A picture speaks a thousand words, and when it comes to your content, that cannot be truer if your image is relevant. Images add richness to your content, and make readers more willing to read a long article. And they have great SEO value too!

Best Images for Content

The following are the types of images you can use to add an extra bit of pizazz to any blog post, article, or other piece of online content.

Eye Catching Photography

That photo grabbed your attention, right? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been lured into reading a post simply because it had an eye-catching photo attached to it. The key is to find something that either relates to your content or proves your point. In this case, my point was to catch your eye. Some examples include:

• An article on how to calm the mind including photos of peaceful gardens or open meadows.
• An article on how to build a treehouse including photos of awesome treehouse designs.
• An article on the perfect cupcake recipe including photos of the ingredients and the finished product.

Relevant photos can help the audience really feel the point you are trying to make with your content as well as breaking up the text making the story seem like less of a daunting read.

People Photos

Have you ever noticed that you tend to trust a Twitter user or Facebook friend more if they have a photo of themselves as opposed to a cartoon, logo, or other non-personal bio image?

The same goes with content. Readers love to see the face behind whatever topic is being covered in a piece of content. This includes:

• Author bio photos for blog posts and articles.
• Photos of a person who authored a book or an eBook that you are reviewing.
• Photos of people included in a list, such as the top designer bloggers on Twitter.

Including people photos will increase the reader’s engagement and trust with your content as it lets them know that there is a real person on the other side of the screen creating the content.

Screenshots

Screenshots, in my opinion, are essential when it comes to two particular types of content – how to articles and lists.

How-To Screenshots

You can write the greatest tutorial on how to use a piece of software, but if it doesn’t include screenshots, it will make the reader still feel that the software may be to complicated for them to understand. For example, I could say that, when editing photos in Gimp, you should scale the image to the appropriate size to fit the article, such as I did with the above photo in this post to make it 570px wide. Or I could say that and then include the following:

Including the screenshot directs readers to the right menu option to correspond with my instructions, helping readers get to know the software before they get to it and give them a reference point if they get stuck.

List Post Screenshots

Have you ever seen a piece of content such as the top 25 ___ websites? Have you noticed that some lists go viral while others are just blah. The difference is generally in whether the post has included screenshots of the websites in question.

A good example of this is how Dainis listed 33 blogs to make you a social media and marketing guru with screenshots of each site.

So the next time you do a list of your favorite people on Twitter, include a screenshot of their Twitter profile. Or if you do a list of your favorite brand’s Facebook pages, include a screenshot of their fan pages. This will make readers love your list even more and share it with their audience!

How to Get Images for Your Content

So now that you have some good ideas of what kind of images to include in your content, here are some tools and resources to get those images.

Eye Catching Photography

The following are great sources for eye-catching photography.

• Creative Commons Images – My favorite resource is Flickr’s Advanced Search to find eye-catching photography. Be sure to check the box to Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content and include a photo credit with the image you use.
• Royalty-Free Stock Photos – If you can’t find what you are looking for through Creative Commons, your next best bet is sites like iStockphoto that allows you to buy a photo for use in your website content and designs.

There are tons of other resources – simply search for creative commons images or stock photography on Google to find them, but the above are a great place to start. Also, if you find a photo you want to use but it isn’t creative commons licensed, all hope is not lost. Just email the owner of the photo / photographer and let them know what you had in mind. You might get a great response!

People Photos

Whenever I need to grab a photo of a person, I tend to go with their Twitter profile photo as it is one they have chosen to represent themselves online. Other places to grab a photo include:

• A person’s Gravatar (if they have commented on your blog).
• The author bio page on their blog.
• The photo on their corporate bio page.

Or, if you prefer, you can contact the person and ask them to send you a photo of their choosing for an upcoming piece of content you are working on. Generally, if you let them know you are including them on a list or a positive review, they will be happy to oblige!

