“However think about if you added some great visuals or videos to give your posts more, “pop"! Your content is excellent but with pics and videos, this site could certainly be one of the very best in its field. Awesome blog!“
Although this comment is friendly SPAM (the same is posted over and over ;-) it pushed me. A smart Blog - I’ll agree – should use multimedia to attract readers and followers and to visualize certain aspects. It’s the message I give to all my clients and students when talking about how to blog. This is one of the basic rules.
The comment inspired me to write about my motivation despite this not to follow this basic rule.
I’ve started blogging in 1999. Blogging at this time wasn’t as easy as it is today. Posting was in a way coding. Embedding images or videos was not really feasible. Later I enjoyed to illustrate my blog posts with pics, images, videos, podcasts … From 2004 to 2009 I wrote more than 5.500 posts and most of them worked with embedded multimedia.
I became fed up by the overflow of visuals. I am a visual talented fellow and images are very certain to me. Inflation of images drives to a noise that efface their qualities and the quality of visual communication in a broader sense.
In the early 80ies Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” fascinated and inspired me. Isn’t our world dominated by Simulacra? By the way this book has also inspired Andy and Larry Wachowski when writing the screenplay of Matrix.
Years ago I met Jan Hoet, the former curator of documenta IX. He told me that his father had forbidden him and his siblings to enter the church they were visiting on Sundays using the southern portal. Because there hung pretty bad images of the Via Dolorosa. He said to his children that bad images would corrupt them.
In preparation of this year’s vacation I ordered a guidebook of Istanbul. And I was really happy when I got it and couldn’t find any photos and pictures - not one in 235 pages. Convincing how Kai Strittmatter sketches Istanbul with words and stories. Images evolve. Great. It’s for the first time I am going to visit Istanbul. There are no pictures I could try to recognize (exempt those I’ve seen before).
I subscribed the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” not only because of an excellent journalism but also because there is no inflation with meaningless pictures.
I know, that Images with alt and title tags are in addition relevant for SEO and embedding multimedia enhances Community building, and that both supports Leadmanagement. This is my daily job. But for my blogs I decided to choose a way that’s less marketing. So the number of readers and followers thereby may be smaller, but number is not the only criteria.
May be you’re interested in Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman First, Break All The Rules
