It’s the third Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for the Author Toolbox Blog Hop!

More and more the visual appeal of something is what makes people stop and look, take in the message and then take action.

There are different ways to use this and different places to use this.

Basic

The easy way is to go to a site where you can get royalty free, free for commercial use images (Pixabay, Morguefile, Unsplash, etc.) and then add them to your blog posts, Twitter posts, Facebook posts, and others. Just make sure it is relevant to what you are sharing.

Intermediate

A step up from this, and which will help with your author brand, is to use Canva or Adobe Spark. You can create social media posts and blog banners with certain fonts and other elements that work at building your brand – things that are instantly recognisable as yours. Adding your blog’s name in the corner – or your author name – also helps with visibility.

Here are a couple of reasons to add pictures in your blog posts:

• Visual appeal (people like pretty things, so your picture will draw them in and your words will make them stay).
• Search engine optimisation (though we’ll look at SEO later in the challenge, you should know that images help your posts to appear in search engine results).
• Complements the writing (relevant images will enhance the reading experience – much like a great cover for a book will set the tone. When I do interviews, I also add the author’s photo and the cover of the new book.).

Advanced

Make videos.

You can easily create book trailers with Adobe Spark (there is a free plan) and load it to Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Goodreads, your Amazon author page, your blog, etc. With Adobe Spark, you get music, images, a text function and a voice recording function to create your videos. Be creative.

You can also use YouTube to create videos, though you’ll need some extra tech to make it work if you’re using it directly.

Why do you want videos? Because of voice search. A lot of people are using their AI voice search functions to find new content. And you type something a lot differently than you say something. It is worth doing your blog post as a video and as written content (sometimes as a transcript beneath the video on your blog).

But even if you don’t want to venture too far into this realm, just making book trailers and sharing it widely will already make a huge difference to your brand’s visibility.

If you’re not already using images consistently, I hope that this has helped you. This was a partial extract from my non-fiction books. If you need more help with your author platform, check out my book “The 30 Day Author Platform Challenge” or the workbook edition “The 30 Day Author Platform Challenge: A Companion Workbook” to help you to go from invisible to searchable in thirty days.

Series: Non-Fiction @ Ronel the Mythmaker

Volume number: 3

Not sure how to get started on building your author platform? Not sure what an author platform is? Then this is the book for you.

Includes how tos on the various social media networks and writing tips. Helps to define your writing goals and who you are as a writer. Helps with community building and getting your name on the map.

Some parts of the book can be found on the author’s website, but this is a complete updated version for 2019.

The author originally ran a 20 day Basics of Author Online Presence Challenge on Writer to Writers in 2017 – this is the superpower version of that challenge with loads more information and tasks.

Included are homework questions to get the most of the lessons, exercises, and to-do lists to help you keep track of your various platforms and what you have to do every week.

By the end of 30 days, you will no longer be invisible online.

Get this book from your favourite online retailer in print/ebook.

If you would like a digital copy for review (Amazon, Goodreads, your blog, other places you post your reviews), fill in the form below and I’ll send you your copy.

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