The average blogger or website owner has to learn to tell a story through pictures. A couple of tips can help you to do that more effectively, and will properly leverage your content.

Don’t Tell, Show

A major rule of thumb is to never tell when you can show. When handling a topic that is instructional, or when providing a tutorial, you should eliminate confusion by providing photos that describe each step and the end result. Of course, text should also be given to provide context and better explain the process. But having visual cues is important.

Enhance With Images

Sometimes you don’t need to give too many pictures to get the point across. When you aren’t offering an actual step-by-step process, one or two can be plenty. The aim here is to enhance the content with visuals, rather than focus the post around them. Place a photo at the top, and if you like you can add additional images spread through the post to provide further context to the reader.

Choose The Right Photos

When you use a picture that isn’t relevant to the post, you might as well be using none at all. All photos have to be well chosen to the topic you are discussing. If it is only vaguely related it fails to convey the message, and it definitely won’t tell a story. Bloggers run into this problem a lot when they use free stock images. Often a creative commons picture just won’t cut it, and you will have to seek images elsewhere. Which is why you should…

Pay For a Stock Photo Subscription

A good stock photo site that charges a monthly or annual fee is an affordable way to get more targeted images for your posts. It is also cheaper than paying by-the-photo, which can add up really quickly. You will be surprised by the range of images you will discover on these sites, which can have even the most obscure concepts covered.

Paid subscription at Smart Photo Stock is also coming soon by the way!

Take Your Own

When at all possible, try to take your own photos to post. These will always tell the best story because you are aiming at a very specific message when you take it. It also adds a personal touch and more professionalism to your post. For added profit value, you can even offer these as stock photos to be purchased through the same subscription sites mentioned above.

Use Pinterest

This is less a storytelling angle and more a marketing process. When you take your own photos you should be sure to upload them on Pinterest to link to where they will be posted. It shares both the blog post, and tells the story to a wider audience.

Use Facebook

Want to spread the message even further? When you upload a link to Facebook it will show off the image first. Having a well chosen image that tells a story is very beneficial here, as you can catch the attention of the reader right away. It is a means of direct engagement that has been shown to pay off again and again.

Do you have a tip on how to tell stories using images? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3.

Lately there have been more horror stories from bloggers, Pinterest users, Tumblr owners and webmasters about copyright. They used an image without direct permission, posted it in the same way everyone does, and then preceded to get screwed by photographers or companies with good lawyers.

In fact, Kristen Kowalski, an attorney and photographer, wrote an extensive post about Pinterest specifically and the fact that users are liable on behalf of both themselves and Pinterest if they are caught in a legal battle over an image. Even if they did not originally post it, but repinned it. A concern addressed directly in a conversation with Ben Silbermann, the creator of the site.

What this shows is that the issue of copyright and the web is a sticky issue. If you post a disclaimer on your blog stating that the images you use are fair use and you aren’t claiming ownership, you can still be sued. In fact, it does nothing at all…nada, zilch, zero. You are just as liable for stealing that image, even if you did not intend to do so.

What To Do

• The first step, and this is a must, is to get rid of all pictures that belong to someone else on your blog.
• If you want to share an image, you need to link to the actual site without displaying the image on your blog.
• If you want to get around this in the future, contact the owner of the photo and ask them if you can use it with a link to their site and a copyright notice. They may or may not charge you for it.

You are probably thinking that this is a huge pain, and you would be right. But the amount of money you will have to fork out if the photo owner makes a claim it going to be substantial, and much more costly than the time it will spend to protect yourself.

Where To Get Images

But what about photos that can be used safely? They have to exist, right?

Glad you have asked!

We have created Smart Photo Stock *exactly* for you, the lost and confused blogger who need images to beautify your awesome blog posts!

We have plenty of photos that have been places online because we want them to be used (preferbaly with credit).

Conclusion

It is not a huge risk to use images on your site, as long as you are using Creative Commons or public domain images that are free to post. Otherwise, you are putting yourself in the way of a serious lawsuit, and the more images you have stolen from other sites the more costly that lawsuit can become.

