Podcasts vs. Blogs

You know the company that does the ratings for TV shows? Yeah, the Neilson ratings...well, they just put out some interesting information about podcasting. According to their recent study podcasts are more popular than blogs.

I'm sure you've heard of podcasts by now. They've been quite the phenomenon since they launched in 2005 and essentially serve as the audio or video versions of the typed blog. Churches, ministries, and Christian businesses are increasingly getting on the podcast boat. Pastors have seen it's a great way to redistribute their weekly messages. I recently discovered a company that's geared specifically for helping churches and ministries set up and run their own podcasts. They seem to have an intuitive product that takes some of the headache out of the process...check them out at PodPoint.net.

If you're a church thinking about starting a podcast, consider using it for more than sermon distribution. In fact, you could have a couple podcasts a week...one for the previous week's message, one from the pastor talking about what he's learning, living, loving, etc., and one about general church news or announcements. If you want to test it for a while, encourage the youth director to start podcasting...afterall, he's going to have the highest percentage of wired, web saavy people in the whole church. The question is really not if you should begin podcasting. The question is when will you begin podcasting? I'll help you with the "what" and the "why" and folks like PodPoint can help you with the "how".