Friday, October 18, 2013

What to Blog About Next, 3

 A picture really is worth a thousand words. 

With apologies to Pinterest and Tumblr, personally, I think the photo-blog thing is a bit over-done and less effective (in most cases) than most photo-bloggers would like to think. Darren Rowse's outstanding site DPS runs hundreds of obvious exceptions, but let's remember that DPS stands for digital-photography-school, OK? 
By the way, Rowse welcomes guest bloggers, so if you've got a post in mind that's built around some awesome images, by all means, click on over and create one of those exceptions. Brag about it and send me a link, and I'll probably blog about you.

Blog with Wrong Image = Bad Blog? 

When blogging, the right picture is worth more than a thousand words. Note the qualifier. The right picture adds so much to your (related) blog post, you can probably keep the post down to 100-200 words - regardless of topic!

The wrong picture isn't really much of a problem - if your blog is strong. That said, don't be that guy.
You know, the guy who sets up his blog template to have an image of a certain size in a certain spot and it's pretty obvious he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how the image improves the message. Worse, it's so obvious that the image detracts from the message. Do that a few times and your credibility and readership will start to suffer. 

Now You've Got the Picture

Unless your blog format requires an image, it's better to not include one if the only one you can think to include is a distraction rather than an addition. 

Case in point? You get the picture - I couldn't think of one. 

Blog on, my friends.

Update 10/22/13-- hey, do you think Social Media Examiner is riffing off my stuff? Yeah, well, I don't really think so, either. But it's a sweet coincidence

~Diane Stresing

Did you miss part 1 or part 2? Well, click and read already ;]

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