The internet used to be devoid of multimedia.
Websites were built around text; animation and color were provided by images, and audio was the limit of interactivity. The Geocities-era web may have met its end some time in the late 1990s, but its design principles and legacy quite surprisingly live on in the way we arrange text, video, and audio today.
Blogging is not a new phenomenon or the result of modern technology. The internet has been largely blog-based since the early 1990s, albeit in a slightly different form to the one we know today. Blogs were updated manually, the authors behind them were versed in HTML and CSS coding, and platforms like WordPress and Blogger were unknown to the public.
Today, almost everything can be incorporated seamlessly into a blog. Videos can be placed and edited to suit, images can be tailored and resized to fit almost any post on any screen, and Flash content gives bloggers the power to create involving, immersive content. However, there are rules surrounding this enhanced content – rules which, when ignored, can lead to distracting, difficult, and frustrating blog posts.
Incorporating Video into your Blog Posts:
A growing number of bloggers have given up on video+text content combinations, citing the lack of search power and organizational variation as reason to keep the two media forms separate. They have got a good point too – video content rarely blends well with text, especially when the two are both long-form media designed for isolated study.
But there are ways to make your online videos perform effectively. By pairing the short with the long: quick videos with long text, and long videos with short text summaries, respectively – your text-and-video posts can end up engaging your audience beyond the initial glance and quick read.
Is Audio Still Worthwhile?
In short, yes. Apple’s branding has extended all the way to the blogosphere – “Podcasting” as we know it has become one of the most popular forms of sharing information online. While relatively few podcasts have achieved mass profitability and commercial success, a great deal have succeeded as sources of information. When combining a podcast with your text-based blog, it is essential that you keep the same rule of balance in mind. Mix long-form audio with relatively snippy and brief text – telling your audience what you are doing in text and explaining how it is done through your audio. This one tweak can help you engage audiences both during and after your podcast, through a combination of blog-based notes and engaging audio content.
What About Solitary Multimedia?
If your blog happens to be the type that benefits from isolated media and non-text posts, by all means offer your audience something that is free of text or images. Craft a video explaining what could have been pieced together as text; review a product through a video, or simply offer a visual version of a previous blog post, and then link to it in your video-only post. Audio and video can be effective when paired with text, but they are rarely anything but effective when offered in isolation.