I'm going to have to agree with Mister Turtlehead here. Yes a links fine, and if it sounds vaguely interesting I'll click on it, and I might spend a bit of time looking about.

BUT, I'd far, far, far and away have a taster on here, a few photos, and a tiny bit of text, maybe just one highlight from a longer story, one part of a pre-existing blog copied and pasted on here, something to get me to bite. It's basic marketing to be honest, give a hint of something and people are more likely to bite.

And yes, I like the interactivity (is that even a word) of it being on a forum, of being able to ask questions of the author, make encouraging remarks, or hints, or anything, and being diverted away to a blog which I'll read on my own doesn't allow me to do that the same way. Here's a prime example.

In THIS post of the previously mentioned Romanian trip thread, Dave Ede says, "Very nice pictures of the Romania trip, in picture'30' was she like that before, during and after you had 'passed' through?". And that's OK, I scrolled back up to the top, clicked the link, clicked the link on the site and found the photo.

But how much better, how much livelier, would it have been if it had looked like this.

Then all sorts of people would have seen the picture, and some of us might then have taken it further, and gone to look at Chris's site, to see what else was on it.

It's marketing, and if you're doing a blog for anything more than your friends and family, and specifically if you've had sponsors you want to give converage and thanks to, or like Chris, you've got something you'd like to sell, then a little tiny bit of marketing is worth it. It doesn't even have to take that long, if you've written a blog post, just copy and paste it in.

And personally, if I saw this photo from the same site



I'd have been over there like a shot to find out what the story was.

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