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How to Create Amazing Social Media Images For Your Blog Post

November 6, 2015 by Ben Adkins 6 Comments

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, a solid content marketing plan is a must if you want to grow quickly.

But once you start putting together a plan for releasing content that will engage your potential customers, you need to do everything possible to make that content attractive.

Taking your blog post and content from good to great is no easy task.

In today’s Social Media Dominated environment, one of the most important things for content marketers is to make their content seem attractive on Social Media.

If you’ve gone through and learned how to do market research correctly, you should be able to write a blog post that targets your ideal consumer. When your writing is hitting the right audience, you should see them sharing the content that you write on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, as well as Linkedin.

When we first started the Fearless Social Blog, we noticed that the images we used as the main blog post image (the one you see at the top of any post on this blog) made a huge difference in the amount of traffic that we got to that post. Not only did we get more shares when we used an attractive image, but we also got a lot more people coming to the blog and reading the post.

While that wasn’t a surprise, coming up with really good images was tough.

Finding a System to Create Great Social Images was Tough

Finding Great Images

With that in mind, our team started looking for ways that we could put together highly shareable images without much effort.

After about a month of trying everything out there, we finally settled on a few tools and built a system around creating post images that are highly sharable (no matter what subject matter you write about).

In this post, I want to show you exactly how to use that system to create amazing social media images for your blog post that will get you a ton of shares on Social Media.

In this post we’ll cover:

  • How to Find the Perfect Image for Social Sharing.
  • The Power Behind Creating a “Branding Box” for your Content.
  • How to Use a Software called Canva to Create the Perfect Branded Social Image.

How to Find the Perfect Image for Social Sharing (the “naked image”)

Every good blog post image that we use here starts with a what we call the “naked image”. This is typically a stock photo that we have purchased the rights to use that will form the base of our Social Share image. While most people would stop at just using this image, we take it a step further for branding purposes.

Every good Social Share Image starts with the “Naked Image”.

Qualities We Look For When Picking An Image

Every “naked image” that we use meets a few criteria:

  1. It has to look amazing.
    The last thing you want on your blog is an image that looks like you pulled it out of a google search. You want images that look like a pro photographer took them. If this blog represents your brand and business, you want to make sure that the image you’re using to represent you is top notch.
  2. Contrasting Colors
    The majority of your share based traffic will typically come from Facebook. With that fact in mind, we want images that are going to contrast well against the famous “Facebook Blue“. We want your image to stand out against the blue on Facebook so it catches people’s attention as they are scrolling through their feed.
  3. Visual Hooks
    There are certain qualities that just make an image stand out and get clicked.A Few Types of Images with Irresistible Visual Hooks:

    Images that have People Looking Back at You.

    If the person in the photo is looking back at the camera it simulates someone looking us in the eye.
    If the person in the photo is looking back at the camera it simulates someone looking us in the eye. This is a powerful trigger for our brains to pay attention.


    Images that have something weird Going on in Them.

    Our Brain isn't trained to notice things unless there is something that doesn't add up.
    Our Brain isn’t trained to notice things unless there is something that doesn’t add up.


    Images that Use Subtle Sex Appeal

    Don't go overboard when using sex appeal in your images. Make it subtle by using lips and eyes.
    Don’t go overboard when using sex appeal in your images. Make it subtle by using lips and eyes. This gets both male and females brains to stand to attention.


Where we Get Our Blog Post Images From

The key to getting an image that’s going to stand out and follow all of the rules above is to use a stock photo site. Too many blogs on the internet are using images that 1000 other people have used. This is a terrible way to distinguish yourself in the market.

I am an advocate for always paying for images that we use on our blog just because it ensures that we will be more unique than most. That said, I compiled a list of a few places that you can go get images that will be unique and high quality. You also shouldn’t have to worry about copyright issues when you use these.

Pixabay
Pixabay

The images a Pixabay are free and super high quality. You also get a good assortment of Vector images. The best part is that everything is searchable and you can go in and find what you want based on the topic of your post.

Gratisography
Gratisography

This is a bit of a more unique type of site and you’ll have to do some digging. The cool part about Gratisography is that these images are 100% unique to this site.

Viintage
Viintage
There is absolutely nothing like this site on the internet. Viintage helps you find old, public domain images that you can use in your content. These are typically very visually appealing and have a ton of bright colors. You’ll have to pay a small fee to access everything but it’s worth it if you’ll looking for style.

The Power Behind Creating a Branding Box for your Content

Now that you have a great “naked image” as the base for what will end up as your blog post Social Share Image, it’s time to add a little personalization to it. To do that we want to add something to your image which is called a “brand box”. If you look at the image that is at the top of this post you’ll see a dark grey box that has our Fearless Social brand logo on the side of it.

