Can it be done? Yes. Should it be done? Maybe.

Doug at Outside The Box Ministry wrote about Posting Audio to a Blog. I’ve known about the idea for a while and have been pondering it. Today I commented on his post about it.

On the one hand, I don’t see a lot of value in posting audio like that. At least from a search engine perspective, it’s not good. You have a lot of valuable content on the blog but the SE can’t index it. Also, many people don’t want to listen. They’d rather skim read content. They may not make it to the end of an audio presentation…if they choose to click to listen in the first place. There’s more barriers like needing speakers or headphones…and though that’s readily available to most visitors to the site, they may not be in a situation or environment where they can stop and listen for minutes on end. However there is an audience for podcasting.

On the other hand, I can see this as a quick way to get content up. One great application of a blog is to post while traveling. With a cell phone that takes photos, one could post audio content, photos, and some text through text messaging. That’s pretty cool!

So depending on how you want to measure effectiveness will determine if you should go this route. It is a cool toy and technology. Just think through it (just like everything else you post online) to see if your target audience will like it and will it serve the greater goal of communicating or moving people to some desired action.