Your website’s images are intended to present your visitors with an enriching, intriguing, and engaging visual experience.

They’re also a crucial tool for encouraging activity and improving the effectiveness of your website. The images and videos that you choose can make or break your campaign, benefitting performance metrics ranging from engagement to conversions.

The Value of Visual Content

Yet, content marketing isn’t and shouldn’t be limited to text alone. Visuals are an essential component of any marketing effort. They have the ability to attract and maintain your target audience. They have the capacity to enhance your entire campaign and ensure its long-term success. Why do you believe that? Why are images necessary for a blog?

According to a studies conducted by Social Media Examiner, 38% of businesses feel that blogging is the most significant form of content for their brand. Visual content ranks second, with 37% of marketers citing it as the most significant component of their content marketing approach.

According to the same survey, 68% of marketers use blogs for marketing goals, while 74% utilise graphics as a popular sort of content. In general, content marketing yields six times the conversion rates of other forms of marketing.

Why is it important for brands?

With all of the information saturation we face on a daily basis, brands must think outside the box in order to be unique and compelling in their offerings.

Visual marketing may be quite beneficial since, at our core, humans are incredibly visual. That’s why the information supplied in a visual manner is much more likely to be remembered than another kind of promotional content.

The Featured Image

Whenever it comes to visuals on your post, the featured image should be your first step. This type of graphic is even more crucial when you create blog posts that are mostly textual, with no screenshots, graphs, charts, or other visuals. If you use social media marketing, the featured image is also significant. Why? When you share a link, this is the first element a Facebook or Twitter user sees.

Comprise Visuals in Your Posts to Increase Conversion Rates

Now that you understand a featured image and why it is necessary, let’s look at the different types of visuals that can be combined with the texts you write. What kinds of images can you utilise as a blogger, and how should you use them in relation to your entire content marketing plan?

1.Screenshots

They are your perfect idea if you wish to describe certain computer or mobile device activities and procedures. “How to” tutorials are popular among online users, and screenshots will assist you in making them more understandable.

According to one study, persons who follow directions with texts and drawings comprehend and perform 323 percent higher than those who follow the similar directions without illustrations.

2.Charts and graphs

Another intriguing study done by Nielsen Norman Group found that consumers pay more attention to knowledge visuals while ignoring decorative images. What exactly does this mean?

To attract the viewer’s attention, you need visuals that supply him or her with valuable content. Graphs and charts belong to this group since they help the audience grasp your facts and statistics while also making it easier to memorise the information presented. 

3.Photos

If you want to share anything specific with your audience, images are advised. To draw readers in and keep them interested, readers of travel blogs in particular need stunning images of the locations they discuss.

If you are unable to take your own pictures or if all you need to publish with your texts is a generic image, you can choose to use stock photos. These work well as featured photos for blog posts with green content.

Where can I find stock photos and how can I use them?

• Well, so the first thing you should do is make a budget. There are a number of high-end stock photo businesses out there, including Dreamstime and Stock Expert, but they are all expensive.
• Consider using free resources to obtain your images if you don’t have any money. There are lots of choices here as well, but there’s a grab: most of the photographs aren’t free from copyright restrictions. Although you receive things for free, you should give the owner credit.
• Always adhere to the copyright specifications when using a photo on your blog. This is crucial if you want to stay out of trouble with the laws and, of course, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional.
• Don’t merely use pictures that you find via Google or any other search engine. If you locate the one you need through an online search, try to identify the owner of the image and contact them if they would be willing to sell you the usage rights or, alternatively, if you could post the image for free with author attribution.

4.Infographics

Infographics are by far the best option for efficiently marketing your blog out of all visuals accessible. An infographic is 30 times more likely than a normal text-based blog post to be read. Furthermore, these pictures can assist you enhance visitors to your blog. According to Consumer Magnetism, blogs that employ Infographics receive 12percent more traffic than those that do not.

5.Catalogues, Flipbooks, and Banners

You may also use visual as posters and publish them on other people’s blogs to increase visibility and lead generation. Your achievement is determined by how appealing your banner is and how easily it captures the viewer’s attention. I recommend that you develop your banners with HTML5 whether you are a skilled designer or an enthusiast marketer with minimal knowledge of graphic design.

6.Videos

Videos can be an effective aspect of your marketing plan. They are well-liked by all audiences, and most importantly, they can convert leads into buyers or members of a massive audience in an instance.

In this scenario, the best example comes from RedBull, a brand that has elevated video content to a new level in content marketing. While you are unlikely to be able to build a video channel as popular and effective as RedBull Media House straight soon, you should consider integrating videos in your approach due to their popularity.

It is estimated that video content accounts for over ¾ of all Internet traffic. Furthermore, ¾ percent of marketers admit to using this form of content in their campaign at least once. It’s an excellent choice, given that those who prefer to watch a video outweigh those who prefer to read about just a specific subject by four to one.

Make use of a Content Delivery Network

Speed is affected not only by your hosting company or the quantity of your visuals, but also by how you reach out to global audiences. Local websites, as you may know, load faster than websites located thousands of kilometres away on some other continents. This is when a CDN can help. How? By storing a cached duplicate of your web page on a local server, you can reduce the distance between the contents and the consumer.

Google Optimization

Page load speed has grown to be an important ranking criterion in mobile search in recent years, mainly on Google, the most prominent search engine. Google ranks webpages based on a variety of relevant characteristics. The page load speed is one of these requirements.

What are your options? To begin, consider optimising your visuals so that they load quickly. You can accomplish this before sending them to your server with a tool like Adobe Photoshop, TinyPNG, or Affinity Designer. Alternatively, you may use a WordPress plugin like Imagify to automatically optimise all of your images in bulk without sacrificing quality.

Then you may use Google to see how quickly your website loads. Click “Analyze with PageSpeed Insights” to evaluate your website or pages. Alternatively, utilise a speed test programme such as Pingdom or GTmetrix. Keep in mind that the overall load time is more essential than that of the scores.

Conclusion

Visuals are essential for a blog. These can be crucial in your content marketing plan if you choose them appropriately for your audience and, of course, in accordance with your design and visual style. In this article, we learnt why graphics important and what types of visuals are suggested for different types of information. People want knowledge, and they want it as quickly and as entertainingly as possible. Visual marketing is one of the most powerful methods of offering consumers what they want. When you give people what they want, they are more likely to give it back to you in the form of more conversions and favourable feedback.

What impact has visual content had on your conversion rates? Tell us in the comments.