Worth A Thousand Words?

In her series of posts about posts, Dr Tanya @ Salted Caramel asks about using images.

1. How important are images to a blog post?

I didn’t use to place importance on images, unless a post was about travel or a recipe. To me, blogging is writing, not comics. And I feel the same about twitter. But I am in the minority ~ people are visual, even on these alleged written media. To grow an audience, you have to give the people what they want. At first, I didn’t care about that, but when I began to care (around the time I published my first Kindle book), I started using more images. Now, I wouldn’t dream of posting without an image (if I don’t, my pink cupcake icon will still show up with my post in readers), though I’m fine with bloggers who don’t bother with images. In fact, I have to respect them for that.

2. What is tbe role of images in blog traffic and reader engagement?

I don’t know. I assume they help drive it up because I read this when I looked for tips. But I don’t have a direct comparison of my own before/after, since at the same time I began using more images I also began posting more frequently and commenting more often on new blogs.

3. How many images on average do you use in a blog post?

For a prompt post like this with a few questions I use one image only, and the same goes for a poem or a piece of flash fiction. I also generally use a single image for my own prompts: The Monday Peeve, Thursday Inspiration, Flashback Friday. When a post is longer, I may use more images. In my series fiction, I’ve been up to 3 or 4 in an 800 word post.

I’ve become stressed out over images for the series fiction, and I wish I’d just stuck with the same one from the beginning all the way through. First, it’s super hard to find what I want. Sometimes I spend longer looking for the damn images than writing the story… and even then they’re not right. Second, I can’t get the same person in the images, which bugs the hell out of me. So, Kevin grew a beard? Ugh. Third, the free sites that allow you to use unattributed images are so limited, and often their stuff is ridiculous, so I’m forced to google and hope I haven’t stolen something. It’s really stressful! I won’t write this way again. One image, straight through. That way also, people will know it’s the same story coming up.

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©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.