Use Your Digital Camera to Help Draw Readers to Your AC Content

You can use your own digital camera to create photos that draw readers to your Associated Content articles, increase your page views and raise your clout. It's easy to do. This article examines why you should include photos with your articles and then discuss how you can get photos for your articles.

Why You Should Include Photos

My article is fine without a photo, you say. Why should I go to all the extra work to take or find a photo to include with my writing?

Photos get your articles read. Readers who read your articles are more likely to return and read more of your articles, more likely to email your article to friends and family, and more likely to blog about your article. All of these things increase page views and ultimately, clout.

Here five reasons why photos can work for you:

1.Visual Learners. There is a large and growing body of research that indicates that up to 1/3rd of all individuals strongly prefer for visual learning. Readers who fall into this category will not stay with a text-only Associated Content article for long and likely will not return to the Content Producer page of a writer who uses only text. It only takes a few seconds to lose a reader.

2.Photo Text Gets Read First. I remember from my days in marketing and advertising writing that photo captions are the most important part of the story. (This is true for even non-visual learners.) Imagine the front page of a newspaper with text only-how many readers do you think that newspaper would they get? (The only paper I know that does this is The Wall Street Journal-and even they have black and white drawings.) If you don't include a photo with your article you miss the opportunity to further draw your readers in to the story.

3.Scannability. Using photos makes your articles more scannable. In today's busy world readers may only glance at your article for a few seconds to find out if there's something there for them. If they can't find that something to capture their interest, they're gone. This is especially true for web articles whose readers are used to the high-impact, multi-media environments of YouTube, iFilm, Squidoo, podcasts, and streaming video.

A point and shoot camera such as this digital camera can create photographs that will increase your page views and raise your clout level. It always amazes me when I see a story without a photo. This article will help you add photos to your articles.

Credit: Laura Spencer

Copyright: Laura Spencer