Images Add Life to Your Site

Prose is designed for writers, and it was created as a showcase for your words.

But that doesn’t mean images aren’t important, or that they’re just decoration.

The old cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words has some real truth to it. Why? Because images can create an instant emotional response.

The image you choose might convey a sense of calm, or love, or humor, or outrage. And it can do all this in under a second, creating an emotional “backdrop” for your content.

Adding images is easy

Just click the image icon on the WordPress dashboard, and in under a minute you’ve added a great-looking image to your post. (You can find hundreds of thousands of images at the inexpensive stock photo houses, or choose from the incredible variety of images available through the Creative Commons license.)

Don’t like how it looks on the left side? Takes two more seconds to align it right or center instead, or to add a caption.

By the way, did you know that image captions are some of the most-read elements of any web page? You can use captions for humor, to add clarity, or to reinforce your key points. Or if you prefer, you don’t have to have a caption at all. It’s completely up to you.

Adding a caption is easy, you just enter a few words in the “caption” field when you upload your image, and a frame and caption are added automatically.

Develop a visual “brand” with your images

Your image choices can be corporate or funky, soothing or jarring, pretty or intense. It’s up to you.

Instead of the cheerful sunflower image I used at the top of the post, what if I’d chosen an image of spiky Venus Flytraps? It would change the mood from mellow to edgy in an instant.

Over time, the types of images you choose will become part of your brand. They’ll work with your words to convey all of the value your content has to offer. Along with your well-chosen words and the sleek design of your site, your image choices will become part of your unique identity — and part of what makes you stand out among the rest.