Brandbox1

While this is something that is super easy to create on your own, we thought that we would save you the trouble.

Right Click the image below to download it to your computer.

SOCIALPOSTSHARE

Once you download the image above you’ll want to add your own personalize brand graphic to the right corner. You can do this with a variety of graphic design programs, but I would highly recommend you just follow the directions in the next section as it’s the easiest way I’ve ever done it.

How to Use Canva to Create the Perfect Branded Social Image

Now that we’ve got our “naked image” and our Branding Box ready, we just need to combine everything in a neat and clean design. To do that we’re going to use an online tool called Canva.

Canva Graphic Editor

The best part about Canva is that it comes with a set of templates that are pre-sized to fit the most commonly used types of graphics that you might use online.

For our purposes, we’re going to select the Facebook Ad Template as this should be the perfect fit for most blogs and for Social Sharing.

The Canva Facebook Ad Template

To Create our Final Social Share Image we’re going to combine:

  1. Our Naked Image
  2. The Branding Box
  3. Your Businesses Logo
  4. Some Text for the Post title.

Let’s start combining everything for the perfect social share image.

To start out you’re going to upload all of your graphics to the Canva Interface.

How to Upload to Canva

Next, we’re going to Select our base “naked image” and put it on the main canvas. From there we’re going to drag the image so that it’s top right corner is in the canvas’ top right corner. After we do that we’re click on the bottom left corner and drag it to fill the canvas.

Once we get the base image stretched we’re going to add our branding box and stretch it out over the canvas as well.

Branding Box

After that you’re going to add your logo by clicking on it and dragging it to the right corner.

Adding your Branding

After that we’re going to add our Post title via the text tool and change the color to white so that it looks good over our black background.

Adding Text in Canva
Click Image for Full Screen

And then we’re going to justify the text to the left and then drag it to the bottom left corner of the canvas.

Facebook_Ad_–_Untitled_design6

When our image looks like we want it to, we’re going to export it to our computer.

Export from Canva

And Finally, we’re going to upload the image we just created in Canva to our WordPress site as the “Featured Image”.

Create a Social Share Image

What’s Next?

Now that you know how to create an amazing image that will grab people’s attention and build your brand at the same time, it’s time to start putting what you learned into action.

You should now be able to build amazing, share worthy, images that will make your blog and brand look amazing.

Got a Question or Comment about this Tutorial? Post it Below.

  • About the Author
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About Ben Adkins

Dr Ben Adkins is a Social Media Expert and the CEO at Fearless Social. He grew up in St. Louis MO and was a practicing Chiropractic Physician before he started his own online agency. Visit Dr Ben's Website for more.

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Filed Under: Get More Traffic, Increase Conversions Tagged With: canva, facebook image sizes, image editing, social images, social sharing

Comments

  1. Richard de Laat says

    November 10, 2015 at 6:19 am

    Thanks Ben.

    Another valuable post! Very clear and cost-effective approach to getting my social pics done.
    As an affordable source, I also like to use http://www.bigstockphoto.com, I like their 10 pics a day pricing.

    Kind regards
    Richard

    Reply
  2. Devin Dorosh says

    November 10, 2015 at 2:46 pm

    This post is incredible…a lot of content out there is not this actionable. Love it!

    I have been using http://www.dollarphotoclub.com for my stock photos and Adobe Photoshop to create branding by adding a logo or text. Not only does this article provide a lot of great free resources, but it has given us everything we need step-by-step to setup beautiful images to share on social media.

    Dr. Ben and the FearlessSOCIAL Team truly provide a first class experience with everything they do.

    Reply
    • Devin Dorosh says

      November 10, 2015 at 2:51 pm

      Is there a way to share this content from the post on social media and email or do we just need to share the URL link…I didn’t see any share buttons above.

      Reply
      • Devin Dorosh says

        November 10, 2015 at 5:49 pm

        Was using an old internet explorer browser at work…disregard the last comment.

        Reply
  3. Kevin Baker says

    November 11, 2015 at 2:51 pm

    Nice touch Ben,

    they say that “imitation is the best form of flattery”. I guess i’m going to flatter you because this was a problem I didn’t even know i had, now have a solution as well.

    Cool!!

    Kevin

    Reply
  4. Tunde Sanusi (Tuham) says

    May 1, 2016 at 2:13 am

    Since i did had a trouble with my PC (and is currently out of action), i used to grab pictures from Pixabay for my blogpost.
    Great Post her ben!

    Reply

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