Why You Should Use Pictures In Your Blog Posts

If you’re blogging as part of your marketing regimen, you should be using photos. Yes, I know Seth Godin doesn’t use them. You’re not Seth Godin. When you get to that level of fame and exposure, you can ignore the photos.

Until then, not so much.

Your readers come to your website or blog with questions. They’re overwhelmed, frazzled and likely not thinking too clearly. They need to be calmed so your information can penetrate.

You have two choices: let visitors be frazzled or cut through the mental clutter so your information can help a reader make a good choice about whether they need your help.

If you’re going for the latter, you need a picture for your blog posts.  In fact, there are a number of excellent reasons to use these visual cues.

1. Break Up The Line.  Derek Halpern of Social Triggers discusses the perfect blog width, and recommends using a picture to break things up and make it easier to digest.  The picture breaks up the clutter and dispels the feeling of overwhelm that accompanies a wall of text, which in turn makes your content more easily digested.
2. Illustrate A Point.  A photo that conveys the emotion or reasoning behind your blog post will help the lesson sink in more effectively. Some people, after all, think visually. The use of color and descriptive images drives home the point so your readers are more likely to get the most out of their time on your blog.
3. Jump Start The Sharing.  Posts with pictures in them are shared more often on social media platforms. Don’t believe me? Just go into Facebook and count the number of status updates in your stream that contain pictures. Case closed.
4. Engage The Mind’s Eye.  Visual memory, the process of memory triggered by a visual cue, allows us to pull ideas from memory more easily when they are connected with an image. It’s one of the reasons why you can see a character actor and immediately say, “it’s THAT GUY! From THAT MOVIE! Damn, what’s his name?”  When you add a picture to your blog post, you help the reader engage heir visual memory and create a link between the words on the screen and the mental image. That’s going to help people remember you as well as the information you’re sharing.

Giving your content the visual cue of a picture makes your blog more visually appealing, easier to read and better understood.  Given the fact that you’re blogging for attention from your prospective clients, it’s easy to see why a picture can come in handy.