Do you sometimes feel like you are a terrible writer? Or, you struggle to put out quality content from time to time? Well, you are in luck.

Today’s blogging requires more than just writing.

In order to stand out from the noise and provide the best experience for your audience, you need to leverage the power of graphics and visual content. As a blogger you have the opportunity, scratch that…the responsibility, to add stunning visual content to your blog posts.

Here are 6 ways that adding visual content to your blog can take you to the next level of awesomeness.

1. Helps You Tell a Story…Well Duh

The use of images and other visual content on your blog no doubt helps you tell a story. When you include visuals, whether it’s screenshots as part of a tutorial or decorative photos between paragraphs, your story gains alignment and cohesion.

The reader is able to tie events together and better understand what you are trying to convey. People are visual learners. Add images to your blog posts and help them better understand your amazing content.

2. Takes Your Words to Another Level

Here is something you’ve never heard before…a picture tells a thousand words. Ok, maybe you have heard that before but the premise remains. Visual content allows you to take your story beyond just what you’ve typed.

Your reader now has the ability to interpret your writing and craft angles to your story that you might not have even thought about.

Be creative when you pick images for your blog post. See if you can invoke thought and interpretation from your readers based on the image you choose for your blog post.

Here is an example from Crazy Dad Life that shows how an image can provide a fun and creative angle to your content.

The image portrays a potentially dangerous situation. While the article doesn’t talk to slipping on a banana peel, it does talk to potential issues you have to face in your first 7 days of blogging. Use images that engage the reader and lets them tie it with your content creatively.

3. Adds Creative Flair to Your Content…And You Don’t Seem Like Such a Bore

A big block of text is just boring. Most readers will skim it and simply move on. Or even worse they may bounce away from your website.

Your reader doesn’t want to land on a page full of text. It’s an unfortunate truth, but most people online are not looking to sit down on a lounge chair to slowly read content. In most cases, they are going to hit your content fast and furious and move on to the next thought that pops into their head.

But, if you add a few pictures that pop, your story can take on a whole new dimension.

4. Allows You to Break Up Your Content

Good formatting on a blog post goes a long way with your readers. Having images strategically placed within the post allows your readers to understand where transitions occur and helps them process the key information they are seeking.

Use images placed throughout your content to enable the reader to naturally and effortlessly move through your writing.

One word of caution, make sure you optimize your images for online use so your website doesn’t drag when they try to visit the page. If you use high-quality large images, your download speeds will suffer and your reader may leave before your content arrives. You don’t want that.

5. Encourages Social Sharing

The only thing better than people enjoying your visual content is people sharing your visual content. People love to share cool graphics they come across. Make it easier for them to do so and it results in a win for you.

For example, Pinterest is one of the biggest social channels for images. Add social sharing icons to your blog posts to make it easy for your readers to share your images. The win for you is when the person on Pinterest clicks on your image that someone else placed there. They are routed to your blog and become a new reader!

6. Provides Another Method for Search Traffic to Find Your Blog

When you implement images in your blog posts, make sure you set the following two fields – Title and Alt Text. Populating these attributes for every image helps your search engine optimization (SEO). When people do image searches online, your image could show up if these attributes are populated with the appropriate keywords.