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The term “photo blog” has almost become redundant. Between the popularity of microblogging, and the fact that smartphones are capable of producing high-quality images, our digital communication has become increasingly photo-centric. We consume so much content in our digital lives, it seems we’ve developed a need for it to be presented in the simplest, most efficient way possible. Enter: the photo blog.

If Flickr gave us the photo-sharing bug, then services like Tumblr, yFrog, Instagram and even Foodspotting are making it standard practice.

So how can you get in on the action? There are a few basic rules. First, it should be said, a photo blog can be pretty much anything you want it to be, so long as your content is predominantly –- you guessed it — photos. These pics can be your own, pulled in from across the web, submitted by users or some combination of the three. Basically, when it comes to photo blogs, there are many options.

Here’s how to get started.

1. Pick a Platform

Determine if you are the creator, curator or ringleader?

If your motivation is simply to showcase your own photographs, then social functionality is probably low on the list while the ability to control use of your images is high. If you are curating images from around the web under an entertaining theme, then shareability is top of mind. If you’re crowdsourcing submissions, then of course, your blog will benefit from a highly social, share-oriented platform.

Let’s look at the top three free web-based, free platforms:

• Blogger: Think: basic. Blogger is Google’s blog platform, and it has a fast and painless set-up, easily editable templates and basic photo sharing utility.
• WordPress: Think: high scalability, low social. WordPress is highly customizable and scalable, and it happens to feature lots of nifty photo blog plug-ins.
• Tumblr: Think: simplified, ultra-social. Unlike Blogger or WordPress, Tumblr is a microblogging platform — it is a short-form blogging tool built on top of a social network. Tumblr offers a simple set-up, intuitive interface, customizable templates and, most importantly, a lot of social functionality. Users can follow each other, “reblog” or share content on their own blogs, like, comment or ask questions on Tumblr. The platform’s emphasis on frequent, image-heavy posts is ideal for a photo blog, and its social functionality helps build an audience quickly. The downside is that with greater spread, comes less control over use or attribution.

2. Customize

Ask yourself what you want your viewers’ experience to be.

Consistency is key –- whether it is the font for your captions or your overall design. Users should know what to expect when they visit your blog. A few key things to consider:

• Always resize photos to the same dimensions (if possible).
• Make any credits or captions as consistent as possible, both in language and appearance.
• Be consistent with your posting schedule. Your fans may love you, but no one loves feeling spammed. Devise a schedule that can accommodate your influx of content and is appropriate for your viewers, even down to the time of day you post.
• Ask yourself if your blog will benefit from functions like comments or question buttons. These things will alter the look and feel of your blog and can sometimes muddy a blog’s tone.
• If you are committed to making a photo blog, avoid posts of other media: video, text, audio. This not only changes the look and user experience, but can take away from your blog’s narrative.

3. Promote

How do you want people to find you? Here are some tips:

• Involve your audience. If your goal is to get people sharing and talking about your blog, try opening the lines of communication –- involve your audience. People are far more likely to share content they had a hand in creating. Consider opening contributions, comments, questions and opportunities for increased engagement.
• Share the love. It sounds simple, but a little love can go a long way. Be a participant in your own world: feature fellow photo bloggers on your blogroll, or if you use Tumblr, you can “reblog” content or feature work from bloggers you like. They will likely to return the favor.
• Pay attention! Above all, monitor your blog. Learn what your audience likes and make changes accordingly. Pay attention to how your content affects your traffic. Note which kinds of pics are getting reblogged or shared, and which have best responses.

And finally, here are a few examples of great photo blogs.

The Sartorialist

Platform: Blogger
What it is: The Sartorialist is a notable ‘street fashion’ blog showcasing photos taken by former fashion photographer Scott Schuman.
Why we like it: Simple, consistent image size and captions, clean format.

Sea Of Shoes

Platform: WordPress
What it is: Sea of Shoes is teen Jane Aldridge’s ‘personal style’ blog, her blog has gained such a strong following in the fashion world, she has been called one of the most influential personal style bloggers.
Why we like it: Relatively clean layout, individual posts are sharable via Facebook and Twitter.

My Parents Were Awesome

Platform: Tumblr
What it is: Comedian/writer Eliot Glazer curates photos of ‘awesome’ parents submitted by their children.
Why we like it: Consistent image size and captions, crowdsourced, theme with strong audience appeal (personalized and thus tailored for sharing).

