wordpress-seo
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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /srv/users/sandra/apps/sandra/public/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Today’s guest post is by Mridu Khullar Relph,\u00a0a freelance journalist and writer who has written for<\/em> The New York Times, Time, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms., and more. She\u2019s a big believer in letting images tell your story. View her story on<\/em> her website<\/a> or sign up for her newsletter to get a free copy of her e-book<\/em> 21 Query Letters That Sold<\/a>.<\/p>\n By Mridu Khullar Relph<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was a lowly sub at a magazine many years ago, I sometimes wrote and edited as much as half of this (small magazine\u2019s) entire content. Yet, if you asked me where most of my time went, I\u2019d tell you that I spent about half my day researching, writing, and putting together stories and the remaining half on presentation<\/i>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right, I spent half my time, each and every day, coordinating with the designers, discussing layouts, helping identify text that needed to stand out on the page, playing about with different fonts, analyzing all the different covers the designers had come up with and vocalizing why they worked or didn\u2019t, and mostly, sourcing the right images.<\/p>\n In your blog, too, images are important. It\u2019s been shown repeatedly that bright, interesting, and relevant images tend to draw in more readers than blog posts without images or those with boring and overdone ones.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Here are six ways to ensure you\u2019re picking the right images for your blog that help to challenge, inspire, and surprise your readers.<\/p>\n A couple of months ago, when our own Sandy Beckwith guest posted on my blog about nonfiction platforms<\/a>, I chose this picture of a guy getting ready to jump because not only did it signify the \u201cliteral\u201d platform, but it captured what most writers feel when we\u2019re talking about building a platform– that they have to take a deep breath and just jump.<\/p>\n When I started working at the magazine I mentioned above, the leadership changed. The new editor was charged with taking the magazine from a technology magazine for geeks to a lifestyle magazine for people who wanted to know how to pick their next gadget. The first thing he did? He put models on the cover.<\/p>\n People respond to people. It\u2019s human nature. So given the choice between a dozen envelopes ready for the mail and a baby chewing on a marketing book<\/a>, you now know which image to pick.<\/p>\n <\/a>Images aren\u2019t about fact, they\u2019re about feeling (unless you\u2019re publishing a newspaper). Take this post on the levels of commitment<\/a> by Jeff Goins, for instance. It features a beautiful image that draws the reader in immediately and works perfectly for this post. But if you looked at the image in isolation, \u201ccommitment\u201d isn\u2019t the first word that would come to mind.<\/p>\n There are blogs I\u2019ve been reading for years where I can\u2019t tell you one thing about the person writing it. Others where I feel like I know the writer personally. Guess which one I\u2019m going to trust more? Once in a while, make it a point to post a picture of something that makes you uniquely YOU.<\/p>\n For instance, I write a regular \u201cWhat I\u2019m Reading<\/a>\u201d post on my blog in which I always get my dog, my cat, and now my baby, to post with one of the books I\u2019m reading. The cuteness factor is really high and readers absolutely adore it.<\/p>\n Some bloggers like to have tiny images on the side, which is fine if that works for your content or your design. And it can be, like on this blog, more important to keep readers focused on the words.<\/p>\n But if your blog is more in a narrative conversational style like that of say, Michael Hyatt<\/a>, make your images \u201cpop.\u201d<\/p>\n If you blog about serious topics, say addiction or crime, you need to use serious images, no cats, dogs, or monkeys allowed. But if you\u2019ve got a more personal style, like my own, and you talk to your readers regularly and they feel like they\u2019re just hanging out with you, you need a different set of pictures entirely. As writers, we focus so much on voice that we forget how much images need to connect with that voice.<\/p>\n How much thought do you give to the images you use on your blog?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s guest post is by Mridu Khullar Relph,\u00a0a freelance journalist and writer who has written for<\/a><\/em> The New York Times, Time, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms., and more. She\u2019s a big believer in letting images tell your story. View her story on<\/em> her website<\/a> or sign up for her newsletter to get a free copy of her e-book<\/em> 21 Query Letters That Sold<\/a>.<\/p>\n By Mridu Khullar Relph<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was a lowly sub at a magazine many years ago, I sometimes wrote and edited as much as half of this (small magazine\u2019s) entire content. Yet, if you asked me where most of my time went, I\u2019d tell you that I spent about half my day researching, writing, and putting together stories and the remaining half on presentation<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,20,11],"tags":[257,315,312],"class_list":["post-4060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-columns","category-news","category-tactics","tag-blogging","tag-images","tag-mridu-khullar-relph"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to pick the right images for your blog posts<\/b><\/h2>\n
1. Don\u2019t be too literal.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
2. Pick people over things.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
3. Choose beauty over accuracy.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
4. Make it personal.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
5. Bigger is better.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
6. Match the tone of your pictures to the tone of your text.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
How to pick the right images for your blog posts<\/b><\/h2>\n