Images give your blog interest and personality. And let’s be honest, finance blogs don’t score very well on the Interesting Blog Scale. We humble finance bloggers need to step up our photo-game.
Can we all agree to never use stock photography?
Seriously. It’s awful. No road signs pointing to ambiguous destinations. No close-ups of handshakes. No large, arrow-laden graphics that look like they were ripped from a 1990′s flowchart. I’m warning you, even ironic use of these images can render your blog unreadable by the snap-judger.
This is a sucky photo.
Plus, there’s this: 60 Completely Unusable Stock Photos. It’s pretty funny, have a look.
If there’s an obvious choice, take it.
Sometimes posts or post-title’s, specifically, have really obvious photo-choices. And most of the time you should probably just go with that photo. Like when you write a post about a famous Star Wars character, you should probably pull just that character’s photo for the post. Like this:
3 Tips To Help Liz Lemon Retire From 30 Rock
Funny and relevant? That’s a no-brainer.
If you can make a joke or reference pop culture in a way that’s both smart, funny, and somehow, even tangentially relevant, you best take that opportunity. Or if the image can be the punch line of a joke, or a joke in and of itself, then do that.
Permission To Experiment Fearlessly: Granted
A Word on Finding Kick-Ass Photos
Use Google image search, and get creative with your Googling. That’s really all you need to know. You don’t want to use that same stock photo that everyone else is using. If you’re writing a generic post about technology in financial services, experiment with some weird, slightly specific searches like, “woman frustrated by finance,” or “tech problems suck,” or “my iphone saved my life.” You never know what you might find…
Query: “my iphone saved my life”
Result:
This is a not-so-sucky photo.
