Here at the International Bloggers’ Association, we have a wide variety of bloggers, from food to travel, family, lifestyle and more. Since we know that our readers are also bloggers of all kinds; today I will tell you how to figure out the perfect combination of graphics and photos for YOUR blog posts. There are some images and graphics that all blogs must have and some that can be skipped depending on your style.
How to Find the Perfect Combination of Graphics and Photos for Your Blog Posts
No. 1 Rule for Photos and Graphics
Photos: Photography should be high quality and appealing to the eye. If you don’t have your own photographs, make sure that the ones you use are given credit or come from royalty free website. Here is a great list of websites where you can find photos without having any legal troubles.
Graphics: All graphics must be good quality and not pixelated. Blurry graphics are terrible eyesores! Make sure the color and style of the graphics match your blog and don’t feel out of place.
The following are the different kinds of visuals you should be using in your blog to make it shine on Social Media and be recognized instantly by new and repeat visitors.
Blog Post Titles
No matter what your blog is about, if you want to be recognized on Social Media and even make some money then your posts must have a Title Images. These are the graphics that you add as a Featured Image on your WordPress template, the image that Facebook will pull from your blog when sharing, it’s even the image that you can share on Twitter to promote your post.
Pinterest Worthy Images
If you want to be seen on Pinterest and gain a good following you must make Pinterest sized graphics for your readers to be able to pin to their favorite boards. Pinnable graphics can be a Pinterest size version of your Title but they can also be infographics or a step by step collages of a recipe or craft.
Complementary Graphics
Apart from Post Titles and Pinnable graphics, you can include all sorts of complementary images and graphics. You can have a how-to collage or slideshow. If you wrote a travel piece you can insert some images from the trip. Don’t forget to use your BEST photos.
What’s the BEST combination?
Every blog is different so there can’t be just one perfect combination of graphics and photos for your blog posts. I have seen some great blogs with very high readership that don’t even use branded Blog Post Titles. This is because they rely on their amazing writing skills and word of mouth. These kinds of blogs are usually very personal and more like journal entries that other people can relate to. These are not the kinds of blogs we are talking about here, though.
Your blog post will be scrolled before it is actually read. It probably will not be read all the way through if while scrolling, the reader’s attention is not attained. A post without images or graphics will look unappealing and maybe readers will skim through if just the headline pulled them in.
In my opinion, blog posts should always have a Blog Post Title image or graphic and they should always be branded and follow some kind of template. Apart from this, your perfect combination can vary widely.
It Depends on Your Blog
For example; A food and recipe blog really needs a pinnable image because Pinterest loves recipes. A how-to infographic is a great addition as well. Complementary images of the process are also great additions. Remember though that if the photos of the process don’t make the food look yummy when your readers scroll the article, they won’t read it. If you wrote a travel story you definitely need some great shots of the place you visited.
If you blog post is a personal story or event, you might not have very nice images to go with it. Try using a relevant quote made in Canva, or maybe a video. The Blog Title can be enough if the text isn’t very long (around 500 to 800 words).
Whatever the type of blog, it can benefit from having a Pinnable image. Even if you don’t use Pinterest much, it’s possible that your readers do, so give them something to pin. If you don’t like the way a Pinnable image looks inside your post, there is a way to hide it with a bit of code. Here’s the link on how to do that.
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A good way to calculate the perfect combination of graphics and photos for your blog posts is to ensure that when the post is scrolled, there is no long space of just text. This post, has a visual example of this and many other great tips for adding images in blog posts.
Images and graphics in blog posts are also great for SEO. Yoast has a great tutorial on how to master this so that even your images found on Google are pulling in readers. Read it HERE.
Have you found your perfect combination of graphics and photos for your blog posts? Share your strategy with us in the comments section below.
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