You've likely heard it said by Mari Smith, "Content is King, but engagement is Queen and she rules the house."
"Content is King, but engagement is Queen and she rules the house." ♕ツ♛ #SMSS13
— Mari Smith (@MariSmith) October 1, 2013
The king and queen's defining characteristic is their crown.
Royalty without a crown can easily be mistaken for a commoner, and the same is true for content and engagement. Images are the defining component that sets apart and completes both your content and your engagement potential.
In a digital world where we are bombarded with volumes of content, great content can be missed by the masses that are prone to skim through posts. The solution is to visually enchant the viewer and pull them in to the post via the images used. Plus, a blog post can lag behind lesser quality content in social shares and engagement simply because of the lack of "hooks" that images provide. Images act as the hook to bring the viewer in deeper! A post with great content is simply a commoner unless they complete the post with value-adding images.
Starting out with a image that draws attention can pull a skimmer (those just glancing through) deeper into the content itself.
Sociallsorted.com.au Blog
A summary image can be a infographic of the main points, or a visual that recaps a key point.
JohnHaydon.com Blog
A image can be the difference between a sale and simply content on a web page. When images are used in blog posts to encourage the viewer to action, results increase!
Images on your blog not only capture the attention of the visitor, they enable greater and more social sharing. The key is making your images large enough to be of value. For example Facebook Post Ads for links have a recommended size of 600 x 325. This image dimension fills the news feed area and creates visual impact within Facebook. Pinterest on the other hand has more "repins" of images when the height is greater than the width, such as 600 x 900 (infographic type).
Thus a mix of images can be important, or at least knowing what your dominant social sharing goal is and creating images on the blog that fit this criteria.
Do not succumb to the "I'm not a designer" belief, there are online image tools for creating great visuals that give you the head start you need!
So be sure to "wear your crown" by completing your blog post with visual images.