Have you ever been on Facebook and seen a massive wall of text from the owner of the page? That is one way to pick out a blogger among the crowd. They continue on the same habit they have picked up through writing on their site, and they don’t even realize that they are missing the point. Social media is a way to engage users through multiple mediums, and the best way to catch their attention is through visuals.

Images are a big boost to social media, and they should be a part of your posts as often as possible. Here are some reasons why:

• Visual content is more shareable, and people are more likely to repost a graphic than they are to copy/paste a status comment.
• A preview image with a link tends to grab the attention of the viewer more effectively, and on sites like Facebook it will also provide the headline instead of just a glimpse at the link.
• Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site on the web, and is a great way to expand your social marketing into a purely visual field.
• A full 98% of Pinterest users also have a Twitter or Facebook account, according to a survey by PriceGrabber. This improves your chances of having images cross-posted to other accounts.
• An engaging screen cap from a video will make the casual skimmer more likely to stop and view the clip.
• An image can quickly convey a message that is likely to stick. Human beings are very visual creatures, and we are more likely to recall something that we can relate visually.

• Dan Zarrella found that images ranked the highest for likes and shares on Facebook. If you take a look at your friend feed, it becomes very obvious that he is right…most of what is shared is inevitably an image, or has a related image.
• Users can become involved through providing their own images. This goes back to engagement, which can really be driven by asking people on your social media accounts to share their pictures. Contests run on this principle always get a lot of interest.

• A study done by Anson Alexander found that high quality infographics were read 30 times more than text articles, and traffic grew 12% faster when those infographics were published than those posts that didn’t contain one.

Do you have a reason or two about why it is important to use images in social media marketing? Let us know in the comments!

***Image Credits: Smart Photo Stock -> Feel free to choose yours using our free collection for bloggers!***

But not every image that finds its way on a user’s board is going to catch a lot of attention. Having been a user from the beginning myself, I can tell you that a lot of content – even interesting photos – will be largely ignored. Others might even be considered spam and end up with a Pin Block, causing your entire account to be mistrusted by the majority of users. Not a good thing for someone wanting to expand through pinning.

The good news is that there is a very clear pattern of interest on Pinterest. People tend to go for certain types of images, widely repinning and sharing them, even linking them on other sites. As both an avid user and a marketer, I have been keeping an eye on these trends as I have seen them.

These are five image types that just seem to work on Pinterest.

1. Food

Get free food images for your blog

This is perhaps the biggest category on Pinterest, and I see images of food being passed around all over the place. Even people who have dedicated their boards to other interests seem to have at least one board for meals they come across on the site. Other people (like myself) have several. I can tell you right now that my most repinned images have been food related. Especially savory meals which have been linked to the original recipes. I can get dozens of repins on a single image, and I have friends who have gotten hundreds. While it isn’t official, I would say the most likely item to go viral.

2. Travel

Here are awesome free travel images for your blog

Another big category is travel, where people will post photos they have taken around the world. Or, more often, images they find on the web that show a location they would like to visit. The travel photography on Pinterest is simply stunning, showing some of the most beautiful pictures you can imagine. Because of that, they are shared a lot. My second most widely repinned images are travel related, both my own and other people’s. Especially when they show nature or scenic shots. City shots are not as widely repinned, but they do get a lot of likes and comments.

3. Geek Chic

I don’t mean gadgets here, though there is a section for technology on the site. I mean the photos you will see of things like cosplay, captions images of Doctor Who, Harry Potter jokes, sarcastic ecards making references to super heroes and anything similar. These are passed around quite a lot, which has more to do with the mainstream appeal of various classic reboots and the positive feelings towards certain TV, movie and book series.

These are also easy to create in a way related to your industry or site, because all you need is a bit of clever text. I have an entire Geek Board that tends to lean more towards older references like Star Wars, Babylon 5, ect. These are largely ignored. But Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Avengers, Batman, Firefly and Star Trek: The Next Generation have a ton of repinn value. So pick your fandoms wisely.

4. DIY

Pinterest has a massive DIY and upcycling community. Why? I guess because all us women want to be able to make cool things out of other things. Unfortunately, not all of our efforts are successful, and I know I have come up with some unmitigated disasters when I have made attempts. Hence why sites like this exist. But be that as it may, cool DIY photos, especially showing off the steps of a project in a long sequence, will get a lot of attention.

