefits of Using Podcasts?

• You can experiment with various topics or make mistakes. Since you pre-record them, you can edit and cut out segments before publishing.
• Your listeners can consume the podcast at any time
• They are downloadable, which means your audience can listen to the whole podcast (if they choose to listen from beginning to end)
• Your audience can also subscribe to your podcasts through your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds

What Are Some Disadvantages of Podcasts?

The pre-recorded episodes do not allow audience interaction. You also cannot use visual aids to keep your audience engaged.

Webinars

Webinars are online presentations or meetings held in real-time via the internet. You can use them to educate or train your audience.

What Are Some Advantages of Webinars?

• You can incorporate chats, on-screen sharing, videos, and images. You can also share files or run quizzes, polls, and surveys.
• Webinars are great for teaching practical skills. Incorporating visuals makes it easier to remember content.
• You can control your audience in real-time. It allows you to gauge the audience’s mood and answer questions live.
• You get a targeted audience since people have to register and sometimes pay to show up. They can help you attract the right audience since only people interested in what you offer will show up.

What Are Some Disadvantages of Webinars?

They can be costly. You may need dedicated software to leverage interactive features. There is also the cost of marketing to boost attendance and hiring hosts or guests to speak as experts.

Even though podcast statistics show that podcasts are a great way to promote your business and present yourself as an industry expert, they are hard to create. 

You’ll have to spend several hours writing a script, editing content, and working on promoting it. Besides being time-consuming, podcasts have a limited way of bringing in free traffic. 

Unlike blogs, you won’t be able to optimize your content for search engines, and you’ll likely have to rely on paid promotion. 

Finally, if you need to pay for several licenses to use music in your podcasts, they can be quite costly.

Still not sure about which one to use?

Check out the infographic below first published by FLOW. It offers a detailed comparison between the two to help you choose.