Screenshots

If you don’t have a program like Snagit or similar to get screen captures, then you have some free options to work with.

• Screenshots on Windows Based PCs – I tend to rely on the Print Screen (Prt Scr) button on my keyboard to do a screen capture, then resize and crop it in Gimp, a free image editor.
• Screenshots on Mac OS Machines – If you’re running a Mac, you can use shortcuts such as Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot and save it on your desktop, Command-Control-Shift-3 to take a screenshot and save it to your clipboard, or use other shortcuts listed here. Gimp also works on Mac for editing your screenshots.
• Website Previews – If you use Safari and need an image of a website, then you’ll be happy to know that Safari actually takes screenshots of websites in .png and .jpg format. In Windows 7, you can find these previews under C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari\Webpage Previews. You can then edit the website’s capture in Gimp to fit your post.

Windows 7 also has a Snipping Tool that allows you to grab screenshots easily, but I have found those captures are very low quality, so depending on your needs, you might want to use one of the above options instead.

Your Thoughts on Images for Content

Now it’s your turn. How do you use images in your content? Please share your strategies and resources with us in the comments!

Photo Credit: Ground Squirrel of the Desert

1. WordPress

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes available to suit your needs. WordPress is also free and open source CMS and it is considered one of the most used content management systems out there and I might dare to say it is ruling out there. It uses PHP as a server side language and MySQL as a database.

2. mojoPortal

mojoPortal is a free and open source content management system built using the Microsoft ASP.NET and supports various databases like MySQL, MS SQL and PostgreSQL. It comes with a lot of built in features such as: Image Gallery, Event Calendar, Polls, Blogs, Forums and many more.

3. Drupal

Drupal is a free and open source content management system that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

4. Joomla

Joomla is a free content management system, which enables you to build web sites and online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla one of the most popular content management systems available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. It has many built in features but if that’s not enough you can take a look at the 4000+ extensions from the community.

5. Pligg

Pligg is a free and open source content management system. Pligg CMS provides social networking software that encourages visitors to register on your website so that they can submit content and connect with other users. You can create websites where stories are created and voted on by members, not website editors. Use Pligg content management system to start your own social networking community in minutes.

6. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is an open source and free content management system. Besides their feature rich CMS they developed Sapphire which is an object-oriented PHP5 web framework designed to let you either build standalone applications or extend your SilverStripe CMS-powered site.

7. Plone

Plone is a powerful, flexible Content Management solution that is easy to install, use and extend. Plone is created for non-technical users to create and maintain information using only a web browser. Perfect for web sites or intranets, Plone offers superior security without sacrificing extensibility or ease of use for non-technical users.

8. BlogEngine.NET

BlogEngine.NET is an open source and free .NET blogging engine that was created to offer a better blog platform. A blog platform with less complexity, easy customization, and one that takes advantage of the latest .NET features. BlogEngine.NET was designed using the current .NET framework and focused on simplicity, ease of extendability, and innovative features. despite it packs a lot of built in features along with extensions available by the community it still lacks attention for the little details that is found in other content management system.

9. Symphony

Symphony is XSLT-powered open source content management system. Symphony leverages open standards like XML and XSLT, and good old XHTML and CSS. Even the admin interface employs the widely-used jQuery library, so extension developers don’t have to learn a whole new framework when extending the back end. Symphony is comprised of discrete, fully configurable components. Its data, logic, and templating layers are all independent, meaning that whatever you implement can be modified, added, or removed with minimum effort.

10. sNews

sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. sNews is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and use via a simple web interface. sNews consists of only one core engine file, one independent template file and its accompanying CSS stylesheet file, plus an .htaccess file that makes all URLs search engine friendly.

11. CushyCMS

CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites. It’s built from the ground up with ease of use in mind – for both content editors and designers. It’s such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement. No PHP or ASP required for this CMS. If you can add CSS classes to HTML tags then you can implement CushyCMS. It’s also a hosted CMS, so no installation or maintenance is needed either.

