Nikk's Guide To Better Blogging #1

A picture is worth a thousand words (they say), and sometimes, dammit, "they" are right. Whenever possible, therefore, add some visual enhancement to your blog posts by including pictures. Often, this won't really add any relevant information for your readers, but the fools will still think it's pretty and perhaps stick around a little longer like the moronic idiots they are ("Haha, lookie here, a picture of something...me like..me going to keep looking at this blog! Duh, yeah, pretty blog!").

However, before I dismiss illustrations as mere superficial distractions for a brain damaged population, I should also make clear that a few relevant photos can make or break many of your lesser posts, and for some posts, actually become more important than the words you've written to accompany them.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Here's a post by our friend T.C., who blogs at a strange place called The Commentator:

We just came back from a Brazilian restaurant earlier. All you can eat succulent meats (including sausages), pork, and poultry, sweet potatoes, rice, salad, mushrooms, and spiced pineapple. It was our first time and it was deeee-lishus.-All You Can Eat Brazilian Meat

Believe it or not, that's not an excerpt from the post, that is the post. Now ask yourself, what the hell is missing? This is a case where a few digital snapshots would have added immensely to the post. In fact, they would have made the post, creating a visual delight to spark interest and actually illustrate that deee-lishusness in a way those poor, pedestrian words cannot. For God's sake, take a camera with you when you go out to eat! How hard is that?


Give us a picture of some sausage, at least!

image by Rick Abruzzo
under Creative Commons

Feel free to include yourself in the photos you take for a restaurant post, but don't feel obligated to. People really want to look at the food you're talking about, and don't really care if they see an example of your eating habits (a whole sausage in your mouth) or the sausage juice dripping down your chin.


Here's another example before I let this all sink in to your amateur blogging mind:

I saw a chicken.

Okay, so you saw a damn chicken, so what? Who is going to stick around and stay at a blog with posts like that?




However, how about this:

I saw a chicken.

image by xxxtoff under Creative Commons


Now that's what I call real blogging!