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How To Use Killer Pictures & Graphics To Promote Your Blog Posts

How To Use Killer Pictures & Graphics To Promote Your Blog Posts ... I love making pretty pictures for my blog! And have done for a while, but they have never been more important than they are today.

I love making pretty pictures for my blog! And have done for a while, but they have never been more important than they are today.

Today ALL of the social media websites have big, bold graphics as the main thing that they are promoting and learning just a wee bit about photo editing and how to make cool graphics will go a long way to making your blog posts more popular and get you more traffic!

please note, there are some affiliate links in this blog post… if you purchase something, you will not pay more and sometimes will be able to save a wee bit using my links! readers' support is how I keep this site free!

Old Blog Graphics Versus New Graphics

Years ago when I started my blog it was okay to throw any old picture in there and sometimes we didn't even have one at all. Here is comparison between one of my post graphics from 2010 and one from this year. As you can see, there is a HUGE difference in many aspects!

Old Blog Pictures Versus New Blog Pics

Things that have changed include:

  • Size – the picture on the right is 1200 wide X 628 high which is a great size to share on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus
  • Words – back in 2010 there was a LOT less noise and people were more willing to read or figure things out… now-a-days we have to make it super easy to help people figure out immediately what your post is about
  • Words for marketing – if you are going to be paying to promote your post on Facebook the “new” style has too many words right now, you would have to either make those small or reduce the number to get your ad approved
  • Pinterest pictures – you can't see it but there is a Pinterest picture (tall and skinny) hidden in the blog post that my readers can share on Pinterest (more about this later!)

Update your old posts!

While all this info about blog pictures and graphics is great, the easiest wins you can get on your blog right away would be to update the pictures on your older, but popular in Google, posts. That “old picture” post gets lots of traffic through search but almost no social media traffic so that would be a great one to update!

Making New Blog Graphics & Pictures

So let's say I was going to update that old evergreen blog post article. Here are the steps that I would use to make a super cool graphic for my blog post!

1. Find A Picture

Because I am a graphic artist I have a subscription to a stock photo site, and many of the photo editors that we are going to work with have pictures you can buy for $1, but if you are going to be redoing a bunch of your pictures even $1 a picture could start to add up.

Luckily I have a great resource for gagillions of free pictures, Only The Best Free Stock Photos and Mockups Sites has loads of free pictures that you can work with… I picked this one of pine trees that has great graphic elements from the Unsplash site!

Pine Trees Picture To Update My Blog Post Graphics

Here is the picture we are going to use…

Pine Trees Pic

Photo by Iler Stoe on Unsplash ( you don't technically have to add the photo credit, but I like to if I am using a free photo!)

2. Choose A Photo Editor

There are two really good photo editors for social media graphics, PicMonkey and Canva. We are going to use PicMonkey today to make a wide and a tall picture to add to my blog post so we can share it on social media.

Here are the basic moves to get to the next step….

1. Go to PicMonkey

2. At the top click Open New > Template

3. Pick a Facebook Template that you like

Pic Monkey Facebook Templates

You want to pick one that will fit well already with your picture. For mine I will have the trees at the bottom and then write the title of the blog post across the top so I picked this template…

Facebook Post Template

Okay, so I have this one to start with. As you can see it is a “real estate” picture right now, but I am going to change out the picture to the one I chose..  I did this by selecting Replace Image > My Computer

Ratsies, it only took the middle of the picture… well, that will be okay I am sure! We are doing blog graphics, not brain surgery here!

Imported Picture Pic Monkey

Come to find out I couldn't stand it and did go into the Pic Monkey photo editor to make it a little more “fitty”!!! By using this I could get just the right spot that I wanted for my picture!

Pic Monkey Photo Editor

Now all we have to do is mess around a wee bit with the words and maybe make the blog title pop! I did this by using a “ribbon” and then using the Impact font which is one I use on all my blog post graphics.

Final Evergreen Blog Posts Pic Monkey

And that is it. I KNOW it seems like you have to have way more steps or a huge design background, but luckily you can just use the templates that are already made in both Pic Monkey and Canva!

Last but not least, I did a different version that is tall and skinny for Pinterest…

Blog Post Graphics Pictures - Pic Monkey

As you can see they are very similar but not quite the same. That is FINE! You want to make pictures that look good for each of your social media websites.

How To Hide Your Pictures For Pinterest

Okay, last but not least is the “sneaky” part of the graphics. You can upload the tall picture just like you normally would and then use the “display none” tag in the HTML to hide it from your page! I usually put it at the bottom of the post so it is easy to find

<div style=”display:none;”><a href=”https://marketingartfully.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/writing-evergreen-blog-posts-tall-1.jpg”><img class=”aligncenter wp-image-13463 size-full” src=”https://marketingartfully.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/writing-evergreen-blog-posts-tall-1.jpg” alt=”Writing evergreen keyword rich blog posts is a great way to generate traffic for your site. Once you target a keyword phrase, all you have to do is make sure that the technical bits are right and you should rank well for that phrase.” width=”1144″ height=”1746″ /></a></div>

BONUS TIP

Okay, one last thing! I fought using a social media sharing plugin for a L-O-N-G time! But now that I am working so hard on my graphics, I wanted to give myself a chance to get more shares.

I checked out a lot of plugins but found that the Social Warfare plugin was best one! It is pretty, easy to install and shows sharing counts which helps people decide to share your content too.

Social Sharing - Social Media Sharing Plugin

Killer Blog Post Pictures Wrapup

I was going to write something really insightful here, but I thought it would be more fun to show you a whole bunch of cool blog post graphics for inspiration! Honestly, it is much easier if you can find a style to use on your pictures so your “stuff looks like your stuff” and you can spend less time worrying about re-inventing the wheel every time you have a blog post to do and spend all your time writing great content that you can share with your peeps!

All of these are easy enough to do in PicMonkey and Canva!

Good Blog Post Graphics 1

Source CleansGreen, Brilliant Business Moms, Daisy Yellow

Good Blog Post Graphics 1

Source Spotify, LinkedIn, Niche 

Good Blog Post Graphics 1

Source Renae Christine, Schnieder Electric, Beth Anne Schwamberger (#adlink)

How To Use Killer Pictures & Graphics To Promote Your Blog Posts ... I love making pretty pictures for my blog! And have done for a while, but they have never been more important than they are today.