By now you’re probably more than ready to take a break from reading about starting a photo blog and actually do it. If you have a photo blog, let us know in the comments.

Series Supported by Adobe Photoshop Elements

The Digital Photo and Film Series is supported by the Adobe® Photoshop® Elements product team. Adobe’s® photo-editing software delivers powerful options that make it easy to create extraordinary photos, unique print creations, quickly share memories in online albums, and automatically organize and help protect your photos. Download a free trial of Adobe® Photoshop® Elements® 9 to try it out!

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I have conflicting thoughts about the effectiveness of the WP Auto Tagger plugin for WordPress. I have been using it for the better part of a year now purely because of convenience but have not seen the results that I would like to be seeing.

If you are not familiar with the WP Auto Tagger for WordPress, it is a plugin which automatically pulls keywords from your copy and enters them into your “post tags” area. This is the area that tells the search engines what your article is about.

After reviewing my blog stats the other day I saw that my traffic was increasing but the traffic from the search engines was not. Now… I will be the first to admit that I am an an SEO Guru or anything but one woudl think that this woudl increase the amount of traffic you would be getting from the search engines over time.

Not sure if I should return to the “manual” method for entering article keywords or not.

What are your thoughts?

I would really appreciate any feedback

I just discovered the secret to timely Blog posts in WordPress! Yahoo! If you are an experienced marketer maybe you are already aware of this however I have been posting to blogs for the better part of two years now and just came across this time saving feature. OK…. no more suspense…. it is the WordPress schedule post feature.

I know, I know…call me crazy for not knowing about this already but for some reason I missed it. Through all my potential embarrassment I figured I would share it with you because maybe there is one of you out there that was in the dark about the WordPress schedule feature just like me.

This isn’t a plugin, although there are several available to enhance this feature, this is just straight up edit the publish date when you are finished composing your Blog post. That’s it! Just write your post save it to publish at a later time (I am giddy like a kid about this because of the benefits).

This is great if you go through writers block from time to time and of course the flip side is those “fertile” moments when the words just keep on comin’. Know you can write a weeks worth of content and post it gradually through out the week without going through the work of copy and paste.

I feel like I just got a new bike!

When I first started to market online everything was trial and error. I didn’t know where to start but I did know that I was going to jump right in and figure it out. That seems to be the best way for me, don’t procrastinate, just jump right in. So that is what I did. Little did I know how complicated things could be.

Talk about being overwhelmed! Everything was an hour or two to learn or a day or two to set up. Nothing was simple but that was OK because I was determined to learn how to do this.

About two weeks into it I came across a site called Site Build It. It looked really simple to follow and I didn’t have to be an expert at HTML. It was a bit more expensive than GoDaddy or other sites but offered much more in tutorials and step by step SEO information. This really cut my learning curve in half.

Now I no longer use SBI because I don’t need too. I have become proficient enough at SEO and HTML, WordPress, Joomla and the like to not need all the tutorials and step by step help. This enables me to save some money by going through GoDaddy and Host Gator. But I would have never got to that point without SBI.

The reason I am saying this is because using information that others have put out there is a great way to save you time and money! Don’t reinvent the wheel when getting started. Use what is already out there. I liken it to my golf game. I fought a slice for 15 years and was embarrassed to go to a pro for help. When I finally did he had me straighten out in 30 minutes. Now, it took a lot of practice on my part afterward, but the point is, I could have save myself 15 years of aggravation and had a lot more fun if I would have just sucked it up and went to a pro early on.

If you are just starting out on line, take a look through the video’s and articles I have posted in this blog  as they should give you a pretty good head start to your online marketing.

Have you had a simlar experience? Leave me a comment below or if you have a specific question please post it below and hit the submit button and I will do my best to answer it.

****some of the links on this page are affiliate links and if you purchase something I could make a small fortune -:)

Here are links to the resources I used in this video. There are a lot of very good resources out there and these are just a few. I got started with these companies and found them to be reliable so I have kept on using them.

Please do your own research to find what works best for you.

GoDaddy.com

WordPress.com

FatWallet.com

***some of the links above are affiliate links. If you purchase something I could make a small fortune -:).