There’s a reason why children’s books are heavy on pictures. Images can immediately speak a thousand words: they can grab and hold at attention their notoriously distractable readers; and they can make (or break) the appeal and hence readability of the text they accompany.
The same rationale applies — and same effect achieved — when it comes to blogs. Cool graphic is part and parcel of successful blogging experiences, both for bloggers engaging readers, and readers engaging a blog’s content.
Image by UggBoy♥UggGirl, courtesy of Flickr
Today, blogging as means of communicating content is extraordinarily, increasingly popular; for all content genres and conceivable purposes, individuals publish blogs not only as personal expressive outlets, but also for career networking, market exposure, and revenue. Businesses feature blogs not only as company news updates, but also as industry-pertinent article databases to improve visibility and marketability, and the public is daily turning to blogs not only for recreational use, but also for specialized information and advice to make educated life decisions.
In short, blogs and blog readers are proliferating and diversifying at exponential levels. Mastering blogging’s art is now beyond a matter merely of thought-sharing, no matter how witty your wordsmithing or valuable said thoughts may be. If your blog is to matter, you must warranty its worth on the web by design.
How Graphics Get Readers’ Attention
Imagine, for a moment, your blog’s potential visitors as children, your blog as children’s book. Web surfers are in like positions, aren’t they? They are in stimuli-ridden surroundings, where they’re incited to click here, link there, watch this. And what’s the most powerful sense-capturing stimulus here? It’s graphics. When a given graphic is worth its pixels, it not only grabs initial attention, but also holds it . . . there on its home’s page, to the content, and in memory.
Of course, a graphic’s efficacy depends on its context: the blog’s genre, intended purpose and audience. For optimal impact, your blog’s reason for being must comprehensively guide its graphic design’s conception.
Image by Joe Crawford, courtesy of Flickr
The Case of Travel-Genre Blogs: Graphics to Give Bloggers and Readers Digital Age Agency
For bloggers in the exceedingly far-reaching, influential “travel” genre, graphics are key not only to compelling a blog’s page hits, but also, for many, to its content’s formative expression and ultimate worth. Here’s why:
In today’s economy, a veritable replenishing travel-resource digital buffet is fast rendering traditional “travel agent” services obsolete; travel bloggers are both cause and benefactor of this “cutting out the middleman” by functioning, ideally, as cost-efficient, time-efficient, digital-substitute travel agents. But to effectively fill this role, they must also conjure up the convincing appearance of authority, trustworthiness, reliability, enthusiasm and personalization that folks continue to prioritize in travel decision-making.
Graphics actualize this objective, most notably as innovatively conceived “infographics.” By transforming data into visual information — clearly, confidently, engagingly, and excitingly presented — the best travel bloggers give readers the reasons they seek to stay (and to revisit and publicly commend) the course on which they’ve hit.