10 Benefits of Using Images in Your Blog Post

Our blog posts are the main product of our blogging activities. Just like the pages of a book, we have to create them interesting, catchy, comprehensible and shareable to others. And just like a book, its pages would be boring without pictures in them. That is why every blogger, who wants to make a difference, should invest extra time and effort to find the right photos to include in his or her blog posts. If you’re used to be lazy and always in a hurry to escape putting a picture in your articles or stories, just think of the following 10 important benefits of using images in your blog post.

1. It adds color. Blog posts that only contain plain texts are just like book pages without pictures – they are boring. Add colors to your blog posts by placing eye soothing and relevant images on them.

2. It adds a good introduction. A good picture placed above or before your post adds a good introduction that gives readers an idea what they will be reading for. It gives readers a map or a direction on their way to reading your post.

3. It makes your post memorable. Images are not only eye catchy, but they can also catch the minds of people. If you want to make your blog posts memorable, add unique and interesting photos that will create a mark on the brain of your readers.

4. It triggers emotional response from your readers. A picture is worth a thousand words, and that is perhaps the reason why it doesn’t only sooth the eyes or make a remarkable remark on the brain of your audience, but it could also touch the emotions of your viewers.

5. It supports the message of your post. Images make our blog posts more comprehensive and informative since the image itself brings a lot of information to our readers. Images, infographics, and even graphs could explain some things that texts couldn’t explain.

6. It helps your SEO and drives more traffic. Putting relevant Meta tags (title, description and alt text) on the images within your blog post increases its quality and authority, helping your blog posts or pages rank higher in the search engines. Images are also indexed by search engines which mean they could also be searchable on Google, Yahoo and Bing, eventually driving more traffic to your blog. To check how many images from your blog are indexed by Google, go to Google.com, then go to search images, and then type and search for “site:yourdomainname.com” without the quotes (see below).

7. It makes you a more dedicated blogger. Dedicating some of your time and effort in finding relevant images makes your visitors and readers believe that you are not there blogging only for money, but you are there blogging to also serve your best and make your audience happy. Providing quality and relevant images on your posts could also make you a more professional blogger. It also enhances the relationship you have with your readers.

8. It gives your post the right thumbnail. Placing a good and relevant picture in your blog post gives it the right thumbnail image in the other parts of your blog and in the social media where you are sharing it. Thumbnails make your blog navigational friendly and make it more interesting to browse. When you share your blog post to the social media, like Facebook, a good thumbnail will make it more clickable and readable. Check out how your blog post will look on Facebook with and without the right thumbnail.

With the right thumbnail, this post is more appealing and clickable.

Without the right image placed on a blog post, a wrong thumbnail may show making it looks like an advertorial post.

Without the right thumbnail appearing, some bloggers tend to choose showing their post without a thumbnail at all which makes it boring and not engaging.

Also, there are times when the thumbnails that are appearing on social media are the photos of the authors. What if the post’s title or description is about a person who has been jailed for doing some crime? The people who could see the post shared on social media, like Facebook, may think that the person described by that post is the one appearing on the thumbnail, who is actually the author and not the one who has been jailed.

A sample post on Facebook showing the photo thumbnail of the author, who may be misunderstood as the man who was jailed for a crime. Do I look like one? 🙂

9. It makes your blog post shareable on the social media. As we discussed in #8, putting good and relevant images will make the thumbnail of the post, we share in the social media, more engaging. It would also be useful if we are using Pinterest.com as one of the top social networking sites for promoting our blogs. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web by pinning images which can be uploaded from your computer or can be extracted from your blog posts. If you have beautiful images on your blog posts, then you will have a higher chance of success in promoting your blog on Pinterest.

10. It makes your blog more competitive. Finally, and to sum up it all, images can make your blog posts and your blog itself more competitive in the blogosphere. If you want to stand out from the crowd and gain more followers, you have to overcome your laziness and instead start becoming more hardworking, patient and more dedicated in giving extra effort and value to your readers.

A picture is really worth a thousand words. That is why always make it a habit to find the right images for your blog posts. It would also be better if you can capture all your photos personally so that you can have originality.