5. Women’s Fashion

Here are some lifestyle and fashion photos for you

Since the main demographic on Pinterest is female, women’s fashion is a really big category. But I would like to expand that to also include Beauty and Hair, which is in a separate category. Beauty sites or companies are really well placed here, because both sections are very popular and people are more likely to repinn them.

What images have you posted that have hit viral status? Do you notice any trends in what is popular among your circle? Let us know in the comments.

But while we have seen those images, even celebrated them, many of us don’t know the actual story behind them. Yet each one has a rich tale behind them, and sometimes knowing the context will make the photo all the more memorable and intense.

While it would be impossible to choose what iconic photos are the most influential or captivating, I thought I would list some of my favorites. More importantly, I thought I would explain the stories behind them.

1. V-J Day in Times Square

Probably the most iconic photograph of all time, this wonderful image was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt and published in Life magazine on the day that the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Originally, it was buried in the pages of the publication, along with many other images taken throughout the day. But it is definitely the most famous, with dozens of couples coming forward over the decades following to claim they were the ones in the picture. But the real story is more interesting, if less romantic.

The man is George Mendosa, a Navy quartermaster who had been on leave in America was the military amassed enough force for the planned invasion of Japan, an eventuality that seemed inevitable, but terrible. The woman is Greta Zimmer, an Austrian native who had fled with her sister to the US in the wake of Hitler’s expanding regime. But the person you might not have noticed also in the picture is Rita Petry, beaming as she watches the man she was on a date with sweeping up another woman and planting a big on on her lips. The news of Japan’s surrender had come hours before, and the Rita and George had ended up in a bar taking celebration shots with the rest of New York.

Moving through Times Square, George had seen some nurses walking through the street. He remembered a horrible attack three months before, when Japanese kamikaze planes took out a bunker filled with hundreds of soldiers, and nurses had come to the rescue. So he grabbed the first nurse he saw, dipped her down, and kissed her. She would turn out not to be a nurse, but a dental assistant, and one who did not appreciate the kiss from a stranger who disappeared in the crowd a moment later, a laughing date in tow. It was Rita, not Greta, who would marry George. They are still together today, and Rita is not shy about saying that she had not enjoyed the kiss from the drunken sailor. However, it has become the iconic image of the joy of ending war, and we will always be sure to treasure it.

2. Kevin Carter’s Sudanese Child

This is one of the most haunting and devastating photos ever captured. Taken by photographer Kevin Carter in 1993, it shows a Sudanese child starving and slowly crawling toward a food distribution center. Behind you see a vulture, roughly the same size as the poor child, following and waiting for the little girl to die so it could eat her. Carter took the photo and then broke down, weeping by the dying child’s body. A year later, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Two months later, he committed suicide. To this day, perhaps no image so aptly captures the horrors of third world hunger, or the criminal apathy of the world at large as we allow it to happen.

3. Monk’s Self Immolation

In 1966, Saigon was the center of a major religious crisis. The Buddhists of Vietnam were protesting the persecution of their order, in the aftermath of the rise of Ngo Dinh Diem’s Roman Catholic government. For a month, the protests had raged on. So when the announcement came that a special event would be taking place in downtown Saigon, few journalists bothered to show up, believing it to be another small stunt and nothing that would make the news back home. But a few journalists did attend, including American photographer Malcolm Browne. What occurred was the first of many self-immolations, started by Thich Quang Duc. As a horrified crowd watched crying and praying, the monk sat calmly while he burned himself alive and became a martyr. The photo taken by Browne is the most famous documenting the horrifying event.

4. Dali Atomicus

Salvador Dali is one of the greatest Surrealists of all time. From his bizarre landscapes shown in his paintings, to his work with director Luis Bunuel on the silent film Un Chien Andalou, he is an iconic figure. But in the 1940′s, some of his most recognizable work came from a collaboration with photographer Phillipe Halsman. In particular, Dali Atomicus, the silly and strange image of the painter jumping in the air, surrounded by a floating chair, flying cats and water being thrown across the room. While many other images from that particular collection would become very famous, this is probably the most well known and loved.

