Public Domain Images

You really can’t get much better than images in the public domain. No attribution is needed. You can modify them and use them commercially. How can you find public domain images to use?

1. Wikipedia is your friend. While I don’t often advocate using Wikipedia as a source for anything, they provide a great listing of public domain image resources, and they list them by category.  Categories include history, art, books, logos and flags, postage stamps, culture, and more.
2. Try the US Government. There are a lot of great .gov images in the public domain.  The government even made a list of the best copyright-free image libraries they offer.
3. Good ol’ DMOZ. Why not check the open directory for some free images? DMOZ categories have human editors, so you can trust that each link does what it says on the box. Check out their listing of clip art in the public domain.

Creative Commons Images

Because not everything you need is going to be available in the public domain, Creative Commons is the next best thing. These images were often created by people like us who want to share their work as long as they get credit for it. If you use any images with the Creative Common license, make sure you follow the artist’s wishes for proper attribution! There are a lot of great Creative Commons resources out there:

1. Flickr. There are so many images out there on Flickr!  For our purposes, we use the Flickr Advanced search. The Smackdown post has a great screen capture (have to scroll down) of the Creative Commons section of the search page. Since we don’t generally need to modify or build upon the images we find, we only need to check the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content and Find content to use commercially options, but I can’t currently create my own screencap to portray this. Maybe I can edit later.
2. Google it. You can’t just do a Google image search for this; most of the images you find from a normal image search will return images with uncertain usage rights.  But one user created their own Custom Search engine called the Connected Classroom Creative Commons Image Search, which searches 14 sites for Creative Commons images.
3. Bad Neighborhood. The Creative Commons Google Image Search Assistant is a great meta search tool that can save you a lot of legwork by crawling multiple image resources to find only images that can be both modified and used commercially.

Free Stock Images

And of course, there are sites out there that offer free stock photos with their own rules for usage. Some require attribution, while others do not. Some require artist notification… Be sure to read the guidelines for each site to make sure you’re following the rules!

1. Stock Exchange. This is one of my personal favorites. You’ll get to know the Stock Exchange URL (sxc.hu) quite well. They do list “premium” results at the top of each search page, which require purchase to download, so be sure you’re looking at the free image results. If you don’t see a watermark, you should be fine.
2. MorgueFile. I used this site a lot when I was writing for a popular web content portal. Artists generally ask to be notified when you use their photos, and it doesn’t take long to leave them a comment to let them know where they can see their pics in use.
3. Top Free Photo Site Lists. Everyone has an opinion about the best free stock image sites. See what the following people have to say: SpeckyBoy, DazzlinDonna, HubPages, PhotoshopSupport, Digital Image Magazine, CPAOffers (formerly Nooti)… You get the idea.
4. Bad Neighborhood. And of course, there’s always the Free Image Meta Search that crawls multiple free image sites to save you the hassle of going to each site yourself. I generally don’t use this unless I hit a wall, because I like to check the sites with the best usage terms for my needs first.

Have I overlooked your favorite source of free images? Let me know.

If you’ve spent any time in the corporate blogging world, you’ll see that most corporate blogs kind of suck. Two weeks ago we heard that only 16 percent of people believe what they read on corporate blogs. There’s a reason for that.  Most corporate blogs are doing it wrong.  They’re posting their article section in reverse chronological order and calling it a blog.  That’s not a blog.  That’s you looking dumb. Wave to everyone watching.

The way I see it, I have two courses of action as a blogger: I can look at the number of corporate blogs failing and get upset OR I can see it as a huge opportunity for the clients of We Build Pages. I choose to focus on the latter.

The sinister side of Lisa almost likes that businesses are ruining their “blogs”. It means that by encouraging our clients to start blogs and then teaching them how to blog correctly €“ we give them an enormous opportunity to grow their business and increase their branding. It stinks for the rest of you, but you’re not my problem or my priority. Our clients are.  [I'm just kidding. I love you all. I just love you a little bit less than the folks who contribute to my salary.]

A lot of companies hear the word “blog” and switch it in their minds to “article writing”. A blog post is not an article; they’re two entirely different skill sets. I know this. I’ve had to write both, and while I’m only marginally skilled in blogging, I am not at all skilled in the article side of things.  If you’re going to start a blog, you need to actually hire a blogger. And two blog entries on a blogspot.com blog doesn’t make you a blogger. If you’re trying to outsource the task (and there’s nothing wrong with that), do some research and make sure you’re getting someone worth it.  Someone who knows how to use personality to convey a point, not get in the way of it.

There are plenty of posts out there about how to blog and what makes a good blogger, so there’s no reason for me to rehash them. Instead, I wanted to share some of my favorite blogging resources in the hopes that you guys would share some of your own.  What do you think?

