Everyone knows that blog marketing a great way to build relationships with customers and associates, while establishing yourself or your company as a credible authority in your industry. But it is not enough to simply have compelling content. You need to have an eye-catching and visually appealing blog design, to stand out from the competition – and to keep your visitors coming.

These days, all manner of web pages from huge company sites to small business blogs are expected to add audio, photo, or video to their posts and homepages. Multimedia consists of pictures, videos or music. The real trick is adding multimedia that enriches your site, product, or brand without taking away from your company’s core message and aesthetic.. Every web design component of your blog should enhance your branding and remind your visitors of what your blog is all about.

For most blog hosting sites, the majority of multimedia is handled through embed codes. All embeds can be handled as simple copy-and-paste jobs using these resources. WordPress, Tumblr and any other half-decent blog host will have ways to add multimedia in their dashboard. Some of these are better than others. Tumblr tools are pretty intuitive whereas WordPress sometimes glitches when switching between HTML and visual formats.

Overall, a website without multimedia is like a cake without icing: pretty good… but not great. Multimedia provides the edge that most blogs need to keep visitors coming back!

Check out Mashable’s list of 26 places to find various pieces of free multimedia for your blog or website. Check it out here!