5. Viet Cong Execution

The Vietnam War is one of the greatest tragedies in history, and as an American I know many vets, my father included. The horrors from that conflict are extreme, and you don’t have to look far to find examples of extreme human cruelty and the darkness of war. But this image managed to truly capture the desperation and fear. It shows General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a police chief in Saigon, executing a Viet Cong prisoner named Nguyen Van Lem. Critics have claimed the execution was semi-staged, and that the General would not have killed the man had the press not been there. But Adam’s denies this, saying that the execution was happening regardless, and that he had taken the photo (along with many others in quick succession) by reflex. He had not known he had captured what would become the most famous image from the Demilitarized Zone until the film had been developed.

Do you know any stories behind iconic images? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Here are 10 of the best free iPhone photo editing apps for handling your SmartPhotoStock.com downloads – and personal photos – on the go:

1. Adobe Photoshop Express

Coming straight from the undisputed champions of the photo editing world, Adobe’s Photoshop Express app for iPhone provides you with most of the tools that you know and love on the PC version, along with a few cool extras, including a one-tap retouch button for quick, precise improvements on the go!

2. Magic Hour Lite

For filter effects and simple touching up, the Magic Hour Lite app is a simple and easy way to get the job done, leaving you with the option of upgrading to the full version if its extended features suit your fancy.

3. Picture Effect Magic

Picture Effect Magic for the iPhone provides you with hundreds of filters and tons of sharing options, even allowing you to pass your photos to a friend’s device via Bluetooth.

4. Pho.to Lab

Boasting nearly 500 effects to retouch and rethink your photos, this massively talented app has all of the photo filters that you could possibly want, and all in a single place.

5. Pixlr-o-matic

Bringing the extensive Photoshop-like abilities of the Pixlr website straight to the iPhone, this app may just prove to be the only one that you need to edit, crop, retouch, and filter your photos quickly and easily.

6. Pic Collage

If a single photo just won’t cut it for your next blog post or other project, the Pic Collage app for iPhone gives you the ability to make custom collages from any number of images, providing a surprisingly professional effect.

7. Sketch+

Give your photos and images a beautiful hand-drawn look with a single tap of your iPhone’s screen with the Sketch+ app, a useful program that aims to do the sketch effect absolute justice.

8. Photo Editor by Aviary

Featuring stickers, filters and effects, a built-in camera app, and much more, the Photo Editor by Aviary app attempts to be the only full-featured photo editing suite you’ll need while on the go – you can even send your finished pictures directly to a local Walgreens for print and pick-up!

9. Pic Stitch

Like the Pic Collage entry that we mentioned above, this nifty little app has what it takes to mash multiple pictures into one beautiful graphic, complete with handsome framing for a professional look on any project, online or off.

10. PhotoChop

This one may be less useful than its predecessors, but let’s have a little fun on the way out of this article, shall we? The PhotoChop app for iPhone allows you to easily crop pieces of your existing photos and add them to others, making for an infinite number of mixing and matching possibilities when it comes to creating cool, fun, and super memorable graphics.

Resizing images for a blog is incredibly easy, especially when you have Photoshop. There is no excuse for not creating a routine size and organization system for every picture that ends up on your blog. It looks better, it makes it easier to see posts on a mobile device and it takes away a look of inexperience that can reflect badly on your site.

There is an additional benefit to this process. That is maintaining the clarity and resolution of a photo, despite resizing either up or down. Photoshop will keep you from ending up with a grainy, blurry or otherwise damaged image by the time you are done resizing.

You will be glad to know that the steps are incredibly simple:

1. Choose Your Standard Size

You want all images to be consistent on your blog. I usually do this by having different tiers for different purposes. Tier I images are used for post headers, and are usually smaller since they are above the post cut and so load automatically for everyone visiting. These I keep around 470 x 350, and center them when they are posted. But for images under cuts, I allow for bigger photos.

I keep the Tier II photos at around 600 x 400. This is a manageable size that should keep you from having to adjust the scroll when you move down the page. As for Tier III, these are the thumbnails I use for consistent links offered through my main page. I try to keep them at 150 x 150, so they stack easily, take up little space but can still be seen clearly. Having the three tiers makes it easy to organize, as I just specify which category it is in at the time of uploading the file.

