Adding rich multimedia content to your blog posts is a powerful way to tell engaging stories. A plug-in called Apture makes adding compelling multimedia to your posts a snap.
Take, for instance, this embed of my favorite alt.country band, The Old 97s. With just a few clicks, I was able to embed a live YouTube recording of the song 504, a link to the band’s website, a clip of the single Doreen, a snapshot of frontman Rhett Miller’s Twitter updates, and a review of the band’s album “Drag It Up” on Amazon, with a link.
Apture lets bloggers integrate text, images, video, music, maps and references from more than 50 sources.
The plug-in taps into popular sites like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Hulu, ESPN, Comedy Central, NPR and more.
Apture’s easy-to-use embed building interface includes built-in search of those sites, though the search results didn’t blow me away. Of course, it could be because I’m searching for video of obscure alt.country bands, but who knows?
The feature I love, though, is Apture’s ability to link your readers to multiple pieces of content, including multiple media, in a single link.
How many times have you written a post and included words or phrases that screamed for a link to deeper context, but couldn’t choose between two or more link destinations? Apture solves the problem by creating a neat, attractive pop-up so your readers can simultaneously see, hear, and read about the topics you care about.
I’m still toying with Apture, but so far, I love it. Are you using Apture? What are your thoughts?