I’ll go first. Here are my favorite posts/resources on good blogging.

[Note: I'm choosing to focus on the how-to-write-blogs side, rather than the SEO /platform side of things. There are lots of great guides on creating SEO-friendly blogs, but that's another post for another day.]

What Makes a Good Blog: This may be my favorite article on blogging of all-time.  It covers 9 absolute essentials to blogging and leaves out the fluff. If you’re going to read one article on how to be a real blogger and engage people, I think this is it.  Plus, if you’re going to take blogging advice from anyone, Merlin Mann is a good person to take it from.  His last two rules are my favorites: Good blogs put in the extra effort to try and they’re smart enough to know when to break their own rules. Amen.

The Executive Bloggers Guide to Building a Nest of Blogs, Wikis & RSS: This Guide comes from Ogilvy (a PR agency, oddly enough) and details pretty much everything you need to know about creating and running a successful blog. They even went as far as to create a Blogger Code of Ethics that I actually really like. It outlines things like not deleting posts or comments, being honest, disclosing conflicts of interest, and other issues that are staples to those of us in the blogging world. It’s a great Guide for those getting started and a maybe a reminder to the vets.

How to Write With a Distinctive Voice: If you’re familiar with me, you know that voice is something I’m overly-passionate about. To me, that’s just what blogging is. Finding your voice and using it to connect and make a difference. This Copyblogger article from Dave Taylor is a good lesson in the finding your blog voice.

I wrote a post for Search Engine People not too long ago called Bringing Your Voice To Your Blog that I think is another good piece on the importance of voice. I won’t shill it here, but you can head over there if you’re interested in reading it.

10 Techniques to Get More Comments On Your Blog: Comments are the lifeblood of your blog, well, to me anyway.  They represent the conversation, the level of engagement and tell you if you’re making an impact or not. Without them, you’re just talking to yourself and I hear you’re not supposed to do that in public.

Ten Recipes for Persuasive Content: This was sent to me last week by one our awesome Web Designers [everyone wave to Zane DeFazio], and I really like it so I’m including it here.  It offers some good tips on being persuasive aka how to make people listen to you. It makes sense that the first tip is to talk like a person.

So, those are some of my favorite reads on blogging. If you’re looking for other resources, Blog Herald, Copyblogger, Lorelle on WordPress and Dooce are some of my favorite places to go to learn about writing. (Yes, I know Dooce isn’t about blogging, but I think it is about storytelling. And to me, the best bloggers are the ones who tell the best stories.)

• I am not an elitist grammar snob. My grammar isn’t nearly good enough for that.
• I don’t think misspelling words or failing to punctuate properly means that you are uneducated/stupid/ignorant/not worth my time.
• I don’t think that I am better than you because writing is something I have a small degree of talent in.
• I realize that if everyone suddenly wrote really well, I’d probably be out of a job. So I should actually be thankful for €˜sentences’ and Twitters that read, “lol HA Ha going 2 gym dinner with friends party!” and shut up.

But I’m not going to shut up. Because I genuinely do feel that grammar and spelling are important. In fact, I think they’re vital.

And it’s not vital because you need to abide by archaic laws laid out by others. It’s not important to write clearly because it shows how smart you are. It’s important because people need to understand you. That’s what it’s about for me. It’s about creating content that is readable, whatever that content is.

Consider this:

• I’ve unsubscribed to blogs where the writing made my eyes bleed.
• I’ve unfollow’d people on Twitter because I wasn’t able to understand what the heck they were saying.
• I’ve abandoned Web sites because the product details didn’t make sense or didn’t answer my question.

And I guarantee you I’m not the only one. Who else are you driving away?

The people I’ve unfollowed and unsubscribed from weren’t dumb. They were educated, intelligent, useful people. People who, if they spent five seconds to fix their mess, I’d probably find were saying some pretty important things. However, I’ll never know because I can’t understand what they meant because all I see is a jumbling of characters and halves of phrases. Even when I take the time to really figure out what they meant, I’m left guessing. I don’t want to have to guess.

If you have something to say, I want to hear it. Make sure that I do.

As I commented on Twitter yesterday, if you’re going to produce content, you have a responsibility to produce valuable content. Otherwise, what the heck are you doing? The greatest idea, horribly stated, goes nowhere. Trust me; I understand the power of voice.

For me, when someone throws up a piece of content that they clearly haven’t read over and is so jumbled that people can’t understand it €“ I think it’s disrespectful. They’re telling me that they didn’t care enough to fix it. I know that not everyone is skilled in grammar and spelling, but most of us aren’t completely illiterate either. You recognize that what you typed doesn’t make sense; you just don’t care enough to fix it. It’s not worth your time. I’m not worth your time. If that’s the case, okay, but I’ll be over here finding someone who does care about me.

