Writing a great blog post is a lot of work. There’s the planning, the headline, the writing, the rewriting, the rewriting, the rewriting.
As the cliché goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So why not let your images do some of that writing for you?
When you’re trying to get the biggest bang out of a blog post (while putting in the least amount of work), it’s smart to let strong imagery do some of your heavy lifting. But what’s the difference between an image that works hard and one that just looks good with your blog theme?
Images are steroids for your headline
You may remember the immortal advice of copywriting genius Joe Sugarman: the job of the headline is to get the reader to read the first line of your ad. (And the job of the first line is to get the reader to read the second line of your ad.)
Let’s face it, writing great headlines is hard. (Worth the effort, but still. Hard.) A great image can give your headline a big boost. The image might be beautiful, odd, heartwarming, instructive or just curiosity-provoking, as long as it makes the reader want to read that first line of your post.
Set an emotional tone
A powerful image zaps right into the primal bits of your readers’ brains and gets them in the emotional state you want. In an instant, a terrific image can create an emotional reaction you might otherwise slave for hours to craft with words.
Images of puppies and cute little children will set one tone for your blog. Gritty street scenes will say something very different. I use a lot of images of apes and monkeys over on Remarkable Communication, in part to convey the primate emotional drivers that shape our communication, and in part because, hey, everybody likes monkeys.
In fact, “lighten up” is a major Remarkable Communication theme, and that’s consistently reflected in the images I choose.
Some images just make people feel good. And associating yourself with feeling good is a smart move if you’re trying to persuade. While a steady diet of kittens and rainbows gets cloying, it can be a good move to choose a photo just because it makes you smile.
What’s the personality of your blog? Funny? Combative? Compassionate? Goofy? Imagery can set the emotional tone of a single post or for your whole blog.
Lazy Blogger Tip: If you can’t find a good, relevant match for your post’s main idea, look for an image that conveys the emotional content of your blog as a whole.
Arouse curiosity
Just like making a ridiculous comparison can intrigue the reader and get her to keep reading, a striking image can work in the same way. The image can either create a seeming paradox with the headline, or just amplify the headline in a surprising way.
(The most notorious example to date on Copyblogger was probably on my own Feel Great Naked post.)
A feeling of “What is this doing here?” can move the reader forward and right into your terrific post. The effect shouldn’t be too jarring, but a little unexpected juxtaposition can be just the ticket.
Where lazy bloggers go to find great images
There are free sources for stock photography out there, but in my opinion it takes more time and energy than it’s worth to dig around and find what you need.
I use two sources for nearly all images I use. The first is iStockphoto, which has a wide selection of stock photography at very good prices. For a blog post, you can use their smallest size image, which will run you a little over $1 depending on how many credits you buy at a time.
The great thing about iStockphoto is that it’s cheap and efficient. You use their search tool to find a couple of options, click, click, click, and you can get back to scrolling through the latest LOLCats.
The second source I like is the Flickr Creative Commons. I shied away from this for a long time, thinking the licensing issues would be too complicated. Skellie set me straight on that with this useful, comprehensive post. Just search for images under the Attribution license and you’re set. The only thing that’s required is a credit, which is satisfied by a pleasingly effortless link back to the photographer.
Other Creative Commons licenses have limitations on whether you can modify a photo (such as cropping it) or use it in a commercial context (which could be a factor if you’re monetizing your blog). Stick to the Attribution license and you won’t have to give any of it a second thought. Trust me, there’s virtually no limit to the fantastic Attribution images to choose from.
The quality you can find on Flickr Creative Commons is as good or better than what you’ll get for iStockphoto, but each has different strengths. Flickr has terrific macro, landscape and botanical photography, and you can find great (and unusual) images of people. iStockphoto often does better than Flickr for animals and machinery, and offers high-quality shots of any object you can think of isolated against a white background.
More lazy fun you can have with images
Flickr isn’t just a great resource for images, it’s a magnificent way to waste hours and hours of your time. Try doing some searches on your major themes from time to time, and mark your favorites for later posts. Instead of “procrastinating,” you get to call it “building your image library.” You can do the same on iStockphoto, building extensive lightboxes of subjects you tend to use again and again.
As a lazy rule of thumb, the more iStockphoto imagery you use, the more professional your blog will feel. Using more Flickr images will create an artier, quirkier flavor.
Try letting your images do a little more of the work in your blog. Your posts will be more effective, and you’ll save precious energy you could be using to play Rock Band.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Bookmark and Promote!
Related Articles
Copyblogger runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give you a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like Copyblogger, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
{ 13 trackbacks }
{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the pressure Sonia… you write a post on finding great images and leave it to me to find one.
This task turned me momentarily into Steven Wright:
“I went to a stock photo website and searched for ‘photo.’ My computer exploded.”
Big fan of iStockPhoto. Willing to pay the buck for ease and peace of mind
Ha ha, sorry Brian.
Note to everyone: those are not my feet.
