One question I have been asked time and time again is “how do you use images in your blog posts?” More specifically, readers are talking about the unique way that my articles look and feel with images inserted professionally in all the right places. It’s really little more than a clever web design trick, but having your images styled to fit with the rest of your articles can be a major catalyst for your blog’s popularity.

The video above outlines the entire method with a helpful screen display that walks you through the process I go through every time I slip images into my blog posts. I’ve discussed before a more general guide on how to effectively use images in your blog posts, but I feel like you guys are looking for something more specific to this blog. Therefore, the video above goes through step-by-step to show you exactly how I style images and add them to all my articles.

I like to back all my videos up with a post just as normal as any other, so let’s discuss right now The Net Fool’s Blog Post Image Method for getting all of your articles styled to perfection. Using images effectively will increase your traffic and popularity over time simply because people like to be entertained, and images are the number one way to add a unique touch to everything you do. Better yet, they make things easier to read… which encourages people to stick around!

Understanding What Images Work For You
One thing that many bloggers do incorrectly is use images that obviously clash with their overall designs. What do I mean by this? Well in my case, everything is drawn and animated. I’m not using any “real” photos of people or things anywhere on my blog, so I shouldn’t be using them in my blog posts. To fit with my theme, I am going to be using the type of “cartoony” or “hand-drawn” graphics to maximize my style. This could be the most important tip for many of you, as finding images that naturally match the overall feel of your blog should always be square one.

Grabbing Images That “Fit”
Once you have the general concept down on what kind of image you are looking for exactly, we need to actually go out and get a copy, right? My three favorite services for getting stock images are: iStockPhoto.com, Google Images and Stock.XChnge. Of course, iStockPhoto images do cost a few dollars a piece to purchase. However, I have found that these images are far superior to anything you’ll find for free, and you can use them over and over again (as I do) in order to make the purchase worth your while. If you are looking for a 100% free I would recommend simply messing around with images from Google Image Search.

Format the Images to Your Blog’s Content Style
Once you have the images you are going to use, the most important step is to get them cut down and optimized to flow with the rest of your article. Here are the general tips that I use in editing photos to get them looking their best!

1. Use a professional image editor like Photoshop!
It is really important to use a professional image editor so that everything can be edited to perfection and later optimized to cut down on your blog’s loading time. This is a prime reason why you should be using more than just MS Paint!

2. Make sure the image background matches your content area!
In other words, whatever background is under the normal text of any article you put out should match the image’s background. My background is white, so all of my images are going to have a white background (#FFFFFF, not something “close” to white). This ensures that the images don’t distract, but still offer some eye candy.

3. Resize Your Images to Fit Your Articles
Take note of how big the content area is that you will be posting in. For me, it’s somewhere around 500 pixels. Because of this, I never want to go more than 1/2 the size of the total text area for ANY image that I use. I typically choose to resize all my images to somewhere between 200 and 250 pixels. Unless you are planning on using a separate line for your images (if it’s just too big), things need to be no more than half your total content space.

4. Save as Optimized .jpg, .png or .gif
JPG, PNG and GIF are the three primary ways to save images simply because they look good and aren’t too big. I personally use JPG images because they are the smallest in size for what I use. What’s more, you can typically get away with just 60% quality since you aren’t going for high definition necessarily. Optimize images to cut down your blog’s loading time, and you’ll have satisfied readers!

Upload Your Image to the Internet
An obvious step, but I felt that I should address it nonetheless. A lot of bloggers just use images from Google or other websites and have links to the images on someone else’s server. I recommend just saving your own copy (if legal) on your web server so you can be sure that it won’t be down next week. A lot of these websites are offline within weeks of you seeing them, so you don’t want to run the risk that things will be offline. If you don’t want to use too much of your own bandwidth by hosting all of your images, you can simply use a service like ImageShack to host them for you for free.

Insert and Align Your Image with Spacing
The sad part about most blog articles is that people work hard to format their own images, and then just throw them in their posts without a care in the world. This strategy can completely dismantle the appearance of your posts, so you need to be formatting everything correctly to make most effective use of your images.

One thing I ALWAYS do is add a protective 10px horizontal spacing between my images and my text. You can accomplish this in the “appearance” tab of your WordPress WYSIWYG Image Editor. This makes sure that the text doesn’t bump against your image, which always looks sloppy.

Assuming that you have your image all formatted ready to go, one last step is to align either left or right to make sure that your text wraps around it properly. Of course, if you image is too big, I would center the whole thing and put it on its own individual line. Otherwise, things need to be to one side or the other if you want to rack up the most style points possible.

Bottom Line: Using Images In your posts is one of the most essential steps to ensure that you gain popularity as a blogger. Blogs that fail to put images in each article are going to find gaining subscribers so be a bit harder, as readers generally see blogging as an escape from reading through news. People want information that is fun to read, so using your images in a way that optimizes your content can really boost traffic and returning visitors.

-The Net Fool

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