One of the best ways to increase engagement with your audience is to design amazing images to go with every blog or social media post. Today I’ll share a few tips on how to design amazing images for all those posts.

If you are writing a blog and sharing your blog posts on social media, make sure you’ve included an image on every post.

If you’re just creating standalone social media posts, be sure to use images for every one of those posts.

There may be exceptions, like if you’re just tweeting about the score of the sports game. But including images with every post is a good rule of thumb. You can’t go wrong with this approach.

Images grab your audience’s attention, they help create a consistent brand identity, and they help people to remember your message. In fact, studies have shown that people remember about 10% of what they hear after 72 hours have passed. But if they see an image paired with that same information 72 hours later they still remember 65% of the material.

Images are super important, but they need to look good!

How to Design Amazing Images for Your Posts

Below are a few ideas for creating better images for your posts. One thing to keep in mind – you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create attractive, engaging images. You just need to be able to follow a few guidelines and get familiar with a few tools.

Be relevant

My first tip for how to design amazing images for your posts is to make sure your images are relevant to your message. When choosing an image for a post, ask yourself a few questions:

* Does this image relate to this post? If you see this picture paired with the title of this post, will it make sense right away? If your post is a recipe for vegan ice cream, use a photo of vegan ice cream. If you’re sharing about your experience at a restaurant, use a photo of the restaurant, or even better would be a photo of you sitting at a table in the restaurant. Using a picture that’s relevant to your topic will help create a connection for your audience.

* Does this image help tell the story? Sometimes your image’s relevance isn’t clear right away, and that’s okay. For example, I used a picture of apples for a post about building brand awareness. The connection with the apples doesn’t make sense until you read the post and I share a story about how eating organic produce is better for you. The image helps tell that story.

* Don’t confuse. Whatever you do, try not to confuse your readers. If you’re writing a fashion blog about the new Fall boot styles, use a picture of, wait for it, boots! Don’t use a photo of a tropical beach at sunset. It doesn’t help to make those connections and only confuses your readers.

Be on-brand

Another way to make sure your images are more effective and more engaging is to be on-brand. Decide on your brand’s image style and use that same style everywhere.

For example, Jenna Kutcher uses soft images of herself and the people she interviews on her Goaldigger podcast. Every image is a little different, but she’s using the same Instagram filter and the same basic color palette and tone to maintain brand consistency. You could adopt a similar strategy by using the same filter for all of your images.

Another great way to stay on-brand is to add your logo as a watermark on all of your images. When you do this you not only help people make the connection to your message but also to you and your brand.

Use words

Adding words on top of your images helps people understand right away what your post is about.