You have only a matter of seconds after a prospective client finds their way to your blog—to inspire them to read your post. The most effective methods of inspiring your prospective clients to invest their time reading your blog content—is to place well thought-out images within. This could be anything from graphs, charts, photos, or graphic design. In fact, selecting images for your blogs increases readership by an astounding 94%!

If you have yet to see the value of sourcing images for your blogs or are not sure where to begin—the tips below will help you in making your selection.

Select Relevant Images For Your Blogs

When selecting an image for your blog, make sure they are relevant to your blog post and are something that your target audience can relate to. In other words, any old image won’t do. For example, adding your business logo to a blog post about “The Top 5 Ways to Increase Productivity” does not relate to what your prospective client hopes to learn. However, adding an image of a graph with a gradual incline to this same article can entice the reader.

Select Creative And Interesting Images For Your Blog

While you want your images to be relevant, don’t confuse relevancy for lack of creativity. For example, a picture of a singular tulip may be relevant to a blog post on “Spring Flowers”—but an image of a professionally arranged tulip bouquet, colorful tulip field, or a close-up of tulip petals will be far more impactful. Also, keep in mind:

• If you enjoy photography and photo editing, you can shoot your images and edit them to perfection.
• If you have minimal photo editing skills, you can utilize Paint and Photoshop to customize your images.
• If you don’t have the time or desire to shoot and/or edit images for your blogs—purchase photos online.

Select High-Quality Images

When selecting your images, you must ensure that they are clear, and do not appear grainy or pixilated. Sometimes when you download an image that is perfectly clear, its clarity is lost when you size it for your blog posts. As a general rule, opt for images with twice the resolution you require. This way they will have greater versatility for future online content and marketing materials—besides the blog post you have in mind. Also, keep in mind that some images are shot in a matter in which some sections are blurred for artistic purposes.

Learn Basic Formatting

Even if you have no interest in learning how to edit images, you must invest time in learning how to accurately format your images within your blog posts. This includes proper alignment within the post, basic resizing, and adding a simple border.

Honor Copyright Laws And Usage Rights

When selecting images for your blogs, you must ensure that you are not infringing upon any copyright laws or usage rights. While you can type any word into a search engine and access an unlimited number of images—odds are you do not have the right to share them elsewhere online. Also, keep this in mind when posting images taken at events, or received by professional photographers. When necessary, obtain written consent from photographers, models, and others featured in your images.

When searching for online photo stock, utilize a reputable provider that provides access to images with copyright permission—iStock is an excellent choice.

Keep Your Budget In Mind

When sourcing images for your blogs, set a budget. Photo stock does not come cheap, so you want to make sure that you are not investing more on an image than you can comfortably afford. Balance the visual appeal and potential for increased interest, with what you can afford. It may be helpful to set a maximum price per image.

Make Your Images Shareable

Part of effective content marketing is making it easy for blog visitors to spread the word about your brand, product, services, or blog. By ensuring that your blog posts and images are “shareable”—they have the potential to spread across the web on social media or via email. In fact, social media posts with images are 37% more likely to attract engagement such as being liked, shared, and clicked on to learn more.

Keep Your Blog Images Organized

Once you purchase images for your blogs, keep a record of what blog posts they are associated with. This will help you when considering when and where to utilize your images in the future. This includes future blog posts, your website, offline marketing materials, social media posts, email marketing campaigns, landing pages, or any other content in which a relevant image will increase engagement.

Consider Linking Your Photos To Other Relevant Information

When you add an image to your blog, you have the ability to add a link to a secondary source that readers can access when they place their mouse above the image. Even if you have links within the text of your article—images with links are clicked on up to 84% more than text links. So if the goal of your blog post is to encourage readers to visit your e-commerce store—link your image to your e-commerce store.

Think Mobile

It is essential to know how much of your traffic currently comes from mobile devices. Even if your blog is already responsive (aka. mobile friendly), consider how the images you select will appear when viewed on the smaller screen of a smartphone or notebook. Consider if the internal text will be difficult to read and if the image will still have the same impact when viewed as a mini photo.

While you may still opt for images that are not as easy to view in detail on mobile devices—keep the mobile top of mind. Also, remember that mobile devices allow readers to enlarge images if they want to take a closer look.

The tips above will assist you in finding the most effective and engaging images for your blogs—both to increase reader engagement and overall conversions.