There are plenty of arguments for why spelling and grammar are important €“ mistakes are distracting, they make people question your authority, you look unprofessional €“ but to me respect is really the biggest one.  As someone who produces content on a daily basis, I respect it. I respect the people that I write content for. I don’t have perfect grammar. I’m not the greatest speller in the world, but I self-edit things.  And even if they’re not perfect, it makes the content readable (er, usually).

I don’t care what you’re writing. I don’t care if it’s content for your Web site, if it’s a Twitter message (though we all flub those from time to time), a Sphinn description, etc. If you’re writing for an audience, you should respect that audience. You should respect that audience by making your content as readable as possible. Regardless of whether or not you graduated from school with an English, Business or Chemistry degree.

• Read your Twitters before you send them (simple typos are forgivable).
• Take pride in the content you put on your Web site.
• Make sure that people are getting the message you’re putting out in blog posts.

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be understood. That’s all I’m asking.

I didn’t learn the FATP system in high school like Jim did. I learned other stuff, the stuff that high school is made of. Here are some of the valuable lessons I picked up during my days wearing a wool skirt and blazer at a Catholic prep school.

Find the Cool Kids; Then Hang Out With Them

I was a 10th grade transfer student plucked from the comfort of mediocrity and dropped into a neurotically over-competitive world of academia. It was like a scene out of Gossip Girl. Only there was more wool. And on some days the skirts were longer.  Like all high school kids, I quickly learned that my survival would 100 percent depend on my finding a group and assimilating myself into it as seamlessly as possible. I didn’t necessarily have to hang with the coolest of the cool, but I did need to find some semblance of a support group. I needed to end “the new kid” phase as quickly as possible. This was critical to high school success. Thanks to my smartz and ability to run really fast, this wasn’t too difficult of a task.

However, hanging with the cool kids is a recipe for disaster when you’re a blogger. If all you do is stay with “people like you” and talk about who’s sitting at the In table, you’re bound for failure. If you don’t reach beyond your current group, read other bloggers, promote other bloggers and talk about other things €“ you’re going to get stuck in the circle jerk providing no actual value to anyone. It’s hard to look at ideas with fresh eyes when all you do is read about SEO from SEOs written on SEO blogs.

Blend In

High school is all about blending in with whatever group was nice enough to adopt you. If you’re part of the Meatheads, that means you must wear your letter jacket in 90 degree heat regardless of how ridiculous it makes you look. If you’re a Socialite, you must pretend to be 20 IQ points dumber than you are (assuming you’re €˜pretending’) and if you’re a Brain, you must openly covet Mr. Roger’s sweater collection. You want to look, act, speak and carry on like every other person in your group. This is how others will identify you. Its how people will know to whom you belong and to leave you alone (or NOT to leave you alone). In high school, blending in is your protective gear.

In blogging, blending in makes you suck. Blending in makes you forgettable, boring, predictable and someone no one wants to associate with. Good bloggers stand out. But they do it naturally. They don’t force it. There are lots of posts telling you that in order to be successful in blogging you have to be controversial or edgy or snarky, but that’s really not true. To be successful in blogging you have to be yourself, and if you’re brave enough to do that, you’ll stand out exactly like you’re supposed to. Because there’s not too many people on the Internet (or IRL) who are comfortable doing that. It’s why we’re all in therapy.

There’s No I In Team

High school is about team work. It has to be or most kids wouldn’t survive. You work together on group projects, there are team sports where the team can win a trophy, and you’re dressed up in silly uniforms together. For all the drama and infighting, high school is about surviving together. When you graduate, you don’t do it alone, you do it with a couple hundred (or thousand) people standing right beside you.

When you blog, it’s about you. Even if you’re writing for a team blog, it’s about your relationship with the reader. It’s about the emotion that you evoke. The attention you demand. It’s you being thrust into the spotlight to deliver. You have to break out of that team mentality. The one that says if you fail, someone else will be around to pick up the slack or hold your hair back, because they won’t. If you don’t deliver, your audience will abandon you.  This is the real world. This isn’t no college internship.

Make Friends With Your Classmates

In high school you’re encouraged to get along with those around you. You’re not supposed to start fights. You’re supposed to be nice and encouraging of your classmates. You’re supposed to sacrifice yourself to help the team. Rainbows, puppies and all that jazz.
In blogging€¦not so much. Flame wars and being controversial are encouraged. People like when bloggers offer a dissenting opinion. When they don’t go along with the crowd. When they’re mouthy and rude.  Being a successful blogger means taking no prisoners and not being afraid to write something that would get you sent to the principal’s office.

For me, blogging is about forgetting everything you learned in high school. Because once you do that and you let it all go, you’re left with one thing – the ability to be yourself and talk to people like a human, not a high school zombie.