Blogging - Why Images Matter

 

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

This is why images matter! The most important type of content for marketing your business today is arguably the content you put on your website’s blog. This is the content that will attract visitors via the search engine traffic that the keyword-rich content will generate when your audience makes a search.

Studies show that blogging about your business, products and services at least twenty times per month will allow you to get five times more traffic than if you don’t. This is according to a study done by HubSpot.com. You can literally double your website traffic in six months if you keep it up.

So, if you’re going to blog, why use images?

1) 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%).  (Source: Social Media Examiner)

37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business - Social Media Examiner Click To Tweet

2) 74% of social media marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing, ahead of blogs (68%) and videos (60%). (Source: Social Media Examiner)

74% of social media marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing - Social Media Examiner Click To Tweet

3) When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.  (Source: BrainRules.net)

 

 

 

If a relevant image is paired with information, people retain 65% of it three days later - BrainRules.net Click To Tweet

4) B2C marketers place greater importance on visual content than B2B marketers.  (Source: Social Media Examiner)

B2C marketers place greater importance on visual content than B2B marketers - Social Media Examiner Click To Tweet

5) 51% of B2B marketers prioritized creating visual content assets in 2016.  (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

51% of B2B marketers prioritized creating visual content assets in 2016 - Content Marketing Institute Click To Tweet

If you want visitors to stick to your blog and read it more than once, it’s important to make your blog posts visually pleasing. Putting images in your blog posts will break up the text to make your blog more attractive. In addition, it can help further explain the meaning of the content that you place on your blog. Taking the time to choose a relevant image will make your blog look more professional, too.

 

There are many ways you can find appropriate images.

 

Take Photos Yourself

You can produce perfectly good images by using your iPhone or Smartphone to take relevant pictures. If you have a digital camera, that is another way to take pictures. If you want to take pictures of products, make yourself a portable light box or try taking the pictures outside in natural light.

 

Get Creative

 

An image doesn’t have to be a photograph; it can be an attractive arrangement of a quote from your blog post made into a .jpg  or .png file with a beautiful and colourful background. This is a great way to add interest as well as call out an important point within your blog post. It looks attractive and helps explain the meaning to your readers.

I created this one using one of the wallpapers/backgrounds from our Collection of images. I simply used Canva to upload the image and then added the text and our logo. Really quick to do!

 

Hire Someone

There are plenty of graphic designers on sites like Fiverr, as well as other sites that you can hire to help you come up with appropriate graphics for your blog posts, such as Canva. They may be better at coming up with ideas than you, and it’s perfectly okay to hire someone. If you outsource your blog posts, ask your writer if they can help you with images.

 

Look on Stock Photo Sites

There are quite a few subscription stock photo sites, like iStockphoto, Fotolia, and 123RF, and also some free stock sites, such as Pexels and Pixabay, that you can use to find appropriate images to use on your blog. Some of the sites are free, and some are paid. Just check the license rules to ensure that you have a right to use the image. It’s also good practice to give credit for images.

You want to use images, but don’t go overboard with them. Remember to consider loading time, so use smaller images. As well as that, remember to use the “alt” tags on the images so that if the image doesn’t show up for some reason it will tell the reader what the image is. This is also another way to alert search engines about the subject of your blog.

If you do decide to create your own then it really is worth your while taking a browse through our Collection. We’ve taken the hard work out of drawing and have colour coordinated sets of images that you can just mix and match to your own branding.

Of course, having decided to use images, the next thing you need to do is promote your blog and the best way to do that is through social media! If you not sure which social media platform is right for you, take a look at this article by Broadband Search - The Most Popular Social Networking Sites in 2020. It’s full of really useful information on users and which social sites might be best for your business.