Micro Persuasion’s Steve Rubel says, even in the day of new media, text is still king on the Internet. 

He offers five reasons why:

• It’s scannable – according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely
• Three letters: SEO – For all that Google Universal Search has done to elevate video, search results are still largely made up of text and everyone wants better SEO
• The workplace – It’s much easier for cube-based workers to read text on the screen and get away with it vs. watching long videos. Watching videos (even work related vids) screams “slacker”  
• Mobile Devices – Yes, of course you can put a video on an iPhone. But it’s work and requires planning. Text is easier to pull up in a nanosecond  
• Distribution – Nothing flies like text. It’s so easy to cut and paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via email, RSS or social networks

Rubel is right. This is why combining new media with blog posts as podcasts makes so much sense. 

Wrapping a blog post around your audio video files addresses the issues that Rubel raises – making your media files findable and scannable, subscribable and viewable in a variety of situations. By putting your media in a podcast with scannable text, your content more useful everywhere.

Do you think putting your audio and video files in blog posts, as podcasts, helps get your message heard?

Image: sean dreilinger