Relevant, thoughtful and on-point images in your blog post reinforce your message and provide additional insight for your audience.

Having images in your blog post drives increased audience engagement. However, adding images just for the sake of having them can actually detract from the readability of the article and lower your visitor engagement metrics.

Stock images versus original images. Which are better?

Many companies don’t have the internal capabilities to create their own images, so they rely on stock images as their solution.

Stock images can be incredibly effective if they are relevant to the content that you create. However, if you’re merely inserting shiny images that don’t directly relate to the content, they won’t be effective. At that point, you are better off employing only text.

Don’t despair! Quite a few stock image websites are available, and these royalty-free stock image libraries have millions of images. No matter how niche your industry segment is, these libraries have sufficient depth, making it easy to license relevant images.

Why does image relevance matter?

The whole point of trying to get someone to read your content is so they’ll engage with your brand and develop awareness and interest in what you’re doing. Ultimately, you want them to take some sort of action, either now or when they return to your site.

If the images in your blog post are highly relevant and add value to the content, you’ll see a higher engagement rate and more brand affinity.

Think beyond the box

Many companies struggle with creating relevant images that they can use effectively. To help, here are a couple of easy hacks that you can do yourself:

• Charts and graphs. If you use Microsoft Excel, you can create charts and graphs that reflect the data in your blog post. By saving those charts and graphs as an image, you’ve essentially created your own ownable media. Therefore, incorporating that into the article adds more weight to the message you’re communicating there.

Additionally, some people are visual. These types of charts and graphs will help them better assimilate your story.

• Your company and product images. Another option is using images from your company or from your product. By using them where relevant, you also reinforce your brand with your readers.

In summary

If you add images in your blog post for the sake of having images, you may end up detracting from your overall content marketing efforts. Make sure all images are relevant to your content.

Need help?

If you have a content marketing program or are planning one, download our e-book 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing and Scaling Content Marketing Programs.
This e-book will walk you through the mistakes of hundreds of other companies and the challenges they faced in implementing their content marketing programs. To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you streamline your content creation process and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.