How To Create Stunning Images For Your Blogs That Get Shared On Social Media

One of the main benefits of having a blog is the opportunity it creates for driving more traffic to your website. But you may be wondering  – where is this traffic going to come from?

A major traffic driver for most blogs is social media. You can share your blog posts with your existing audience, and if they like what they are reading they will share it with their network, getting your content in front of more eyes.

The challenge is making sure your audience is actually seeing your content. Standing out in the crowd is easier when you attach an eye-catching visual image with your blog and social media updates. In fact, content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content with no images.

Today I’ll share with you why you should be incorporating images in your blog posts, and how you can create them quickly and easily without breaking the bank (and without any design experience!)

What are the benefits of using images on your blog posts?

There are plenty of reasons to use great images, but the main reason is this – images make your blog more shareable. Visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared!

Most social networks are visual in nature and they favor content that features an image. Think about when you’re scrolling through Facebook. What posts grab your attention most – a long text heavy post, or an attractive image with text overlaid on it?

Nice images are just more eye-catching in a sea of content.

Using images is also a great way to build brand recognition with your audience. What I mean by brand recognition is that when you post content, people will recognize that it’s yours because it contains your branding – your fonts, colors, logo, and styles.

Brand recognition helps to maintain your audience and build up their loyalty.

If you don’t yet have set fonts, colors, or a logo, no worries.  You’ll still benefit from adding images to your blog posts, and you can start to play around with different fonts and colors and see what feels like a good fit for you!

How can you create images for your blog posts that get shared?

Do you ever wonder how other coaches and entrepreneurs get such great images and graphics for their blog posts? If you’re not a designer, it can be easy to assume that these images are nearly impossible to create and that your blog won’t look good until you have enough money to hire a designer.

This isn’t really the case, though!

You can create your own images for your blogs that will help your articles to stand out on social media. I’ll show you how to create stunning graphics easily and on a shoestring budget.

What tools can you use?

There are plenty of tools out there to create and edit images. The most popular one is Photoshop, which comes with a hefty price tag and a steep learning curve. But there are easier tools on the market.

My favorite tool is Canva. It’s a free online editing tool that allows you to edit photos, add text and shapes to images, and comes with a built-in library of layouts, stock photos, and samples you can use. When you sign up there is a tutorial on using the tool – so you’ll be up and running in no time!

Canva is equipped with plenty of layouts that you can use for your own designs. The layouts can include different shapes and font styles that pair nicely together, which you can adopt as your own. The best part about this is once you have a go-to layout you can use this as a template for your future designs. Templates are the key to saving you time when creating images! You just swap out the text and the featured image and voila, you have a brand new blog image in seconds.

How to create a blog image

To create a graphic for your blog, start by choosing the size you want.

I recommend you choose the image size based on the social network you’re most active on.

If you use Facebook most, choose the Facebook post size which is 1024×768. If you’re more active on Pinterest, choose the Pinterest layout which is taller than Facebook images.

If you’re very active on two social media platforms, you can include more than two images in your post – one at the top and one in the middle of the post.  You can look at this post for an example of how we do this.  The image at the top is sized for Twitter.  The image in the middle is sized for Pinterest.

Canva has pre-sized canvases that fit each social media network. The dimensions for the most popular social media images are:

• Facebook post: 940 x 788 (all in pixels)
• Twitter post: 1024 x 512
• Pinterest graphic: 735 x 1102
• Instagram post: 800 x 800

Once you’ve chosen a size for your graphic, you can choose to either use a layout that Canva already has in their library or create your own.

The main elements you will want your images to have are:

• a photo or a background (this can be a solid color, a pattern, or an actual photo depending on your preference and your branding)
• the title of your blog post or a catchy headline
• your logo if you have one (I like to make mine pretty small and put it in a corner of the image so when someone sees it on social media they know it’s from me)
• shapes, lines, or borders if you choose to add them

Get creative, play around with Canva, and have fun with this!

Keeping your images on brand

An important aspect in building a visual brand with your website and social media is maintaining consistency in your images. You can easily create this consistency with the templates you make in Canva.

What keeps an image “on brand”?

• Fonts: it uses your fonts. This can be fonts you use on your website for main body text and headings. It could also be the fonts you use in your logo.
• Colors: the colors you use for text, borders, shapes, and other elements should be consistent with the colors on your website. There should be 2 to 4 colors you use repeatedly in your website and other marketing materials.
• Elements are consistent: If you’re adding your text in shapes or boxes on an image, be sure that you’re using similar shapes and boxes in all your images.
• Your logo: To add your logo to an image, upload a png file of your logo (with a transparent background) to Canva, so it can be added to any image.

Where to find stock photos

Using stock photos is a great way to keep your blog graphics interesting and captivating. Choose images that speak directly to your audience. If you’re using Canva to create your images, they give you access to a library of stock photos that cost only $1 each.

Free stock photo sites include:

• Unsplash
• Allthefreestock.com
• Pexels

You can also use paid stock photo sites such as Deposit Photo or Dollar Photo Club.

Whatever you do, do NOT try to get away with grabbing photos for free from a Google search. You can get hefty fines for using photos without permission.

Sharing your blog photos

Once you have fantastic images created for your blog posts, add them to your WordPress or Squarespace site. Now when you’re sharing your blog post links on social media, be sure to add the image to the update as well (Facebook should pull it in automatically but Twitter doesn’t). Share the image to every social media channel you’re on, and you can even include the image in your email newsletter to your list.

Watch how your audience reacts to your new blog images!

Once you get the hang of using Canva you will be able to create beautiful images for your blog posts in less than 10 minutes.

Now I’d love to hear from you!
Do you have any tricks for creating images that your audience loves to share?