More Words About Images for Your Business Blog

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“Don’t put that stock photo on your website,” begs Peter Wolfgram of Roundpeg. “You didn’t have to do time is moneyit,” he says. “You could have taken that picture yourself. You could have shared your unique people and culture with a picture taken by your unique self.”

Over the past two weeks in my Say It For You blog, I’ve been discussing the use of images in business blog posts. The Roundpeg newsletter piece about using original vs. stock photos happened to coincide with my choice of topic at the time, making we think all the harder about the whole visual component in blogging for business.

“What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are,” Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics asserts. Parkinson quotes famed psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who demonstrated that no less than 93% of communication is nonverbal.

There’s no question that visuals are one of the three “legs” of the business blog “stool”, along with information and perspective or “slant”. I’m not sure, on the other hand, that I agree that all OPI’s (Other People’s Images) are a bad thing. Yes, photos of you and your team members are part of “getting real” and introducing your company or practice to readers, so they get to know the people who will be serving them.

The other category of images for sale, though, is clip art, and I happen to like many of those images a lot. And, no, they’re not original to my clients’ businesses or to mine, and they are not able to – or intended to – show the products and services offered.  What those images do accomplish is capturing concepts, which helps me as the content writer, express the main idea I’m trying to articulate.

Since I’m a corporate blogging trainer as well as a blog writer, I’m keenly aware there’s another piece to this whole stock art question. That piece is time. While business owners know that blog frequency impacts customer acquisition, (see HubSpots’s State of Inbound Marketing.), most have a very hard time sustaining their content marketing efforts even without the additional burden of generating original photography. Sure, finding a good stock or free image takes time, too, but good stock clip art can offer a reasonable compromise.

My advice: definitely go ahead and use visuals to add interest to your blog. When it comes to photos, try for originals, and for concept pieces, OPI’s are AOK.

 

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Images You Can and Cannot Share in Blogging for Business

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I certainly don’t need to be sold on using images in blogging for business. (This post, believe it or not, is actually #1135 on my Say It For You blog, and in every single one of the 1,134 others, you’ll find a photo or image of some kind.)

In fact, one of Debbie Hemley’s 26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts is using mages. Pictures have the power to:

  • Pique interest
  • Aid in learning
  • Evoke emotions

Engaging blog posts, I teach, need to contain more than well-structured sentences. Just as public speaking maven Jim Endicott teaches speakers that every oral presentation needs three elements to be effective (delivery, content, and visual presentation), I believe there are three “legs” to the “stool” of blog content creation:

  • Information
  • “Voice” (the way the message comes across, the opinion slant)
  • Image

There are so many awesome images you can post on your blog,” says Megan Wilson.  But what is OK to post and what is not?  Megan’s design agency and Vound teamed up  to create a graphic to clarify many of the confusing aspects of copyright infringement,  and Megan invited me to share this information with my Say It For You readers.

 

 

Copyright Infringement: Images You Can and Can’t Share on Your Blog

Copyright Infringement: Images You Can and Can

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Blogger Writing Basics

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The ideas highlighted in this week’s Say It For You blog posts were sparked by Tony Rossiter’s Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps.  “Whether you’re drafting a lengthy company report or sending a short email to colleagues, it’s vital to get it right,” cautions Rossiter, defining “right” as meaning clear and concise prose, in a style that’s acceptable to your readers.

Different layouts fulfill different purposes, Tony Rossiter explains, such as:The word Write on a cork notice board

  • Attracting attention
  • Saving space
  • Selling something
  • Summarizing a topic
  • Raising questions

Good, clear layout is essential, the author cautions.  “Remember that every line on every page is the result of someone’s conscious layout decision.”

Layout applies to business blogs in different ways, with one of those being the Calls to Action.

