Blog stories with unique images receive 94% more engagement, according to Optimind Technology.
Important headlines and bulletproof text are sometimes not enough to pull in the audience you deserve. Readers are not rational beings, and when writers shift focus to emotions and eliminating friction, they get higher returns and capture more attention with their ideas, articles, and websites.
Your reader acts on emotions first, and then follows with reason.
People are creatures of split-second decisions based on their emotional drive.
Your life is overrun by thousands of voices screaming for attention. Marketeers blast links, sales templates, and advertising funnels for products that you’re not even sure you need. Grab for attention can overwhelm both writers and readers, especially when it lacks substance.
If you’re a content creator, then you’re the big player in this game.
Your currency is attention. And people give attention to stuff that makes them feel special, curious, and prestigious. Seeing the same image twice doesn’t leave anyone screening for more. Most people turn down a good headline and skip on a life-changing blog article just because they have already seen the cover image before.
Tech Crunch, one of the most famous publishers in the tech industry, is annotating images for its widely-successful blog.
Annotated images help your blog photos stay fresh, enticing, and valuable.
Free stock images come with a significant risk of being used in similar articles.
Exclusivity wins readers because people want to feel unique, special, and important. However, getting exclusive photos is either expensive or time-consuming. And If you’re a content creator, spending $500 for paid stock images is financially risky because you never know which post is the viral one until it actually goes viral.
You’re alienating potential readers with overused stock images.
Another option can help you put your creative juices to good use. If you can’t spend obscene amounts of dollars on securing exclusive photos and don’t want to risk alienating your readers with cool but overused images, then adding a dash of personality to stock images with annotation tools can just do the trick.
Annotate images with elements that are relevant to your story.
You can use the easy-going annotation tools to create scroll stopping cover images.
Having the right cover photo is just as important as your headline and killer text body. If one element of your article is lacking, you can be sure that your reader is not hesitating to search for another story. Only Seth Godin can produce dry text and make it go viral.
I’ll take a wild bet and say that you’re not Seth Godin, and like the rest of us, you will need every trick in the box to make your story work.
What does it mean to annotate images?
Annotating images means adding text, elements, frames, and drawing on photos to add more information.
Nobody likes to think too far and wide about what the artist wants to say.
The best and most successful blog stories are clear, straightforward, and simple to understand. But offer life-changing message, and dominate attention. Good stories are easy on the eyes but heavy on the soul.
Simple to understand often means hard to make.
Your job is to get your message across and your reader interested. Adding text, pointers, and shapes to images tell the reader you’re willing to go the extra mile for them.
And who doesn’t like it when the writer goes the extra mile for them.
Create great relationships with readers, build killer articles, and reach the widest audience possible by adding another crucial element to your blog — annotated images.