How To Double The Popularity of Your Blog Posts
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How To Use Pictures to Increase Post Popularity
“A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words!” - Fred Barnard*
An easy way to make your post stickier and more popular is to add a snazzy picture to it. Adding a single picture has known to double and treble the traffic to a blog post!
How To Find The Perfect Picture for Your Posts
Step 1: Reduce your post to one core keyword. And search for pictures using that keyword. For eg: the keyword for this post is “pictures.”
Step 2: If you fail to find a good picture for a keyword, use the thesaurus to come up with alternative words you can search for. For eg: When I didn’t find the perfect picture while searching for “pictures”, I searched for “mosaic” and found the right one immediately!
Where To Find Perfect Pictures For Free
1. Google Images. Search for pictures on Google and contact the website owner to ask her if you can use her picture on your website. Don’t use the pictures from Google Images without permission.
2. Wikimedia Commons. All the pictures on that site can be freely reused.
3. EveryStockPhoto. Most pictures will require attribution.
4. Creative Commons Search. Select the Flickr tab on that page and search for your picture. Read the licensing terms carefully. Most pictures will require attribution.
5. iStockPhoto. Pictures on this website aren’t free. But they aren’t expensive either - pricing is as low as $1 per picture! The best thing about this website is: No attribution required. So you can use the images in brochures and business cards too. (Most of my pictures come from them.)
6. IconFinder. Good site to find icons that can be reused for free.
You should be able to find your perfect picture 99% of the time using the above 6 sources!
*Did you think that Confucius said “a picture is worth a 1,000 words”? Ad executive Fred Barnard wants to encourage people to use more pictures in their ads. So he coins that quote for an article he writes in 1927. And to add weight to the quote and make sure that people pay attention to it, he attributes it as a “Chinese Proverb.” Over the years, the attribution shifts to Confucius.
“A Word is Worth a 1,000 Pictures!” - Apple Computer Human Interface Group
In 1985, after finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple Computer Human Interface Group adopted the motto, “A word is worth a thousand pictures,” and a descriptive word or phrase was added beneath all Macintosh icons.
To jazz up your snazzy pictures, make sure you add a caption under all of them.
- A good picture is eye candy and will win people’s attention.
- But a good picture with a powerful caption won’t only win attention, but will also drive people to read your blog post!
How To Write Powerful Captions
The trick to writing powerful captions is: apply the same techniques you use to write headlines. Perceive your captions to be your sub headlines.
- Create curiosity with your caption.
- Write a benefit summary - what will readers learn when they read your blog post?
Credit: Above picture by nicmcphee (cropped)
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Ankesh, great post. The suggestion about adding pictures is a great one, and the links to image sites is extremely helpful.
Thanks!
Todd
http://wirepaper.com/
Posted 29 Aug 2007 #
Great post. Should add videos to posts too, as this really works well.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 #
Thanks for that hint. I will try it on my wii-blog next days and see what happens!
Posted 30 Aug 2007 #
Most of my post does not have images. since I can’t find any relevant image to my post. thx, now I know where to find them.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 #
Mike: Thanks for talking about videos. Are you talking about finding video clips that support your blog post? I must admit, I’ve never tried that. I have made video posts before. But have never tried using videos as I use pictures: to complement the main message. Usually videos are the main message. Would love to see an example of how you do it…
Posted 30 Aug 2007 #
Awesome post again Ankesh. I don’t use pictures often enough. You forgot another advantage with pictures and media : They retain the reader’s attention longer (most internet readers have temporary attention deficit disorder while surfing).
About your comment asking for video examples, i’ve done it a couple times. It’s often a matter of having the right subject (media related subject) : For example I talked about “Tower Defense” (a flash time waster game) and its various clone games on one of my french blog posts. I put a video showing a successful game example recorded on Youtube as an illustration of the post.
My gf once made a post in chinese about the best duet songs and also put a video online showing one of her selected works.
You have to be even more cautious with the use of copyrighted videos, though.
My bullet points (just like you ;)) :
- Check if your subject is related to video media use.
- If so, use the same method as picture search, but on sites like youtube, google video, dailymotion, etc.
- Ask for permission from the video author.
- Use the “embedded code” functionality of the video site to integrate the video in your blog post (Wordpress has a nice youtube plugin to use youtube videos without breaking the layout of the blog).
- Be sure to integrate the video where appropriate. A video should rarely be used on the top if the post isn’t about the video. Use it to illustrate a paragraph instead, or to retain the viewer’s attention if the post is long.
- Add a nice caption (see Ankesh’s post).
Well that’s it. I hope my english is alright !
Posted 30 Aug 2007 #
I agree! And I like to use this site for help: http://yotophoto.com/
It searches several free stock image sites. Add it to your list! It rocks.
Posted 01 Sep 2007 #
Thanks for that list…very helpful. I use IStock Photo for most of my projects, so I usually just go there anytime I’m looking for an image. But now, I might have to check out your other sources next time.
Posted 04 Sep 2007 #
[…] @ 4:15 pm Simply including this bikini image should get my blog more hits, according to the “experts”. Now, if only it were a shot of Britney in this bikini, then I’d really have […]
Posted 29 Nov 2007 #
[…] Kothari says that adding a picture is known to double traffic to a blog post4. Although he does not cite sources, adding relevant images can enhance the readability and […]
Posted 19 Feb 2008 #
thanks but i want to ask how we will use google image in blog post .. please tell by mail
Posted 10 Jun 2008 #