By Emma Miller

Your blog is a great way for your business to build its reputation, brand awareness, and recognition. It’s an area where you can put all the best SEO practices to work and improve your search rankings, bringing your website more quality traffic and conversions.

As a matter of fact, statistics show that marketers who blog generate up to 67% more leads than marketers who don’t, and your small business can hardly afford to not monetize this opportunity.

However, to make your blog efficient in achieving these goals, you should be able to grab your users’ attention, keep them around longer and engage them.

Including more visual content can be the key to improving your blog’s performance.

Why are visuals so important?

The human attention span is narrowing, and even though internet users spend an average of three hours surfing the net, 80% are looking for content that is skimmable and easy to digest.

This has a lot to do with our nature, as people process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, while 90% of information transmitted to our brains is visual.

It’s determined that visuals increase the desire to consume content by 80%, while your odds of selling a product grow by 85% after your customers have seen a video of your product.

Here are several great ways to incorporate more visual content in your new blogging strategy, and reap all these benefits.

-Add videos

Research shows that adding videos to your blog posts can increase the time your visitors spend on the page by 105%, boost the organic traffic for 157%, and double your conversions.

Videos are the most popular type of content online, so use this fact to repurpose some of your evergreen articles and offer your visitors a chance to consume them, using the form they prefer.

If you’re in need of ideas for your video posts, here are a few:

• Turn your old blog posts into educational videos on relevant topics in your niche.
• Use a video to introduce people to your business.
• Create a showcase video for your products or services.
• Make tutorials and teach your customers the best way to use your products.
• Publish behind-the-scenes videos and show your clients the human face of your business.

-Use infographics

Infographics are a great way to grab your visitors’ attention, fast. They make use of graphs, charts, tables and other visual elements, making complex matters easy to understand and grasp.

To your blog visitors, infographics will seem credible and demonstrate expertise, while the form will be more fun and engaging than text.

You can try out your design skills using free tools, such as Canva or Piktocart, and make your own infographics.

-Product catalogs, ebooks and brochures

Make sure to include eye-catching visual elements in all the content you provide for your blog visitors and customers.

Product catalogs and brochures are some of the types of ePublishing that you can use to deliver useful and relevant information on your business, products or services to your target audience. You can use eBooks to grow your audience and customer base by positioning yourself and your business as a credible and trustworthy expert in your industry.

Even though creating these types of content is more demanding than blogging, all your efforts will pay off if they add value to your customers.

-Use images and original photos

You can use various types of images to better illustrate the topic you’re writing about and break down large chunks of text, making your post appear readable.

For example, you can use the images of the products you’re posting about, or your own photos if you have something special to share with your visitors.

GIFs are also very popular online, especially in the form of memes. You can use them to express your sentiment on the topic, as well as to add some movement to your post.

-Include screenshots

Screenshots are a great visual aid to make your how-to articles easy to understand.

It’s not so easy to explain to someone how to do something using words alone, but if you take screenshots and mark them with arrows, circles or boxes, you can achieve this much faster.

-Charts and graphs

If there is data that you need to present to your customers, don’t just share it with the text. You can visualize your data with charts and graphs, and present it in a way that is easier for your viewers to consume and grasp its meaning.

Tools such as Canva, Visme or ChartGO can help you create your own charts and graphs.

Now that you know some of the best ways to make your blog posts more engaging by adding visuals, mix them up and include them in your content marketing strategy. The results, such as increased traffic and more shares, will follow soon after, leading to a much better bottom line.

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Emma Miller is a digital marketer and blogger from Sydney. After getting a marketing degree she started working with Australian startups on business and marketing development. Emma writes for many relevant, industry related online publications and does a job of an Executive Editor at Bizzmark blog and a guest lecturer at Melbourne University. Interested in marketing, startups and latest business trends.