When a potential reader visits a blog, he considers two main things when he’s deciding whether to read a post: the post’s headline (or title), and the image or images that go with the post.

He doesn’t jump into the post immediately and start reading the text of the post — he uses the headline and the image(s) to make the decision about whether or not to read the post.

In fact, a reader will often scroll down the front page of a blog, looking for a post that is worth reading — using, again, the photo and headline as a quick way to make the decision.

Is a post’s image as important as the headline? No, for a couple of reasons.

1) A headline is often the only thing the potential reader might see, if he’s reading a list of headlines in a feed reader or in his email inbox.

2) While a photo can convey a lot of information about a post, the headline is much more specific and therefore a much better way to sell the post.

However … after the headline, the photo is the next most important way to sell the post to a potential reader.

Why Images are Important

Images are important to sell the post to a potential reader. Why? For a few reasons:

1. The reader’s eye is naturally drawn to a photo, before text, because photos are more eye-catching.
This means a photo is an extremely important way to draw the reader’s attention to a post.

2. As we are visual creatures, an attractive photo will help make the reader interested in reading the post.
If we see a great photo, our desire to read will be greater.

3. Images help people scan and get information fast.
Most online readers are scanners — they don’t have the time to read every post from beginning to end. So they want to get the info quickly, and if they do decide to read the entire post, it’s because they’re able to quickly get the info they need to make the decision to read at greater depth.

Some ways that’s achieved include headlines, lists, sub-titles and other textual clues — but one of the best ways is the photo. A photo is an extremely easy way to get info by scanning — you can instantly tell something about the post, if the image is chosen well.

4. An image dresses up a post.
A post that is just a headline and text is boring-looking, and many readers will skip over posts that seem boring. Not every post needs to have an image, but if it doesn’t, the post should be short, or it should be compelling. Otherwise, make it a common practice to have an image in most of your posts, so readers will be more interested in the post.

What Makes a Great Post Image

Just slapping any image into a post does not mean the image will help sell the post to a potential reader, or enhance the experience of reading the post.

In fact, if you put a lousy or unattractive image in the post, often you’ll be doing more harm than good — you could give the reader the impression that the post is uninteresting.

So what makes a great photo? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but here are some guidelines:

1. A large image. A larger image is generally better than a smaller image, because it attracts the eye more, and you can see the photo better. Small photos cause the reader to squint in order to tell what it is, and that’s not a good thing.

2. People. People generally prefer to see photos of people, rather than things. There are exceptions, but in general you should look for photos with people in them — not only people, but faces, which are more interesting (in photos) than feet or hands without faces.

3. Attractive or interesting people. Again, this is a generalization, but people like looking at photos of attractive or at least interesting-looking people. It’s why you see photos of celebrities and models in magazines, instead of pictures of regular people. That’s unfair, I know, but it seems to be human nature, and you’d be unwise to ignore human nature.

4. Kids and animals. Speaking of human nature, people also like to see photos of young children and cute animals. Don’t ask me why. It’s why LOLCats has become not only a huge blog but an Internet phenomenon. So when appropriate, feel free to choose a cute photo of a kid or animal — you can’t miss. 🙂

5. Great colors. Think of why a photo of a sunset is so visually interesting — basically it’s just a horizon, the sun and the clouds, which at most times of day isn’t necessarily the most interesting photo. But at sunset, the photo becomes so much better … because of the magnificent colors. This is true of any photo — the most mundane subjects can become great photos if the colors are vivid and captivating.

6. Close-ups. Picture a photo of a woman … she’s off in the distance and while the photo is interesting, you can barely see her face. Now picture another photo of the same woman … but this time, the camera has zoomed in close and you can see the expression on her face. The second photo tends to be more interesting and attractive (usually), because the face is captured up close. Again, we like to look at faces — so photos that are close up are generally better than more distant shots. There’s an old saying in photography that relates to this idea: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, it’s likely because you aren’t close enough.” I tend to crop photos closer because of this.

7. Interesting shape. Sometimes the shape of a photo can be interesting by itself. A square photo is more boring than a rectangular one. And a rectangular photo with more extreme dimensions — it’s very vertical or very horizontal — can be even more interesting. Still, I tend to avoid extreme photos only because you’d have to run them at a large size to see any detail, and that would take up a lot of space. Key point: avoid square photos if you can — try for an aspect ratio of 4:3, 3:2 or even 2:1.

8. Simplicity. Photos that are cluttered are not usually as good as photos that are uncluttered and simple, unless the photo is about clutter or chaos. Generally, the photo should have the subject of the photo — what the photo is about — and not much else. Other things in the photo — a telephone pole, wires, other objects in the background — are usually distractions from the photo’s main subject. So the better photos usually have very little in the background, or are cropped to show just the subject.

9. Mood setting. A serene-looking photo will set the mood of a post on meditation, while a vibrant photo of a happy person can set the mood for a post about happiness. If a photo can do a great job of setting the mood for a post, it’s well chosen.