12. Frog CMS

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Born as phpRadiant in January 2007, Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS. Frog CMS requires PHP, a MySQL database or SQLite.

13. Radiant

Radiant is an open source content management system designed for small teams. It is built using Ruby on Rails and using the SQLite as a database.

14. MediaCore

MediaCore is a free open source video cms and podcast platform. MediaCore can pull video or audio from any source, track statistics, enable commenting, and provide a high degree of control over the presentation and administration. The CMS was built for individuals and organizations who wish to distribute video or podcasts on their website without kicking users to other social media sites. MediaCore is built using the TurboGears Python Framework and MooTools Javascript Framework.

15. CMS from Scratch

CMS from Scratch is a quick, easy, open source and FREE solution that lets web designers give their customers a web site they can edit themselves. It is now also an open source project, so you can use the source PHP scripts for FREE.

16. MODx

MODx helps even regular individuals manage content on their websites simply, quickly and intuitively. For the geek-elite, MODx is an Open Source PHP web application framework with a capable built-in Content Management System.

17. TYPO3

TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extensibility while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

I have no idea how much of you guys use Drupal, but I’m a big fan of Drupal and this time I take a big risk and hope you’ll at least check out this selection and compare it with your CMS. Drupal is definitely worth trying out, it has a lot more customization options and chances to add different features, which even mighty WordPress cannot handle.

1. BlogBuzz

Stunning Drupal theme! Everything is so clean, very well made. Could be a great theme for your portfolio web site or a blog.

2. Magazeen

Great looking theme! Just clean and shiny.

3. Gardening

Beautiful cartoon-style Drupal theme. Great piece of art!

4. Acquia Prosper

Clean, good looking theme for an e-commerce website.

5. ColorPaper

Great piece of work! The best implementation of this theme could be for a blog or just a personal website.

6. Beach

Good looking Drupal theme. It has a nice underwater feeling.

7. Notechoas

Interesting piece of art. Background has a big role in this theme.

8. RootCandy

This is very cool and great looking theme for Drupal’s administration section. Everything looks clean and shiny and those icons look awesome.

9. Scruffy

Great Drupal theme for a blog.

10. Grassland

This theme looks nice. There’s a positive atmosphere inside this theme.

10.1. Clean Design – The Clean and Elegant Drupal Theme

View Demo

11. Coolweb

Great theme for a corporate website!

12. Cleanfolio

Beautiful theme for a small and simple website.

13. Abstract

Beautiful theme for a blog or portfolio website!

14. Fusion Theme

Clean and simple theme which looks great!

15. A3 Atlantis

Very interesting theme. Could be good for a corporate website.

16. Orange

Very well made and great looking theme for a social networking site!

17. Arclite Theme

Clean and simple theme which could be great for a blog.

18. Fields 2009 template

Good looking theme for a corporate website.

19. NonZeroRed DTB

Just a simple and good looking theme. Could be implemented for many types of websites.

19. City Magazine – The Most Advanced Drupal Theme

CMS Magazine is a Powerful Professional Premium Drupal theme. It comes with an impressive fully customizable jQuery homepage slider with more than 10 different jQuery effects together with fixed/fluid,  1, 2, 3 Column Layout Options on a click.

View Demo

20. Elements Theme

Interesting Drupal theme. Could look good for a portfolio website.

21. A Cold Day

Nice looking theme which has three color versions available.

22. Ebizon RedFire

If you want just a clean and simple website then this theme is a theme you are looking for.

23. Acquia Marina

Cool theme for many types of websites.

24. Alek 2.0

Simple Drupal theme for a simple website.

25. Twittish

If you would like that your website would look like Twitter then you have found the best solution for you!

26. AD Redoable

Simple theme which would look great for a portfolio website.

27. Austin Zen Sub Theme

If you want just a simple website without any flashy, shiny elements then this simple theme is for you.