Are you considering starting a blog or a podcast? Both can be great ways to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, but which one is right for you? Here are some factors to consider. Podcasting requires a little more equipment than blogging does. And both blogging and podcasting are ways to share your voice, connect with your people, and make a difference in your world. It's true that audiences have been favoring listening to podcasts over reading blogs. But with the recent adoption of Voice-Activated devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, new opportunities to expand your audience are available for both bloggers and podcasters. Let's take a look:

Artificial Intelligence (also known as AI) has been advancing behind the scenes for many years.  We've heard of "deep fakes" and "clickbait", which are some examples of how AI has been used in shady ways. But almost everyone has a SmartPhone and Smart Speaker, and when we talk to our Voice Assistant, we are speaking to a form of Artificial Intelligence.  While AI started out, without much intelligence, it's clear that AI is getting much smarter.  AI has moved past quick answers, now AI can be used to write entire articles. And now I'm not sure if recent news articles were actually written by a human.  The following blog post was generated automatically by just providing the subject I wanted to write about.  What do you think?

Voice assistants are growing in popularity every day. According to the Pew Research Center, 18 to 24 year-olds are adopting voice tech at a faster rate than their older counterparts. However, 25 to 49 year-olds currently use them more often than any other age group. You can no longer call voice assistants toys. They’ve grown up over the last decade.

Blogs are a dime-a-dozen with over 600 million available on the web. Blogging has been very popular, but it's slowing down, with only 12% growth since 2015.  And many bloggers report it's become harder to get traffic.

Still, blogging remains a profitable and powerful marketing tool, with 57% of marketers saying that they have gained customers through blogging. With 53% of marketers declaring it their top content marketing priority, the question becomes how to do it in an effective way. There are many techniques that bloggers can use to improve their ROI.  Here are three ideas that will help you get the most out of your efforts. The first two you may have heard before, but the third one may be new to you.