Jeff Bullas
Blogger extraordinaire, author, strategist and speaker

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
The main reason is to capture attention first and then the other key reason is to amplify sharing.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
Infographics are my favorite because they drive the most sharing. This is followed by Slideshare that I find is a great visual media platform to position someone as a thought leader. With over 750,000 views of my presentations on Slideshare, I have come to realize that it should not be underestimated.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
The number varies. I looked at the last 2 weeks and the average is 7.4 images per post!

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Make it look professional! Becoming a pro at visual content is not a solo sport and means involving a team. This means using in-house or outsourced graphic creatives and designers and being willing to test your content.

Donna Moritz
Social media strategist, visual marketing specialist, blogger and speaker

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
I use visuals in almost all of my content on most social platforms, especially my blog.

Visual content is one of the best ways to immediately grab attention in order to then entice someone to take action on your content — whether it is to like, comment, click through, tweet or share.

You don’t get the same instant emotional connection with any other medium that you do with images — not even text, audio or video. It’s fast and a great way to help your audience to make a decision about whether to engage with your content.

And visuals are so hot right now!

They are engaging and fun. That’s why I love helping people learn how to create their own, original, traffic driving images.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
Two types. Firstly I love shareable, graphics that are “snackable” in nature (i.e. they gain attention fast, they are highly engaging, and easy to process).  The most shareable of these types of graphics are quotes, how-to images, checklists, and tips.

I also love infographics of any shape or form.  We create infographics for clients that get tens of thousands of shares on major sites around the world.

Many people think that infographics have to be data heavy or pie charts made pretty, but there is so much more you can do with them.

If you can help your ideal audience with an attractive, well-designed graphic that solves a problem or challenge or inspires, it will get shared.

And better still, it will get used and referred to.  I always recommend that infographics are embedded into a blog post containing more quality content about the topic.  This generates a lot of high quality shares and relevant links back to your site and your content via sites like Pinterest.

Pro tip: Check out Donna’s article about the essential elements of a knockout infographic!

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
I always include a visual in every blog post.

85% of content pinned to Pinterest is actually pinned by users from websites, not from brands.

Having one great, “pinnable” image on every page of your website is more important than pinning your content to Pinterest. I always get my clients to do an audit of their website first and make sure they have a great image on every page (or two or more!).

I will often include more than one visual in every blog post.

Always try to include at least one portrait-sized image that is suitable for pinning to Pinterest.

Even if it is a quote from the article, pull it out into an image. In short, your images help people to scan through blog posts and pull out relevant information.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Start simple and batch your images. Aim to add just one original image to just one platform.

Then batch some images (5-10) so you are creating them all at once and then schedule them out on that platform. For instance, on Facebook, aim to add one original image every day.

Then grow it from there and try other platforms like Instagram. Again, start with one image per day.

The key is consistency over volume. Once you have consistency, then turn up the volume.

Jacob Gube
Pro web developer, designer, and blogger

1. Do you use any visuals in your content? Why?
I use functional visuals within other forms of content to enhance the readability experience.Functional visuals are visuals that add to the subject being discussed.

For example, if we were talking about the rate of increase in carbon monoxide in Manila for the past 20 years, that statement would be more impactful and “sticky” if we were to show a line graph that demonstrates the point, versus describing the numbers year-per-year.

Visuals allow us to describe things more succinctly, which further enhances the reading experience.

As cliche as it sounds, it’s still true today that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Screenshots, annotated visuals, contextual images, visual proof, flow charts, diagrams, and so forth really help the reader absorb content more efficiently.

But I wouldn’t use visuals for aesthetic purposes (such as arbitrary stock images or images with text) because they don’t add any new information and they will actually hamper the UX (User experience).

I used to do this years ago, just to “prettify” the content, but I’ve since learned it’s such a terrible practice.

2. What type of visual (video, infographic, Slideshow presentation etc) is your favorite and has worked best for you so far?
My favorite forms of visual content are functional images and embedded videos.

3. How often do you use visuals in your blog posts (how many visuals per post etc)?
It depends on the post I’m writing.

I don’t have any statistics at hand, but just by eyeballing it, I would say that in my work in 2014 I use between 1-8 functional images per post.

This excludes showcase and list posts, which are image-centric.

4. What’s your one best tip you’d like to give to all bloggers and online marketers for creating visual content?
Use functional visuals that add information.

The litmus test is this: If the reader doesn’t see the visual, will she lose out on valuable information? If the answer is “no”, then the image is not useful and should be removed.