The other day Chris Brogan wrote a post about easy ways to improve your blog. One of his tips was to use photos to break up the text on your posts. A great tip, images can really add a lot of visual interest and help to drive a point home, too.

These days, most people have access to a digital camera and a Flickr account, so adding photos to your page is easy. But what about those times when you need a certain type of photo? For instance, right now here in Ottawa we are buried in about 6 feet of snow (still!), but I’m dreaming of Spring flowers. What if I want to add a nice picture of some daffodils to my post, but my own daffodils are buried in snow? Enter MorgueFile.

MorgueFile is a photo sharing site where amateur and semi-professional (and sometimes professional) photographers share their photos for anyone to use. Most of the time all they want in return is an email saying where you have used their photo. You can search on various topics and there are thousands of great photos to choose from.

Using MorgueFile to find a particular type of photo has more benefits than just prettying up your web pages, I’ve learned. It can also help to drive traffic to your blog.

The other day I posted about a special community I was once part of, and I went to MorgueFile to find the perfect photo. I found exactly what I was looking for in a photo by mindexpansi0n. Not only did I credit the photographer and provide a link to his MorgueFile pages, but I also dropped him a quick email to let him know I’d used his photo in my post. A few hours later, mindexpansi0n wrote me back and let me know that not only did he appreciate the credit, but he’d also subscribed to my blog!

Next time you are looking for that perfect photo, check out MorgueFile and support budding photographers by helping them to get their work out there. And you just may get some new blog visitors too!

Photo by ren from MorgueFile.

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I have been thinking over the past couple of days how much things have changed online in the past several months. Social networks have gone from early adoption stage to pretty mainstream, and now the early adopters of business are starting to really grab hold of social media as a way to enhance their online presence. Within the next little while, the business community at large is going to start to catch on in a big way and then it’s going to really get interesting.

Along with this shift has come a shift in the way that people use the Internet. For example, online media and communications wizard Jeff Pulver talks here about how he uses Facebook as a business communication tool. Lots of people, like Collective Thoughts’ Brian Wallace are talking about why Twitter is so important to the new Web.

A year or so ago, my Internet experience was as follows. My home page was the Google Home page, in which I had customized widgets for reading the CBC News, my horoscope, TechCrunch, Wired Magazine and a few others I can’t remember. If I wanted to find information on something I went to Wikipedia. I chatted with people using Windows Messenger and Google Chat. If I was bored I hit the StumbleUpon button a lot and looked at some LOLcats and cute puppy pictures.

Today, my surfing experience is entirely different. My home page is Google Reader and I follow over a hundred blogs and I comment on several blogs a week. I write my own blog and people read it and comment often. I follow and connect with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pownce and FriendFeed, and I share lots of bookmarks in del.icio.us and lots of photos on Flickr.

Notice the words I used to describe my surfing habits a year ago. Reading, finding, looking, bored. Notice the words I used for today’s version of surfing. Following, commenting, connecting, writing, sharing. Which do YOU think sounds more fun and worthwhile?

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