4 Kinds Of Images You Need On Your Blog |
Posted: January 23, 2018 |
The Internet is a visual medium. Sure, people read. But even more, they scan. And when they scan, they pick up bits of text. They might stop to read some, but text all looks pretty much the same when you`re scanning. Images look different. People stop to look at the image. Well, sometimes they stop. It's taken a decade to teach bloggers that they need an image in each post, and some still haven't learned their lesson. But so many of them use unstoppable images. An unstoppable image is one that people ignore. They don`t stop. They just keep scrolling and scanning, scanning and scrolling, scrolling and scanning. What kind of images are unstoppable? Boring pictures of laptops, like this (yawn): Staged pics of meetings, like this (ho-hum): Just like your blog post, the image is only interesting enough to be stoppable if it is useful or entertaining. And it will be sharable. A sharable image is one that people on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest like enough to share it on their timelines for their followers to see. When people share the image with your link attached, that opens your business up to new audiences. If you can create an image that is truly entertaining and supports the message you are trying to advance in your blog post, use it. Otherwise, make your image useful. Here are four kinds of images that are stoppable, just because they are so amazingly useful: InfographicsIf you can put a lot of information in a single image, you have an Infographic. Sometimes these are dreadfully long and try to cover way too much. But a well-done Infographic can work wonders. This Infographicc paid gold for Anita Clark on her Warner Robins real estate blog. She says:“I closed two sales from this Infographic. One was a referral and one a local seller. Infographics work for local marketing.” What this Infographic did was provide all the information somebody wants to know on a specific topic. Handy checklists like this work very well, because they are useful and visual. Infographics are both stoppable and sharable. In fact, people love sharing Infographics. It might be that people feel they are substantial, and so their followers will appreciate them. One of the most shared blog posts I’ve ever written was based on a cheesy Infographic on how Google reads backlinks. By “cheesy”, I mean I had somebody on Fiverr do it up. It really is not a work of art. Your Infographic doesn’t need to be a work of art. It needs to be:
Mini-posters Let’s face it, Infographics are a lot of work, and you won’t create one for every blog post. But mini-posters are easier. Like Infographics, they convey useful Information, but in much less detail. Generally, a mini-poster comes in one of two forms:
I often use the short list approach. In fact, I use it on my service pages to get possible clients thinking ahead of time of what they need to do to make their project successful. The idea is that by the time they contact me, they already know what to do. I can then spend less time educating them, and more time figuring out what they need and how my team can help. Here is an example from my book writer page: These images are also both stoppable and sharable. If people stop to view the image, they linger on my page longer. The longer they stay, the more of an affinity they subconsciously form with the page and the more likely they are to fill in a quote request form. As they linger, their subconscious is saying, “Why not?” And if people like the image, they are more likely to share it (share the page) to their social media accounts. In fact, since adding useful images, I have seen social shares jump quite a bit. The other type of poster is one that transmits a single idea, usually one of the most important parts of an article. I prepared an image for a post about salvaging wet iPhones. One of the messages was not to plug in the phone while it’s still wet. So here’s the image I created: Screenshots If you are writing about something that can be viewed online, screenshots are great. Don’t just tell your readers what you mean, show them. This is a staple of software reviews or of commenting on the news. Here’s an example from the BuzzSumo blog: They can also be used to show how popular something is (screenshot of hashtag trends, for example) or to show stills from a video. Screenshots are highly stoppable, especially in a how-to post. Anybody seriously reading the post will want to see exactly what you mean. However, screenshots are much less shareable, because they lose meaning outside the context of your post. Graphs Graphs are great because they show data in a quick and easy way to understand. People love data. Data proves a point. In this world of scepticism, fake news and distrust of almost every source of information, people crave proof. Yet data is complex and people are lazy. Nobody wants to make sense of even simple numbers. They prefer to look at a graph. Even within Infographics, we often see a lot of pie charts and bar graphs. I don’t use graphs enough. One graph I have used on many occasions is a bar chart showing what writing projects people seek from my team. This helps people in my more popular niches see that, yes, we do lots of projects like theirs. It’s a form of social proof that helps them to decide to contact me for a quote. As they linger, their subconscious is saying, “Why not?” And, of course, the useful image makes the page more shareable. That page has, as of writing, 123 social shares, almost all attributed to the image. Images are not just another box to check off on your list. Images are in many ways as important to the success of your content as the headline is. Both attract readers. But the image can also keep readers. And the image makes your content more shareable. Don't overlook your images. And don't slap in some stock photo just to fill a spot. Make your images work for your success.
|
||||||||||||||||
|