Let’s say that news breaks and you want to cover the story using a blog. What’s your next step? Do you go out and start a new blog using Blogger or WordPress? Do you call your IT guy and ask for help? What happens if your content management system isn’t powerful enough to handle a live blog?

Liveblogging is a great way to provide ongoing coverage of an event:

• What you write can be turned into a longer story later on.
• Users can follow play-by-play action as quickly as you post it.
• Modern liveblogs allow you to also upload and post photos, videos, audio, maps, hyperlinks and more.

I like to highlight the work of the LATimes.com back in October 2007, which used a blog to report the Southern California wildfires that devastated hundreds of homes. It was a team effort that, at the time, helped area residents learn more about what was happening.

Since then, a number of new tools have emerged to make it even easier to liveblog an event. My current favorite is Cover It Live, which is a free tool that works in multiple languages. What’s really nice is that it doesn’t really matter what kind of website you have or even whether you know code. It’s a very simple platform - and it allows people to ask you questions or to post comments immediately. You can save a transcript, publish the liveblog to YouTube, integrate Twitter in with the system and much, much more.

For more information on Cover It Live, visit here.

Amy Webb is a digital media consultant and head of Webbmedia Group, LLC. Find more multimedia tips and ideas at her blog, http://www.mydigimedia.com. You can also follow Amy on Twitter and delicious. Webbmedia Group is a vendor-neutral company. Any opinions expressed about products or services are formed after testing, research and interviews. Neither Amy Webb nor Webbmedia Group or its employees receives any financial or other benefits from vendors.