Should blog posts have pictures?

Lots of air.

That's the advice I gave a client the other day when she asked my thoughts on "pictures in blogs".

I'd already given her a crib sheet of things to remember when writing a blog, but we hadn't talked "pictures".

My advice. Do it! Images always bring a blog to life.

But, there's a but....

Watch the formatting. If the image stretches across the page it can look like the end of the blog. Wrapping the copy around the image shows the copy goes on.

And now we're onto formatting the copy.

Avoid dense, copy heavy paragraphs. They're hard to read. Forget what you learnt in school, think navigation from word to word. You can use punctuation to slow the reader down. (that's another blog)

Keep lots of air around paragraphs.

Single lines are good.

Think of your blog like a train journey. Make it fun. Get your reader comfy at the start. Then transport them smoothly from station to final destination. Without falling into a ravine of detail, bumping into the sidings of boredom or getting caught in a hedgerow of jargon.

Do those things and you'll have your reader jumping from the carriages, screaming for the last 2 minutes of their lives back!!