2. Resize Images Accordingly

Resizing in Photoshop is very fast and simple to do. Open up the photo in the program. Then go to the header and select Image > Image Size. This will bring up a small utility box, which will allow you to select the sizes by pixel or document. I would suggest doing so by pixel, and the rest should auto complete for you. Just put in the correct Width and Height, and change anything you like to your specifications. However, I always use Bicubic as it has the smoothest gradient quality and so is better for photos. Once you are done, hit OK

3. Sharpen The Image

You might notice at this point that there are some subtle changes to the resolution of the image. Maybe there is just a bit of blurring, or it doesn’t appear as sharp to the eye as it did before. Luckily, this is a quick fix.

Go to the header and select Layer, then create a new layer. Or just hit CTRL-J to create one. You should see Layer 1 over Background in the image box at the corner right hand side. Make sure it is selected, then go to the header once more and select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. This will allow you to select the amount of sharpness, and the radius. Start off slow, with 40% to 0.2, then progressively make your way up until it has the crisp look you were wanting. Most will end up somewhere around 60% to 0.4, but the amount of blurring may make it necessary increase this by as much as 20%.

4. Save Image For Web

When you save an image and then put it online, it can sometimes not be compatible and mess with the edits you made to the picture. So make sure when you save that you hit File > Save for Web & Devices. This will bring up a utility box that lets you save the image in whatever form you choose (probably JPEG), and select the image quality. I always save it at 80%, though this makes the load time a little longer. Anything over 50% is usually pretty good. You should also make sure your image name is something easily searchable, so use keywords! Preferably those that will also be used as tags for your post.

See? Just four steps to having a well organized, standard image blog. You will be surprised by how much better it looks when you use a uniform format for photos.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3.

What is the first thing you learn about online content creation? For me, it was that you never create an unending page of text. While paragraphs of writing work well for a book, when placed on a screen it become monotonous, can cause eye strain and is less likely to hold the attention of people using the web. That is due to the habit of users to skim a page for the bullet points, and many won’t bother trying to find them in a text block.

The easiest way to get past this is to break up the content. Small paragraphs, headers and especially images are the perfect way to go about doing this. You can even find yourself influencing readers more directly using images within your text or just at the top of it. Certainly, it will catch their attention more thoroughly than a snappy title will.

A Study On Images

Back in October of this year, and interesting study was released by the Victoria University of Wellington, in Wellington, New Zealand. It was conducted by Newman EJ, Garry M, Bernstein DM, Kantner J and Lindsay DS.

Focusing on people belief and reactions to news of a celebrity’s death, they found that those who saw a story with a picture were more likely to believe the death announcement. That was even though the image was of the celebrity alive, and true in both cases where the celebrity had actually died, or the announcement was false. An interesting explanation into how often false claims of deaths spread online.

Citing comedian and faux news anchor Stephen Colbert and his concept of ‘truthiness’, they said that it was all due to the individuals likelihood to go with what “feels” like the truth. Apparently, in four separate experiments the researchers found that the subjective feeling of truth increased when images were used to enhance the story.

Images For Persuasion

I have found this to be true with my own work. Those posts on my blog that use images directly related to the concept of the post inevitably do much better than those using random stock images. Since this correlation has been found again and again, I have been taking more care in using photos that really support the content, rather than those that are vaguely related.

In order to persuade a reader, you need to do the same. Having a photo that pushes the message visually will engage with a part of the viewer’s brain that creates that feeling of ‘truthiness’, which will make them more likely to look at you as an authority. A status that will extend to the content you provide, and so make the user more likely to both return to your site, and to find value in what you write.

Descriptive text can be another important element to the whole puzzle. When you use adjectives that paint a rich image of your content, it will spark the reader’s imagination. This has an effect similar to the one produced by relevant images. Using both together can be a valuable tool of influence.

Conclusion

One of the most important resources you will have at your disposal is association. Big brands use this to plant a connection in a consumer’s head, telling them that a certain holiday requires a certain product, for example. This is the same principle you should be using when it relates to images and influence. Because the use of photos and descriptive text are ways to create powerful associations in the minds of your readers.

What do you think of influence and its correlation with images? How do you exploit the practice to the best of your benefit? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: 1.