Well, so you have been sold about the value of using a blog to publish your podcast. A correctly setup blog tool will allow you to publish your podcast episodes easily without having to worry about generating the podcast RSS feed every time you update. Another benefit is of course, your podcast is also available on blog search engines.

How exactly can you choose the right blog software from the myriad of choices out there?

There are many questions you need to ask yourself before deciding which blogware is suitable for you. There is no one solution that suits all situation.

For example, hosted blog platform may be free. It even maintains all the technical sides of running a blog software including installing and updating to newer versions of the web application.

The drawback is such software usually don’t allow you to host all the blog posts on your own domain. This is a major no-no for some of us because it gives away branding opportunity.

For detailed post this, refer to my blog post in another blog about choosing your blog platform.

If you want a shorter guide, I think I can summarize the whole thing as follows, especially for podcasting:

• If you want a blog software that sits on your own domain, then use WordPress or Movable Type. A plugin for the web software is necessary as of this writing. In my opinion, this is the best option if you have your own domain since you want a server to host your podcast files.
• Podcast services also have built-in podcast publishing component. Although you can’t host your podcast and its blog on your own domain, this is better than having to maintain a separate files and hosted blog acccount.
• If above solutions are not right, then you can always go with a hosted blog solution like Blogger.com. Yes, you still must have a way to host your podcast files on a separate server.

There are ways to host podcast files for free, but usually they are not very reliable. For business purposes, you want a solid, business quality, hosting service. So, my only advice regarding this is to plan ahead and think it over. Migrating your files and blog pages to another publishing platform and/or host is not something to be seen lightly, not only about the technical work, but also the momentum you have built in the old platform, like inbound links from directories and other bloggers (for search engine rankings) to podcast subscribers, etc.

See also: Podcast Equipment.

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