Unlike when reading a newspaper or book, our eyes quickly tire when viewing content on a computer screen. By breaking content up with a relevant image, you're giving your readers' eyes a subconscious break. Ultimately this will make readers far more likely to stay on your blog because they're not overwhelmed by lengthy, text-heavy posts.

Many blogging professionals use logos or insignias when referring to a particular company in a post. This is an excellent tool as it immediately lets readers know what the post is about without reading a word.

Here's a run down of the dos and don'ts of using images in blog posts:

• DO: choose an image that's relevant to your subject.
• DO: adjust the image properties (border, alignment, dimensions) to ensure the picture looks as it should, without appearing arbitrarily placed.
• DO: give your source credit. This can be done tactfully with a brief line of italicized text at the bottom of the post indicating where it came from.
  
• DO: use either your own or images from public domain sites to avoid copyright trouble. Wikimedia Commons is a good place to start.
  
• DO: read Kevin's post on using Flickr and other creative commons sites.
• DO: see our FAQ about How to properly credit a photo source.
• DON'T: heavily adjust the image's appearance by simply pasting in the image's URL. Save the photo and edit it (resize, crop,etc.) in a program on your computer than then upload it into your post.
• DON'T: use a poor quality photo. Make sure images are clear and in aspect ratio (height and width are in proportion).
• DON'T:  be afraid to use more than one image. Pro Blogger uses a photo for each point in a bulleted list.
• DON'T: put the image at the bottom, keep it toward the top to lure in readers.
• DON'T: link the image back to the site where you grabbed the image. This is hotlinking, which is generally frowned upon.

Any of the solutions you mention will work, in theory. The issue becomes whether a law firm wants to use a solution whose primary purpose is for social journals. Blogger and Live Journal may be great for journaling your family life or sporting interests. But they are lacking features and the visual integrity law firms should be looking for. There is a big difference between a professional marketing blog for a law firm and a journal type blog.

Marketing blogs done by law firms are going to far surpass their law firm Web site in volume of unique visitors and page views per month. Accordingly, law firm marketers want to make certain their blogs have necessary features such as categories and subcategories, among others, not be linked in among a community of common interests ranging from sex sites to teenage diaries to Harry Potter and have a professional look to create a good first impression.

For that reason, I suggest firms use WordPress or Moveable Type. They are the leaders in the development community. They do require some tech support to set up and install and will require some design work to come up with a nice look. And there are updated releases plus bugs with each from time to time. But developers working with one or the other can deal with these ‘fairly easily.’