I use a service called Zementa which runs right alongside my blog as I am posting. It suggests photos as well as links to other stories based on your post content. http://www.zementa.com
On yeah, and it’s free.
Actually, I think those are Scoble’s feet. Can’t confirm that though.
I’ve always had trouble finding images I could use to match the theme of my post - this is a great collection of sources for royalty free images.
Thanks for the tips on where to find images that will match the feel and tone of your blog.
I’m a techie who appreciates good design, and this helps!
twitter/douglaslampi
I’ve always read about using flickr images, but never tried. Thanks for the encouragement! Now I just need some interesting content to go with the images….
A tip from a designer: First try http://www.sxc.hu … it’s free, and if you can’t find an image you like there, then go to iStockphoto.
Cheers!
I’m with you, Sonia. It’s istockphoto or Flickr creative commons for me. That zementa app that Will recommends sounds very cool though. I’ll have to give it a try.
Nice post Sonia. But I learned how to find pictures via Flickr via old Seth’s post.
Fantastic. I put a picture on each one of my posts and its not always easy to find the kind of picture you are looking for. Flicker Creative Commons is a great resource.
Thanks for the great tips! After just spending an hour searching for a free image to illustrate my latest post, I have a headache. Maybe next time it’ll be easier.
I wrote an article a few weeks about how to find free images to use on your web site, there’s ever a plugin for WordPress to do most of the hard work for you.
Finding Free Photos for Your Blog
Ironically, that picture kind of freaks me out. And I’m still waiting for the Elisha Cuthbert Guide to Sexy Blogging.
Fantastic resources. I’ll be looking at all of these soon. My Blog thanks you. It will look much better now.
Nice post Sonia. I might have to try iStockPhoto, seeing as flickr is down right now and I need an image for my new post. =/
There you go, Jonathan, making the best of adversity!
They really do look like they should be Scoble’s feet.
Can I just say something about iStockPhoto? If I see one more picture of a triumphant man/woman on top of a mountain or of a seedling sprouting from a moist little clod of soil in the palm of a hand, I’m going to stab my own eyes out.
You can still qualify as lazy without choosing the first popular one that appears.
If you use Flickr, try using compfight.com and set Creative Commons to “All.”
Hmm, thanks Michael, I think I’ve used both of those photos.
And I think they were both for my posts.
I’m less persnickety than that. As long as it’s not a person in business garb jumping on a trampoline, I am happy. (And I have a soft spot for that plant in a clod of dirt thing, damn you Michael Martine.)
A good free resource is:
http://www.morguefile.com/
Nothing beats the ease of use over at istock. It is worth a buck to get right what you need quickly.
Thanks for the advice! I just started using iStockPhoto and I love it. I will have to check out Flickr, as well.
One thing I noticed about Flickr. Some of the photos are actually copies of copyrighted stuff, SO BEWARE and be very careful. For instance I saw some screen shots extracted from commercial games which could get you sued seven ways to Sunday if you publish them on your own blog or other commercial site.
And here I’ve been using client photos….or those I’ve taken myself. Thanks so much. You just saved me a bunch of time
I can now spend writing headlines.
I echo Will on Zemanta, which not only suggests Creative Commons BY-NC photos from Flickr but also Wikimedia Commons. Both can also be searched manually.
Like Jay, I also use StockXchange at sxc.hu; and lately I’ve been a fan of PicApp at http://picapp.com
I’ve been using Fotolia.com recently, similar to iStockPhoto. Hard to describe the differences between two very large banks of images, but in general they seem to have more artistic (and less corporate) images.
Brian: those are NOT my feet.
@Sonia - great article, thanks!
@Kevin - I second the recommendation for http://www.compfight.com - much faster than using Flickr search and allows you to search for commercially licensed Creative Commons images
Depends. Writing a great headline is hard for some people and not hard for the other.
Overall, good article.
Thank you for the tip Sonia. I love iStockphoto, but I hadn’t even considered Flickr. Now I have a new source to mine, especially when I’m short on iStockpho credits.
My favorite source for public domain images is <a href=”http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page” Wikimedia Commons
Robert, you have crushed the dreams of many.
Thanks to Kevin & Mark for the compfight pointer, I will check ‘em out.
Men wearing sandals…not an image, or reality, anyone wants to see!
I’m a really lazy blogger. It only takes me seconds to find a good photo.
I just use the wordpress plugin Photodropper which searches only creative commons photos in flikr.
So, within a few clicks I’m done. You can see from my website it even gives photo credit to the photographer.
Flickr is my favorite source and it helps me find some really interesting, quality photos. I’d used Photostock for some professional writing, they are also a good source, if you’re looking for high quality photos at a low prize.
Over all this article is very nice, specially the title!
You’re amazing man!
… there’s a right and a wrong way to use Flickr, your tip was a real eye opener for me…
After reading the headline of this post, I was hoping to find Flickr Creative Commons images as one of the options covered - low and behold it was! It is definitely this time-strapped man’s source for all of the images I now use on my blog.