10. Eye-track. If you use a head shot, make sure the eyes look toward your post – and not away from it. We tend to follow the eyes of another human being – even if it’s in a photo. If necessary, flip the image horizontally to get the eyes to focus on your post. Click on Media in the sidebar to edit your image.

Some Good Practices

The guidelines above, for what makes a great photo, should help you to choose the best photo for your post. What follow are some extra guidelines that might help you to use the image effectively in your post.

• One image. This isn’t a set rule, but I’ve found that one large-ish image works better than several smaller images. Large images attract the eye better, so one large image is more effective than a bunch of smaller ones — and while you could do several large images, that takes up too much space. So choose one large, effective photo.

• Except to illustrate a how-to. The exception would be to illustrate how-to articles, with step-by-step photos, but I’ve found this to be too much work — I like to keep things simple. So the one large photo approach works best for me.

• Credit and caption. If you’re using Creative Commons on Flickr, you need to give credit, or you’re violating the license. To give credit, I usually put a little credit under the photo that says “Photo courtesy of Username” where Username is the photographer’s username on Flickr, and I make Username a link to the Flickr page for the photo. If you use a paid service such as iStockPhoto.com (see the section below), you don’t need to give credit. A caption is a good idea: a brief description of the photo or some other text below the photo that adds some context to the photo. It helps readers understand why you used the photo, and gives them another piece of info to use when deciding if they should read the post. A note: I use the <small> html tag around my caption and credit so that the text is smaller.

• Resizing. You can resize and do basic edits right from within WordPress. Click on ‘Media’ in the sidebar and find the image you’ve just uploaded for a post. Click on ‘edit’ to bring up the editing function. You can now easily resize your image.

• On image theft. Something that’s tempting for a lot of bloggers is to take the easy way with images — just do a Google image search for a keyword, quickly find a good, professional photo, then save it and use it in your post without permission or credit. And I’ll admit it: I did this in the early days of my blog, when I didn’t know any better. It’s much easier, because it’s easy to find professional photos this way, and having to find a legal photo to use can be a pain in the butt. And, to be honest, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever be contacted by the owner of the photo to take it down — no one has the time to patrol that. However … I strongly advise you to do the right thing — find a photo that gives you licence to use it, and give credit if you’re required to do so. Image theft is not a cool thing to do, and if you want your readers to think well of you, don’t do it. I had some readers call me out on it early on, and I’m glad they did — I changed my policy immediately and went back in to some of my old posts to give credit.

How to Find Great Images

OK, so we know what makes a great image, and how to handle them once we’ve found the image … but where and how do we look?

• Flickr Creative Commons. For almost two years, I used this method — it’s great for bloggers who have no budget (which was me in the beginning) because these photos are free. Basically, you do a keyword search on Flickr.com, but go to the “advanced search” and check the boxes for “Creative Commons license” and the sub-option below that: “for commercial use”. Any photos found in this type of search will be under the Creative Commons for commercial use license, which means you can use it on your blog as long as you give credit (see above for how to do that). There are tons of great Creative Commons photos on Flickr.

• iStockPhoto.com. While Flickr Creative Commons is great, after a couple of years it gets really hard to find good photos you haven’t used already. That’s why I switched to iStockPhoto, a paid service — it was just taking too long for me to find anything good on Flickr (that I hadn’t already used). iStockPhoto is the best of the commercial photo services, because most commercial photographers are on here — there are thousands and thousands of high-quality photos. There are free photo services — basically they compile public domain photos for you — but it’s just really hard to find good photos on them, and I’ve found it’s not worth the effort. I’d rather pay a few bucks, save a lot of time and get a great photo.

• Keyword searches. No matter what service you use, you’ll have to do a keyword search. This is obvious, I know, but doing a good keyword search is an art that takes a lot of practice. Start by typing in the topic of your post, but that won’t always turn up good results. Better yet is to visualize what kind of photo would be best to illustrate the post … for example, to illustrate a post on procrastination, I might want a photo of someone taking a nap. Doing a search on “nap” or “taking nap” is better than searching for “procrastination”. More specific searches often work better than general ones — so “lazy nap” is better than “nap” or “lazy”.

• Flickr bookmarklet. To save time, I created a bookmarklet in my browser that has already pre-saved the Flickr search I use the most. So I click on the bookmarklet, and it does a Flickr search for Creative Commons for commercial use, sorts by “most interesting” and shows the results in thumbnails rather than larger images so I can quickly scan the photos. To do this, just do a search with the above options, for any keyword, and when you get to the results, save the url as a bookmarklet (Google how to do that if you don’t already know how). Then, when you click on the bookmarklet, a Flickr search will come up — just change the keyword to the keyword you want.

• Look for eye catchers. You’ll spend a lot of time searching if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I like to view the search results on Flickr or iStockPhoto in thumbnail view … then I quickly scan a page of results by looking for photos that grab my attention. Once I see one or two of those, I’ll middle-click on the thumbnails to open each one in a separate tab for further review. I can quickly find 5-6 candidates in 4-5 pages of thumbnail results by doing this — then I just compare the 5-6 candidates to find the best photo.

Author: Leo Babauta