You’ve likely heard it said by Mari Smith, “Content is King, but engagement is Queen and she rules the house.”
"Content is King, but engagement is Queen and she rules the house." ♕ツ♛ #SMSS13
— Mari Smith (@MariSmith) October 1, 2013
The king and queen’s defining characteristic is their crown.
Royalty without a crown can easily be mistaken for a commoner, and the same is true for content and engagement. Images are the defining component that sets apart and completes both your content and your engagement potential.
In a digital world filled with content, great material can easily be overlooked by people who tend to skim through posts. The answer is to attract the viewer visually and draw them into the post with appealing images. Additionally, a blog post may fall behind lower-quality content in social shares and engagement just because it lacks the “hooks” that images create. Images serve as the hook that pulls the viewer in further! A post with great content is just ordinary unless it includes valuable images.
Three ways images can be used in blog posts to add crown value:
1. Capture Attention
Starting out with a image that draws attention can pull a skimmer (those just glancing through) deeper into the content itself.
2. Summarize the Key Points
A summary image can be a infographic of the main points, or a visual that recaps a key point.
3. Create a Call to Action
A image can be the difference between a sale and simply content on a web page. When images are used in blog posts to encourage the viewer to action, results increase!
Images on your blog not only capture the attention of the visitor, they enable greater and more social sharing. The key is making your images large enough to be of value. For example Facebook Post Ads for links have a recommended size of 600 x 325. This image dimension fills the news feed area and creates visual impact within Facebook. Pinterest on the other hand has more “repins” of images when the height is greater than the width, such as 600 x 900 (infographic type).
Thus a mix of images can be important, or at least knowing what your dominant social sharing goal is and creating images on the blog that fit this criteria.
Do not succumb to the “I’m not a designer” belief, there are online image tools for creating great visuals that give you the head start you need!
So be sure to “wear your crown” by completing your blog post with visual images.