  • There should be more than one CTA, so as to appeal to different readers who might be at different. Stages in the sales cycle. Those ready to buy can do that right away. Those who need more information before making a decision can choose to pick up the phone.  There should be something for those not quite ready for even a phone conversation – they might be guided to watch a video or read an article, for example.
  • The CTAs themselves can be in different formats, with some in the text, some in separate “boxes”, and with different CTA’s linking to different landing pages or sign-up pages.

If the purpose of the blog post is to attract attention at first glance, you may wish to use special formatting:

  • Put the opening sentence in bold or in italics
  • Use the first sentence as the entire first paragraph
  • Center the first sentence (rather than justifying it to the left with the rest of the text)

The content of the opening sentence, in addition to the formatting, can be designed to grab readers’ attention:

  • Begin with the conclusion, using the remainder of the blog post to “prove” the validity of that bold assertion
  • Raise a challenging question in the opening sentence, then use the post to propose an answer.

Every line on every page should in fact be the result of YOUR conscious content and layout decisions!

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A Blog Content Writer’s Basic Tools

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“Whether you’re drafting a lengthy company report or sending a short email to colleagues, it’s vital to get it right,” cautions Tony Rossiter in Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps. What is Rossiter’s definition of “getting it right”?

  • Being clear and concise
  • Writing in a style that’s acceptable to your readers.

A business writer’s basic tools include, Rossiter says:

  • Plain English
  • Vocabulary
  • Spelling
  • Punctuation
  • Grammar
  • Preparing and checking the presentation

In this week’s Say It For You blog posts, I’ll share some important tips from Rossiter’s book that blog content writers might find especially useful.

  • Reading aloud: “If you’re not quite sure whether or not a sentence of a longer piece of writing works – whether it’s clear, concise, and readily understandable – read it aloud.” Some of your phrases and sentences might not be as clear as you thought they were when you first wrote them, Rossiter explains.
  • “Look for the overall purpose – have you done what you set out to do?” Conveying that overall purpose can be especially challenging when a business owner or practitioner is using a business blogging service provider.  On the other hand, the very exercise of thinking through the themes and the ideas for the blog helps train the business owner or practitioner to articulate those same things when they’re talking to their customers!
  • “Put it away for a day or two, then look at it again.” My years as a developmental editor, plus my work tutoring in the Ivy Tech Community College language lab have taught me how hard it is for us to catch our own errors.  After all, I teach blog writers, we’re focused on the ideas we’re trying to convey.Using writers’ basic tools to convey a unique marketing message – that’s the supreme challenge for us business blog content writers!

 

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Wouldn’t You Do It Every Single Blog?

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“If you knew something as easy as adding images to your blog posts would increase your readers, Orange Megaphonesubscribers, followers, and leads, wouldn’t you do it every single time?” asks Neil Patel of HubSpot.com.

We live in an age of visual culture, observes Jeff Bullas.  In fact, Bullas points out, 10% of photos taken by humankind took place in the last 12 months, and photos are becoming “the universal language”!

Bullas lists a number of rather startling statistics to demonstrate the reason images and photos need to be part of any business’ marketing tactics:

  • Articles with images get 94% more total views.
  • 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results.
  • In an online store, customers think the quality of a product’s image is more important than product-specific information and even more important than ratings and reviews.

Images need to have a purpose, though, as Neil Patel observes, and not be there merely as decoration or “filler”.  Purposes include:

  • Emphasizing a point
  • Explaining a concept
  • Showing personality

I teach content writers that, even though the words you use to tell the story are the most important part of blogging for business, visuals add interest and evoke emotion.  Personally, I like “clip art”. Why? These commercial images aren’t original to my client’s business or practice and they don’t depict the actual products or the customers or colleagues of that business or practice. But what clip art does accomplish, I find, is capturing a concept, helping express the main idea that is articulated in the post.

When it comes to writing headlines, Neil Patel advises, focus on the 4 U’s: unique, ultra-specific, useful, or urgent. At Say It For You, we try to use images the same way, selecting one for each post that gives readers an idea of what to expect in the post. Wouldn’t you do that every single time?  You bet!

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