Images are a big part of the Internet these days, and when writing your blog posts and articles, it is helpful to create a post with images that are the right size for social media, load quickly and work for your blog instead of against it. Here are 3 image tips for your WordPress blog.
Improve Your Image Loading Time
Since we all want larger images for social media sites such as Pinterest or Facebook, you can use a WP plugin to “squish” the size of your images. The one I use is WP Smush. Every time I upload an image, the plugin smushes it by stripping hidden, bulky information from your images, reducing the file size without losing quality. The faster your site loads, the more Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines will like it.
Upload Images in the Right Sizes for Social Media
When you add images to your webpage, creating images in the recommended sizes for your favorite social media sites will get you more shares. There is a great infographic with sizes for each social media site from Hubspot which you can use as a guide. You can also find some guidelines on sites like Canva that help you turn your photos into social media images.
Editing Images Once They are Uploaded to Your Post
You can also make changes to improve your images once they have been uploaded to your page. You can change your image sizes to a custom size and also change where the image links to.
Once the image is uploaded, go to the visual tab on your Edit Post page. Then click on your image. You will see a small gray box at the top with icons. Next click on the pencil icon.
You will then see this box. The area within the red circle gives you options for displaying your image.
Click on the size settings and select your size from preset settings or create a custom size which is what I did here.
Then click on the link to setting to have your image link to the URL you want. WP automatically sets the link to the media file URL like this one http://pinparty.info/wp-content/uploads/Lets-Go-Viral.jpg unless you change it. I recommend changing it to the page link like I did in the image below.
Then click the update button at the bottom corner of the box and go back to the Edit Post page.
