So now you have written some blog posts. First, pat yourself on the back! This is the hardest step to blogging, congrats! Now how do you spruce up your blog now. One EASY way to improve your blog exposure and help it to be more eye catching is pictures.
Pictures make it pretty. Okay maybe not “pretty” per se, but it definitely gets more attention than just plain text. When your Blog or Website article is shared on Facebook it will look like this :
Instead of this:
Which one do you think looks better? Which one captured your attention? I thought so. I believe, don’t quote me though, I believe when services like “Network Blogs” shares it they select the first picture in your blog post. As you have seen from my examples right here on this blog, I make sure that my “title graphic” is the first thing seen. If someone is sharing your post as a link on Facebook, they can actually choose from all of the pictures related to your blog and even sometimes pictures that are just on your website. The more your pictures are eye catching and have to do with your subject, the better.
Now you are probably asking, “Anthony, where do I get pictures from”. That is a great question and there are a couple of few answers. First, the definition of “Fair Use” of pictures on the internet is :
"Fair use, a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship." - excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
With that being said these are several ways to acquire a picture for your post:
- the first answer is Googling the internet. Find a picture that matches your post. Download it, rename it appropriately, i.e. a dog in a pool gets renamed: dog-in-pool-for-anthonyryanpost.jpg . Make sure you do not take credit for the picture, or that you are not selling services that can produce the picture.
- A second way is to purchase one. You can go to a variety of affordable picture sites and pay credits or dollars for legal use of a picture. This way is safer , but takes longer to probably find one that fits.
- Your last option, if you are good with a camera is to just take the picture yourself. This way costs the least but will take the most time especially if you are looking for a drawing or clip art.
Now you are ready to make your well written blog post shine a little more.
As always, the purpose of #WednesdayWebBlogTip is to show you how YOU can use the tools available to make your website and blog the best experience you can create for your audience. Sometimes the tips will be like this, sometimes a tutorial, sometimes a guest post by a Blog "expert".
Tomorrow is Thursday, so I will be taking questions from the "audience" and I will answer them right here on the blog.
Thank you for visiting and I will see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:54PM 
;)
