As bloggers, it’s our responsibility to come up with original and informative articles. However, our pen (or keyboard, that is) do fail us from time to time, and we need inspiration for our blog posts. A good answer to this problem would be the earlier Blog Tutorial on where to get more blog topic ideas.
So, you’ve pinned down the core concept of your blog post, which built upon your very own sentences, opinions, and experiences. Now, you just need that piece of quotation, that descriptive photo, that matching video – blog content that supports your core idea and words. These will give aesthetic plus points, flavor, and credibility to your blog post.
But where will we get them? Here are some good sites to start with:
- Google U.S. Government Search — “a single location for searching across U.S. government information…content located on either U.S. federal, state and local government websitesâ€.
- The Internet Archive — recently recognized as an official library by the State of California.
- Stock photography sites – an earlier Blog Tutorial article has some good suggestions; stock.xchng is a popular resource.
- Public domain image resources – check out this comprehensive Wikipedia list.
Good ol’ Wikipedia itself – borrowing content from Wikipedia isn’t an excuse for plagiarism; check the Creative Commons license and/or properly cite the source.- Article directories – the tried and tested source of free, free, free (can’t emphasize that enough) website content; examples and caveats in my next Blog Tutorial.
- Syndic8.com – “the place to come to find RSS and Atom news feeds†across a wide range of categories; as of this writing, there are 513,458 registered feeds on the portal.
- Video sharing websites – YouTube, Revver, and their ilk; Google Video searches videos from top video hosting sites.
- Offline sources – don’t underestimate the power of hardcopy newspapers, magazines, and even events; read my May 2007 Performancing article for more.
Originally posted on July 26, 2007 @ 11:27 am
