This post contains affiliate links, thank you for your continued support.

Let's talk first impressions.  Your blog needs to have an amazing layout and be well-designed with great content and pictures that enhance that. Simply put images are what will set you apart from the rest.

Images will help draw readers in again and again.

Social media is an everyday thing, for most people, and growing your reach and traffic on social platforms is essential.  Guess what captures attention on sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. That’s right, it’s images. The images make people click through to read your blog post.

 

Getting Images

There are a couple options when it comes to getting images for your blog post:

1. Use your own pictures
2. Purchasing photos
3. Source images from external sites (giving proper credit when needed)

You can find both free and paid stock photo sites like DepositPhoto.com and Pixabay.com, to name a few. Or use an online program that also offers a chrome extension like Stencil, which happens to be one of my favorites when I need an image in a pinch because you can source an image, add text, watermark and save it all in one place.

Formatting Images

How you format and size your pictures will depend on a few different things.  You need to consider where you'll be displaying your images and if that will be on the blog or social media.

Different sites prefer or convert better with different image sizes. I love PicMonkey for a simple online editor because you can resize based on platform or use one of their templates to customize an image just the way you want it.

Images and SEO

Last but not least, let’s not forget about SEO. The file name and the alt tag are both used to determine what the page (or post) the image is found on is about.

Use this to your advantage by including your keywords and go into detail when using the alt tag which helps increase your SEO especially on sites like Pinterest.

 

If you aren't using images already start doing it NOW.  Play around with editing, style and adding text and titles to your images.  There are many free tools out there that you can use like PicMonkey, Canva, and even apps on your phone like Snapseed.  I know you'll find a winning combination and have images that will wow your readers.

What's your favorite way to edit images?