The Importance of Using Images in Your Blog Posts

Writing blog posts is a fun and easy way to convey your message on any given topic. Mixing in an image or two really adds to the power of the message and helps you illustrate your point.

Having images on any website or blog automatically makes them more attractive and raises the level of interest for the reader. An image placed at the top of your blog post that compliments the title can be a powerful feature. It makes a statement before the reader even begins to consume the content.

As an example, let’s say you were on vacation and wanted to write a post about the island you were visiting. A title like “Blogging in Paradise” and an image of the sandy beach with a beautiful ocean in the background would really set the tone and pique the interest of anyone who happens to see these two elements.

It sounds simple but I, and perhaps you as well, have seen blog post where these two critical elements left you wondering how they correlated to one another and what the post was actually about.

Images also serve to break up the continual text of a post, making it more attractive overall. This can be done with regular static images or video imagery.

It is important to note than images located on the internet can be subject to copyright laws and may be protected, so care must be given to any image you use.

So where can you find images that you can freely use without worry?

• Personal camera or smartphone
• Download from an internet site that has free images to use
• Download from an internet site that provides images for a fee

A personal camera or smartphone can be a good source of images that you can use as you please. These are rightfully yours.

Before searching for images online keep these two words in mind, “royalty free”. This means that you can use these images without paying additional royalty fees.

Internet sites like iStockPhoto.com, Stockxpert.com and Dreamstime.com provide royalty free images that are both free of charge and for sale. Simply register and open an account (free) and see what they have to offer. They all have search features to assist you in finding what you want. Below I simply entered the word “tropical”.

Of course the nicer images will have a cost, but depending on what you are looking for, there are thousands of free images that can be downloaded and used without spending a dime.

Flickr.com is another great source of images. However, you MUST use the advanced search function and select the option: “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”.

If you use any of these free to use public images, be sure to give attribution to the original owner who is likely the person who photographed the image in the first place.

Doing a Google search on “free images” will return pages of choices, so there is no shortage of image sources on the internet.

Best types of images

Bloggers and website operators should always be aware of page load times, so one thing to consider when using images is their resolution. This is important to avoid a sloooow loading blog or website.

Slow loading sites – c ya! Your reader is gone before the header is displayed.

To address this be sure that your image selection is small enough to fit on your site. There is no need to select the largest, highest resolution image available. Select one that has 72 DPI (dots per inch) which is a good resolution, but will not be taxing on your load speed.

Image formats

Images come in a host of formats, but these next three are the most popular for displaying images on the internet. I will not get into the pluses and minuses of the various formats here, as the topic would be quite lengthy.

Jpeg – Joint photographic experts group

Gif – Graphics interchange format

Png – Portable Network Graphics

When downloading from the available sites you will find jpegs to be most common.

Image processing

As you can imagine, there are tons of software packages for processing images. For simple resizing, adding text or converting file types, one of my favorites is Snagit by TechSmith. This is a really versatile tool for screen captures and many other tasks.

Conclusion

Adding images to your blog post or other publications like newsletters and ebooks can make all the difference in a plain document or one with pizzazz. For me, this is where the dressing out of the document occurs.

Quick confession: I have on occasion withheld a blog post because I could not locate just the right image at the time to make that first impression. Now I don’t suggest you go that far, but do put some thought into the overall look and feel of your publications.

Keep Blogging!

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