We humans are visual creatures.
I know…shocker, right? Shall I wait for you to recover? No? All good? Then I’ll continue. 😉
The reason I wanted to bring up this stunning revelation is because of its importance to social media. Platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram are both growing in popularity, and Facebook and Twitter have both recently made changes to how their images are displayed, giving them more room in the feeds. Why? Because studies have shown that posts with images get greater response: more clicks, more views, more shares, more comments, and just plain old more attention…and that, my friends, is something you want to take advantage of.
You don’t need to include an image with every post or tweet that you make (remember our discussion on variety in Facebook postings?), but I do suggest trying to do so at least once in a while. If you’re on Facebook, you’ll probably find your followers are more likely to engage (like or comment) with an image, which means Facebook’s algorithms will push it to more people. On Twitter, you’re more likely to get retweeted. If you include an image in a blog, it becomes shareable on Pinterest, and if someone posts a link to Facebook, their post will have a built-in image (making it more noticeable in a news feed). And so on.
You don’t need to limit yourself to straight up photos or memes, either. There’s a wide variety of fantastic (and free!) apps that you can use to create your own simple graphic:
add a quote to a photo:
create a banner or button (if you want to make your button/banner shareable, you can generate code here):
The possibilities really are limitless:
So…where are these awesome (and extremely easy to use) apps? I currently have two favorites that I alternate between. The first is Picmonkey, and the other is Canva. If you check them out, you’ll see that each one has its own strengths — I personally prefer Picmonkey for adding quotes to photos, but if I’m doing more of a poster-type setup, then Canva works better. Play around with them a little to get a feel for them…and then be sure to stop back and leave me a link in the comments to your creation. I would love to see!
Questions? Comments? You know I’m here.
P.S. Remember to spread the love and share this post with your author friends. 😉
P.P.S. A quick reminder that you need to make sure you have the rights to any photos you use! But you knew that, right? 😉
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