Let’s be honest, when we read blogs, articles, or the news, we scan through the images and headings to decide if we want to donate our time to this piece of content by reading it in full. If this is the case, this makes the images and graphics we include in our content a big deal. This can very well make or break whether or not your potential clients and customers are reading your content and deciding to go through with purchasing your service.
Regarding content, graphics can either help or hurt your message. Poorly chosen or executed graphics can confuse or distract from your content, while well-done graphics can support and enhance your message. In this blog post, we’ll look at how to use graphics effectively to improve your content.
Consistency
As we all know, consistency is vital when it comes to graphics and content. The overall look of your website and blog should be cohesive, with a consistent color scheme, font choices, and image style. This helps create a polished, professional look that will instill confidence in potential clients and customers. Therefore, images should be clean, free of imperfections or distractions, and most importantly, they should all align.
Remember that game you would play as a kid, Which One Doesn’t Belong? You would be given several pictures and have to pick the one that didn’t fit in with the rest. The same applies here. The professionalism is lost if there are polished, pristine images and one or two with different lighting or style.
Relevancy
When choosing or creating graphics for your content, make sure they are relevant and support your message. A creative, well-chosen graphic can be worth a thousand words, but only if it’s related to the topic. Irrelevant or confusing graphics will do more harm than good.
Ensure that if the person choosing the graphics is not the person who wrote the content, they should be in constant communication, ensuring the meaning behind the message is not lost in the photos.
Often, the images are the last piece to be added to any content, meaning that they are likely done quickly, possibly with less thought than the text required. However, the images paired with content have just as much, if not more, important than the content itself. A customer can be lost because the message was misconstrued or poorly relayed through inappropriate or inadequate graphics.
Purpose
Think about what you want your graphic to accomplish before you create or select it. Do you want to inform? Entertain? Persuade? Inspire? As long as your graphic serves a purpose and supports your content, it will be an asset. If it doesn’t, it will be a liability.
If the intention for the piece of content is to support your company and persuade the customer to make a purchase, the images should show happy people with the results of their purchase. Ensure that the purpose of the content matches the tone of the purpose of the image. A poor example of this is using entertainment-based images paired with persuasive writing. This could mean the loss of a sale.
So, graphics can help or hurt your content depending on how well they are integrated and how relevant they are to your message. Be thoughtful about the graphics you use, and your content will be all the better for it. However, if you struggle to do this for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out to our skilled professional team at The AD Leaf.
