Enhance Your Image

As writers, when we post something, we hope someone takes the time to read it. Good bloggers draw attention to their work, and they have hundreds of followers. Those prominent individuals didn’t get there overnight. It took months, if not years, to gain their notoriety and followings.

Some professionals market their services, helping us compete with setting up our website, and enhancing our Click Through Rate (CTR). It’s a numbers game on the internet, and to be competitive, we need to pay attention to the algorithms that drive it. The average CTR for search networks (engines) is 1.91%, while for display ads, it’s 0.35%. The individuals that track blog CTR say if we can obtain 1.0%, we are doing great and above average.

Writing for me is a hobby, and I’m not interested in competing with successful bloggers. I am interested in improving my writing and having peers comment on my posts. To get individuals to come and read my work, I need to gain their attention.

In the last 25 years of my career, I was the Budget Manager for a division of my county in SE, Florida. Every year I produced a budget document that explained to the public our mission and showed how we used the taxpayers’ money. Financial documents aren’t something the average person wants to read. But I learned tricks of the trade to make my material more attractive and I won awards from government financial associations

The other day, I watched a webinar on enhancing pictures or images to gain attention. The individual hosting the seminar demonstrated several of the techniques I used. These are little enhancements that will bring attention to your blog post.

One thing I have noticed with the more popular blog sites is eye appeal. Usually, they use an attractive color scheme, and they add images to support or boost their writing. Adding images is easy, but placing them in the appropriate area is essential. Images that are flat, unattractive, or confusing will draw the reader’s attention in the wrong direction.

I’ll show how you can take a simple photograph and turn it into an image that will enhance your post. I’m using a picture I took last summer visiting my daughter in Turkey. It’s a picture of Roman ruins that we toured, and I took it with my iPhone.

Here is the original picture. When you look at it, what happens to your eyes. Do they bounce around, unable to focus on the objective of the photo? There are so many objects and scenery; the picture becomes confusing. What was it I intended to capture?

With this image, I have cut out all the areas except the area I wanted to display. Do you now see objects and people you didn’t notice before? Your reader’s focus on the image would now enhance the written text.

With this picture, I let image software reduce the glare of the bright sun and the reflection off the stone. I did this by reducing the brightness and increasing the contrast. Now the objects give the photo more depth perception. It’s a step to make your image more attractive.

With this picture, I used the image software to give the picture three-dimensional effects. By adding a shadow to two sides, the image appears to float above the text. It’s an eye appeal step to further gain the attention of the reader.

Often it is the trivial things we can do to a post that will attract the reader. In the competitive world of blog sites, we need an edge to gain attention. There are many more techniques, and I plan to share some in future posts.

Don’t be shy, leave a comment or suggestion to help others.

Feature image photograph by Rose Emery