Krista Neher
Speaker and social media authority

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
Visuals are a vital part of any online content.

Whenever a link to a website, blog post or article is shared on Pinterest, Facebook or LinkedIn, an image from the website is displayed along with a link.

If you don’t have engaging and highly relevant images on your website, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to generate social shares and clicks.

Every page on my website has a Pinnable image. A Pinnable image is an image that tells the story of the underlying content, so that if someone only sees the image they know what the webpage is about.

For example, if we have a page on our website with a Google Plus report, we’ll also have a picture of the report so that if the page is shared on Facebook, a relevant picture will show up beside it.

A great picture makes it more likely that someone will click on the content on Facebook and visit your website.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
I have generated tremendous results from vidoes, infographics and SlideShare presentations, and I think that they each play a different role in a marketing mix.

Videos are powerful sales tools for us — for example, a video demo of a training program shows a potential customer exactly what they’ll get if they choose to sign up for the class.

Videos are one of the most powerful ways to communicate a complex concept.

I’m HUGE on infographics right now — I even made an infographic to represent my bio for my speaking business.

I like infographics because they are highly shared on websites and social networks, which drives a lot of traffic to our website.

Slideshare is also a hidden gem in online marketing.

When I put a presentation on Slideshare it can generate over 5,000 views, and most of my presentations have over 500 views, which is WAY more than the traffic I get to an average blog post.

This makes Slideshare a powerful awareness-building tool and allows me to reach new people.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
Every blog post I write has at least one good visual, if I want the post to generate more traction, I’ll add a second one.

Generally one is a pinnable image that describes the post, and the other is a quote or key takeaway. Regardless of the type of content that I’m sharing, I always include an image.

So a blog post with a video will still include an image of the video.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Creating stunning visuals isn’t difficult and you don’t have to be a designer. I use a tool called Piktochart to create infographics, Canva for quote-style images and Haiku-Deck for beautiful presentations.

All of these tools are relatively low cost and allow any average person to create amazing visuals.

Sharon Hurley Hall
Professional blogger and writer

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
I use visuals with almost all my written content as a way to get readers’ attention and provide a graphic representation of the topic I am writing about.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
I love finding the perfect image to capture the main point, but I’ve had most response recently from quote images that I’ve created myself.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
I use at least one image or screenshot, slideshow or video with every post.

I often use images under sub-headings to divide up the content.

For tutorial posts, I use screenshots to show people what they will see in an app, program or website. For others, I may choose images that suggest or represent the content of each section.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Don’t be afraid of visuals because they really enhance your content!

A good place to start is by combining a quote from your article with one of the images (Creative Commons, of course) to make something original.

Adam Connell
Blogger and founder of BloggingWizard

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
Always. Nobody likes to be faced with a wall of text, but most importantly, when you get the visual element right – you get noticed.

I’ve earned mentions purely for the fact that I use visuals.

I get more traffic, more social shares which in turns helps me reach my goals faster.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
I focus on images mainly because they’re so easy to produce with available software.

I’ve experimented with other types of visual content and I’ve noticed that certain people typically look to consume certain types of content.

By expanding just the type of visual content you produce, you can expand your audience.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
It depends on the nature of the post, there has to be at least one eye-catching image on each post.

For more detailed posts I look to up the number of images significantly. There’s no hard and fast rule, there’s also other formatting elements that come into play. Think of the ‘big picture’ and the content as a whole.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Creating eye-catching visuals isn’t difficult.

A tool such as Visme lets you create awesome infographics.

Canva enables you to roll out engaging images on the fly. You don’t have to be a graphic designer, far from it in fact. Spend 5 minutes more on creating visuals that will attract attention and you will be glad you did.

Pro tip: Use big images on Google+. They work VERY well.

Chuck Frey
Writer, blogger and author on Mind Maps

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
I always use visuals in my content on both of my blogs, because I believe that they can be very powerful. They can make your blog stand out. Well-chosen photos or illustrations can tell a story in ways that words can’t.

Visuals can be used to capture attention or make readers feel an emotion, while diagrams, mind maps and infographics can convey a wealth of information to the reader in a compact space.

Also, a variety of studies have shown that visuals increase reader engagement. From a more practical standpoint, everyone is suffering from information overload today.

The average attention span of people online has shrunk to 8 seconds. In this incredibly noisy environment, you must use images to capture attention and differentiate your blog from all of the background noise. I think they’re essential.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
I frequently use photographs or illustrations, which I typically produce in Adobe Fireworks or Canva. I also use mind maps quite a bit, but that’s because of the subject of one of my blogs – mind mapping software.

I’ve gone through an interesting change in the format of the images I create within the last year.

I used to produce images that were strongly horizontal – usually the full width of a typical blog post. But today, social media channels like Pinterest and Google+ favor images that are taller than they are wide.

When they appear in the feeds of these channels, their height causes them to command more attention. So I have changed my production methods to match their preferred sizes.

I’ve experimented with creating and distributing image quotes on my social media channels, but I find that they don’t result in much engagement.

So many people are creating them today and they appear so frequently in social media feeds that I believe people are starting to ignore them. So I’m focused on creating outstanding content and then pairing that with excellent visuals.

Occasionally, I’ll produce a screen capture or PowerPoint video using Camtasia, depending upon the story I’m trying to tell.

Some information is best conveyed in a video rather than a still image – such as demonstration of a software program.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
It depends. For my personal blog, I’ll typically only use a single image per post. If I’m writing a book review, I’ll use two images – the main one being a photo or illustration like I just described, and the other one a book cover image.

For my mind mapping blog, I frequently use multiple images, because I frequently review software and write tutorials for my readers. Those need multiple images to show my readers what I’m talking about or to help them understand how to do something.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
I urge the readers of this post to experiment. There are a number of really excellent new tools that can help you create compelling visuals, infographics, videos and more.

Many are low or no cost. Canva comes to mind. It comes with preset image sizes and a huge library of images and illustrations. You can also upload your own quite easily.

There are also a wealth of mobile apps that can help you produce image quotes, enhance your photographs and much more.

Play around with them and learn what works and what doesn’t. Learn from and be inspired by the work of others.