The majority of blogs are text-based. You can make your blog more creative and interesting with the effective use of photos, graphics, audio and/or video content. Some cool tools to consider using for adding multi-media content to your blog:
- Flickr - for photo storing and sharing. Flickr has a built-in blog feature that allows me to upload a photo to my Typepad blog.
- You Tube - Upload and share your videos. Easily upload and embed video to your blog (currently works with Blogger, BlogSpot, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Piczo, Friendster)
- Audio Acrobat - I use this service to upload and store audio files, create audio files and podcasts.
Specialty blogs include:
- Art (Artlog) - Post art work in a blog format - "can consist of any type of visual/audio Art such as: images, music, sketches, drawings, paintings, photos, videos, CG, etc."
- Photos (Photoblog) - Posting and sharing photos
- Audio (Podcasts) - You can upload an audio file (MP3) to your blog or go to the next level with Podcasting. A podcast allows a listener to subscribe to your series of audio or video recordings through an RSS feed and download to their IPOD or MP3 player.
- Podcasting Underground is a great example of an audio blog format. Jason Van Orden use this blog to post his Podcasts about podcasting. He posts the show notes/highlights
- Jason's Podcast Tutorial is excellent and informative.
- Video (VLOG) - You Tube, and BLIP.tvare popular platforms.
- Ask a Ninja - a popular, comedy VLOG series
- Rosie O'Donnell uses video effectively on her blog
Once you have your blog started there are numerous forms or types of blog posts to consider. You might post:
- Your opinion, thoughts, rants, raves on a particular subject
- Links to other blogs or websites with your commentary
- Your review of an article, book, website, etc
- Informational content (Realtors might post about their local market conditions, real estate news, neighborhoods, new communities or projects and other relevant content.)
- Interviews of profiles
- Informative, how-to, or instructional content on a subject
Darren Rowse of Problogger.net discusses 20 Types of Blog Posts and battling bloggers block in this post. Also check out The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging...And When to Use Each One for more ideas. Andy Wibbels, author of a great book on blogging - Blogwild! - posted this recently on Four Types of Blogging.
Next in the series: Who is blogging?
Visit my page on "How To Blog" for a list of all posts.
