Motivation: At the behest of both a professor and fellow student, I am contemplating the idea of adding images to my post. However, I do not want to, so I am going to try to get to the bottom of whether or not adding images enhances people's interest in reading a blog. This may just be a task of finding the results I want to hear, but maybe there are some more scientific approaches that have been reported.
Answer:
I started this with a google search per my norm, using the phrase "images on blogs readership."
Of course I got several hits that had nothing to do with what I was asking. Then I found an interesting blog that talked about using photographs on blogs being a good way to enhance readership. Well after reading it, I realized it was speaking of actual photographs that the blog writer takes and it is to either advertise product, show pictures of yourself to your readers or to show projects and steps to creating things (think Pinterest.) But these don't so much apply to this blog, but they do apply to my "parenting" blog. I'll admit I've slacked on the photograph taking for that blog. Back in the day (circa 3 years ago) I would participate in "Wordless Wednesday" where you weren't supposed to post a real blog, just post pictures. I would use this to post pictures of my kids or pets. And occasionally I would use real pictures on some of my product reviews. I haven't done this in awhile because I like to think I'm too busy, but I think it could be a touch of laziness or lack of motivation on my part.
Okay, so back to the search as I am more specifically looking for IMAGES, not photographs. Cause yes, those are wonderful when applicable.
I found a helpful site that gave me 10 tips on marketing your blog and although it didn't have the specific answer I wanted and it was 3 years old, it was interesting and I did find one sentence that KIND OF leaned towards my way of thinking, "Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions. Remember, your site should be attractive to human sensibilities." I think of graphics/clip art/what have you as clutter and a distraction. But again, this is subjective.
Moving on... So I found this site that talks about how adding captions to an image is extremely important in grabbing attention, but it doesn't say you have to have an image, but says an "awesome headline" is a definite attention grabber.
And then I came to the last link I had opened in a new tab that was from 2012. It was about the shocking truth about web graphics and conversion. Now I am going to fully embrace this article because it told me what I wanted to hear:
"Many years ago, advertising legend David Ogilvy commissioned research into the use of images... Images can reduce readership. Yes, they catch people’s attention. But without some very specific conditions in place, that attention does not translate into people reading the body copy—or coughing up cash."
The author of this article went on to talk about the right and wrong ways to use images in a blog post or on a website (which one of them was also about using captions). Here is a list of things that should NOT be used:
- "Stock photographs that are obviously stock photographs—their generic dullness and lack of imagination rubs off on you. Just because a stock photo is attractive doesn’t mean it will be effective.
- Poor quality images of any kind—better to not show anything than to show something pixelated, over-compressed, badly resized, of a low resolution, or otherwise shoddy-looking.
- Crowd shots. Try to use photos that have a single main subject—people find crowd shots boring because there’s no one to focus on.
- Bigger than life-size images of faces. According to Ogilvy, readers avoid them because they seem slightly grotesque.
- Historical subjects—unless you’re catering to an audience of history enthusiasts, it’s a safe bet your readers will find historical shots boring."
I also discovered from reading this that using images in a blog that are left aligned is a no-no. Oops! I do that sometimes when advertising on my other blog. Gonna have to work on that.
Rumination: Ineffective images are distracting and unnecessary. If I post a stock image that I get from a google image search to incorporate into the blog I would have to think of a very worthwhile way to do it (which would include a caption.) Or hey, why not do a pull quote as well... why don't I get all fancy and embed bells and whistles on my website? I'm going to go with the idea that some images are good and some images don't matter. In a perfect world I would get paid to blog, but I don't... so I will have to work on perfecting these things one piece at a time. For now, it's all about content, content, content.
This story always stuck with me: Specialist Patrick Daniel "Pat" Tillman[1] (November 6, 1976 – April 22, 2004) was an American football player who left his professional career and enlisted in the United States Army in June 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He joined the Army Rangers and served several tours in combat before he died in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Army at first reported that Tillman had been killed by enemy fire, and then Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal approved the award of a Silver Star. To the dismay of those close to him, the actual cause of Tillman's death was ruled by the Pentagon as friendly fire.
ReplyDeleteFull article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman