Image via Wikipedia
You have a blog, and you worked hard to get visitors to it.
I hate to tell you this, but that’s the easy part! The next challenge is actually getting them to stay and read what you have to say.
Of course, you want to draw visitors back again and again by providing quality information and regular updates. However, another (sometimes overlooked) way to get visitors to stay longer is by adding images to your blog.
An important element of attracting readers and keeping them is by making pictures of part of your blog. They can be the difference between a blog with a high bounce rate and one that draws visitors who stop and stay a while.
It’s important to understand the purpose of blogging, and that is to sell something, whether it be your ideas and opinions or your own product. In either event, you want your blog to be read, so it is important to make it interesting to your target audience.
After all, your blog has a theme, and the best way to communicate your theme quickly is with pictures or photos.
A key reason that images will add to your overall blog success is that of aesthetics. photos or graphics make your blog look nicer and more appealing to the eye so it will attract more visitors.
Look at any magazine on the newsstand and make note of the number of photographs and images they contain. In essence, a blog is much like an online magazine, and images on the blog are equally important.
After all, our television age is highly visual. Readers expect some kind of visual experience on a blog as well. (By the way, you can also link to YouTube videos to make visitors stay on your blog longer.)
You want your visitors to be engaged by your information, so use images that are fresh and relevant and that accentuate your points.
Every blog platform has mechanisms for uploading pictures. For example, Apple’s iWeb and RealMac Software’s RapidWeaver both make it easy to insert pictures from your iPhoto albums. Blogger and WordPress have their own mechanisms for uploading, storing and hosting photos. The creators of these blogging platforms know the importance of images, so make sure you are using them.
Visitors to your blog want to get a good idea of what it is all about as soon as they arrive, without having to wade through big blocks of grey text. Creating an instant impact with images will make it much easier to catch and hold their attention.
If you use your blog to market products and services, the use of good images will help to keep your products foremost in your visitors’ minds.
Images can be placed either in your blog’s sidebar or scattered strategically through the text. In any event, you can advertise your products without having to bombard your visitors with sales pitches.
Where do you get images for your blog? You can get them from clip art or image collections, joint-venture PLR giveaways for marketers or even from your own library of images in iPhoto or on your hard drive — images that you have taken while on vacation, in your town or around your home. Digital cameras are inexpensive these days, and with a little imagination, you will often be able to find relevant images to reinforce your blog without having to stray too far from your computer.
In the final analysis, your blogging success will be largely tied to the visual appeal of your blog. Magazines would not sell nearly as well if they lacked images, and books would not draw much attention without cover art. Your blog operates in much the same way.
