Research shows that images improve your social media success and engagement.

More specifically:

• Quick Sprout reveals that tweets with images receive 200 percent more engagement.
• BuzzSumo reports that Facebook posts with images generate 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images.
• Research published in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that including an image in tweets about air travel increases the number of retweets by 119%.

Here are three types of custom images you can create that support your book marketing messages while they increase social media engagement.

1. Image quotes/picture quotes/quote cards

No matter what you call them, these social media graphics that place words on images are versatile and powerful.

For the text, use inspirational quotes, a pithy message from your book with attribution to your book (not yourself), or a snippet of text from your blog post (that’s what I’ve done with the example below). There are so many ways to approach this — my suggestions are just a start.

Please don’t quote yourself saying something you feel is wise or profound, though. I know that so-called gurus do this, but it isn’t going to position you as a thought leader. You earn that title when others  believe that what you say is so worthwhile that they have to share it.

Rather than quoting yourself on your road to social media success, quote others you admire — and tag them when you post the image online.

Create these types of images with any of the many web-based and/or smartphone tools available for this. I used Canva to create the three images above. The kitten photo came from  Depositphotos; I’ve got links to free photo sites here.

2. Tipographics

Tipographics — also known as tip-o-graphics — are tip lists. I’ve got a collection of them I created from blog post content on a Pinterest board. Each Pinterest image links back to my original blog post on the topic. While I share them on Pinterest, they can be shared on any social media platform you use.

Here’s one example:

During the first two months I started sharing these on Pinterest, traffic to my site from that social network increased more than 300 percent. I’ve recently added a few more and will watch the numbers to see if traffic jumps again.

When I first started creating these, I used a PowerPoint template (download a PDF version of it here). Now that Canva is an option, I’ll test that tool to see which approach is easiest.

If you’ve got design skills, you can make yours look a whole lot nicer than mine. I opted for simplicity, as you can see.

3. Infographics

Infographics incorporate images and text to walk you through a process or simplify complicated data. 

Of the three image types we’re discussing, infographics are the hardest to create. First, they need to tell a story. Second, they’re graphics-intense — they’re the opposite of my tipographics above.

And yet, I love them. They get my attention — and when they do, they nearly always have information I can use. They give me an opportunity to share helpful information with others, as I did in my recent blog post about world reading habits in 2021. I was happy to build an article around that infographic when the creator offered it to me.

Here’s an example of an infographic that’s designed to inform and influence authors.

To create your own, look for templates online.

HubSpot offers 15 free PowerPoint infographic templates that can simplify the design process. Canva has infographic templates, too. Australian designer Donna Moritz also offers links to infographic templates in her article, “4 Easy Infographic Template Tools for Stunning Infographics” on her Socially Sorted site.

If you don’t have design skills or don’t have the time for this, it might be easier to search Fiverr for a designer who can do it.

Increase social media success

Increase engagement and improve reader connections by creating and sharing social media images, whether it’s any of these three or other types. You’ll indulge your creative side while making your time on social networks more productive and meaningful.

Have you incorporated images in your social media plan? Are you seeing more, less, or the same engagement among your followers and connections? Please tell us in a comment. 

(Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2015. It has been updated and expanded.)

How to pick the right images for your blog posts

By Mridu Khullar Relph

When I was a lowly sub at a magazine many years ago, I sometimes wrote and edited as much as half of this (small magazine’s) entire content. Yet, if you asked me where most of my time went, I’d tell you that I spent about half my day researching, writing, and putting together stories and the remaining half on presentation.

That’s right, I spent half my time, each and every day, coordinating with the designers, discussing layouts, helping identify text that needed to stand out on the page, playing about with different fonts, analyzing all the different covers the designers had come up with and vocalizing why they worked or didn’t, and mostly, sourcing the right images.

In your blog, too, images are important. It’s been shown repeatedly that bright, interesting, and relevant images tend to draw in more readers than blog posts without images or those with boring and overdone ones.

Here are six ways to ensure you’re picking the right images for your blog that help to challenge, inspire, and surprise your readers.

1. Don’t be too literal. 

A couple of months ago, when our own Sandy Beckwith guest posted on my blog about nonfiction platforms, I chose this picture of a guy getting ready to jump because not only did it signify the “literal” platform, but it captured what most writers feel when we’re talking about building a platform– that they have to take a deep breath and just jump.

2. Pick people over things. 

When I started working at the magazine I mentioned above, the leadership changed. The new editor was charged with taking the magazine from a technology magazine for geeks to a lifestyle magazine for people who wanted to know how to pick their next gadget. The first thing he did? He put models on the cover.

People respond to people. It’s human nature. So given the choice between a dozen envelopes ready for the mail and a baby chewing on a marketing book, you now know which image to pick.

3. Choose beauty over accuracy. 

Images aren’t about fact, they’re about feeling (unless you’re publishing a newspaper). Take this post on the levels of commitment by Jeff Goins, for instance. It features a beautiful image that draws the reader in immediately and works perfectly for this post. But if you looked at the image in isolation, “commitment” isn’t the first word that would come to mind.

4. Make it personal. 

There are blogs I’ve been reading for years where I can’t tell you one thing about the person writing it. Others where I feel like I know the writer personally. Guess which one I’m going to trust more? Once in a while, make it a point to post a picture of something that makes you uniquely YOU.

For instance, I write a regular “What I’m Reading” post on my blog in which I always get my dog, my cat, and now my baby, to post with one of the books I’m reading. The cuteness factor is really high and readers absolutely adore it.

5. Bigger is better. 

Some bloggers like to have tiny images on the side, which is fine if that works for your content or your design. And it can be, like on this blog, more important to keep readers focused on the words.

But if your blog is more in a narrative conversational style like that of say, Michael Hyatt, make your images “pop.”

6. Match the tone of your pictures to the tone of your text. 

If you blog about serious topics, say addiction or crime, you need to use serious images, no cats, dogs, or monkeys allowed. But if you’ve got a more personal style, like my own, and you talk to your readers regularly and they feel like they’re just hanging out with you, you need a different set of pictures entirely. As writers, we focus so much on voice that we forget how much images need to connect with that voice.

How much thought do you give to the images you use on your blog?