This is so true! I just found a funny picture to bring home the idea of the assume and the silly thing brings people over. You have a great blog and usually I get sevearl things out of every post. Thanks! Give someone an AWESOME day!!
I’ve always wondered where you got the amazing images you use at the top of your posts!
The most important thing is getting the right pictures for your blog and placing it with the right alignment. Brian (and his co-authors) has done a great job in placing the right pictures on their blog posts. Frankly speaking, I ‘followed’ the way Brian’s way of displaying his post on the front page, including adding “read more about this post” feature in every third paragraphs for each of his post. Very clean and nice-looking indeed.
ZEMANTA RULES!
http://www.zemanta.com/
This is a great tutorial, thanks for the tips…I needed these!
Hey Sonia -
Great write up. I originally fought adding images to my posts because I’m a developer by day and focus on the knowledge. The light bulb finally went off that the eye-candy is part of the hook. It’s an initial and immediate emotional response, before actually reading any of the content. It’s still a bit awkward for me, but I get to practice one post at a time
I cannot say enough great things about Zemanta. I highly recommend it.
Also, don’t forget Amazon. Amazon wants you to use their images - that is what Amazon Associates is all about. Check out this post, which is full of no less than 10 Amazon images: Ten Great Books That Will Change Your Life: http://yieldtopedestrian.com/YieldToPedestrian/?p=590
Sonia, thanks for such a colorfully-written, usefun (useful + fun) post! The leading image definitely set the tone for what was to come, and making image-finding easier is incredibly important. As time goes on, this will be even more true of videos.
That being said, I <3 http://compfight.com too, and one of the bestest things about Flickr is how widely-used its API is; there are many, MANY ways to search Flickr images. I favor the tools that show many at once in a GIGANTIC WALL, so I can surf through. Such as http://flickrleech.net/
I often use middle-click mouse button to open new tabs, and vertical tabs (by way of Tree Style Tab) save a lot of time.
Cheerio!
Thanks for sharing
most people skip over the words on a webpage and look at the pictures simply it by adding pictures great post
This was very helpful as price differences between photo banks are huge.
I used to use fotolia. It has gotten pretty costly.
Thanks for the tips and great links!
Lisa K
http://www.coolmediaplacement.com
We Drive Traffic
Great to see a copy focused website doing a post on the importance of images. Nothing sets the stage for a message like a relevant and appealing image.
Hey!
That is really cool!
you bloggers really know the psychology behind readers… LOL
I have been using sxc.hu for about one year for finding images (which are free to use) for my web designing and blogging needs, the results has been incredible.
I wouldn’t have said it was lazy using istockphoto - you still have to do the research but it is certainly fun and addictive!
I wouldn’t really call it lazy either, but no one wants to read the Hardworking Blogger’s Guide to anything.
Thanks for Sharing. I love IStock Photos
I found that Photrade has specific support for bloggers to legally use images in their posts for free. I wrote a post on how to do it and so far am happy with the quality of the images available there.
How to embed images on your blog
Hope this helps.
Another great resource is Wikipedia Commons. Pretty much all the images are free to use (the licensing details are provided with all the images) and the search function is pretty decent.
I wrote an article about it a month or so ago @ http://www.dotcomdud.com/content-creation/a-picture-is-worth-launching-1000-ships-or-something-like-that/ if you want more details.
Now, back to the LOLCats…
Very good. I am forwarding this post to all of our writers. We are always looking for good images.
Excellent advice - I too use Creative Commons photos in my blog posts. But, since I am an avid amatuer photographer, I also use many of my own image.
Fantastic. Thanks very much. The Flickr tip was just what I needed. I had always been concerned about using Google images and now you have given me the perfect answer.
Link building & Link Submission Services to Improve link popularity. Improve your Google page rank and search engine ranking with our advanced link building services. Request a Quote now for our link submission packages.
Great advice. A suitable pictures can really pulls great attention. Engage the reader, that is the key I guess.
More cheap/free photo sites:
-dreamstime.com has a great free area
-wikipedia images can be free to use, check the licenses under each image to be sure.
Between these two I rarely have to pay for a photo. Another thing I will do is find an image of a product I am blogging about and e-mail the company to get permission to use it - they will usually say yes for a mention and link from your blog.
I hate to admit it but I haven’t paid for a photo in months using these legal means. Must be the Scots in me.
I second rebecca’s comment that morguefile.com is a good choice for pictures. I use them alot on my other blog, timmyjohnboy.com. They don’t even require attribution! I typically offer a link back anyways.
Great post!
I always have trouble finding good images to my blog posts , definitely going to check out the resources. Its amazing the amount of information you can find in the comments as well , might give photodropper plug in a try.
Also, you can check out the zemanta browser plugin. It gives a nifty sidebar, including photo possibilites, and it works for many different blogging platforms.