Quick guide to re-marketing old posts: Facebook and Pinterest friendly Blog post images

IN Marketing & Wordpress
Facebook & Pinterest Friendly Blog Post Images
  • Updated:4 years ago
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I never paid particular attention to making my featured images or thumbnails “Facebook or Pinterest” friendly but I definitely noticed the difference in traffic & likes/shares when I did take the time & make the effort.

After merging 3 of my sites back into this one (01), and having to reorganize my posts and reupload featured-images and so on, I also decided to redesign as many of the featured images of posts as I could (that are not too out-dated to re-promote them to Facebook & Pinterest).

To gather inspiration & ideas, I spent a few minutes in Pinterest, Google Images & the Facebook newsfeed to check out images that “stood out” against the others. What I noticed is that although I liked a few “fancy” images, that the ones that “stood out” the best were those that:

  • Had a border around the entire image (even a black border)
  • Had a Text Overlay with a different coloured background (so an overlay that kind of ‘blocks out’ the image below it a little bit or a lot, where the text was the thing that “drew the eye”) 
  • Had a relevant image (i.e. if it was a recipe, the image that had the ‘final product’ was more eye-catching than a recipe that had just text or an irrelevant image, if it was a remedy, the image that gave the ‘final result’ was more eye-catching than the products used, if it was a blog post, the image that had the text ‘benefit’ with an image that matched the topic of the article)

When you do your own research, you might find your opinion/tastes differ than mine, depending on your interests and what you find attractive and what stands out for you, but for me, the above was what “stood out” the most.

I wanted to make my featured images “standardized” in a way where if you are browsing my site, Google Images, Facebook wall/newsfeed, or pinterest, you can tell ‘at-a-glance’ that

1.) it was from my website (unique branding) &
2.) the type of post it is. (recipes, book summaries, graphic downloads, podcasts, videos, and so on).

But with all these good intentions, I’m not very graphic-savvy and they came out .. the way they came out. And maybe one day I’ll stick to my plan above. I also get confused about all the image-size suggestions for facebook – o.m.g. they have a different rule for everything, so I’m just sticking to what I’ve got for the time-being and will update this post when I have used it a lot more and have figured out the best “safest” size for both platforms.

I own Photoshop and even though I have other ‘lighter’ programs that could probably do the job quick & easy (SnagIt Editor, LogoCreator, even Paint), but I decided that I’ll most likely be using Photoshop for this task because the end-product should look much nicer. (Maybe down the track if I lose a bit of my gung-ho motivation, or realize how much time I’m wasting, I’ll slip back into those programs for the same job, but I’m hoping that if I create psd templates for my different blog posts, that I can keep up the momentum.)

My graphics-skills suck, I can use Photoshop but that doesn’t mean I have ‘design-blood’, so I decided to purchase some PSD elements to help make the task less daunting from people who “do ” have graphics skills.

I headed over to GraphicRiver.net and grabbed the following to help me in my quest:(“nice to have’s” not “need to have’s)
(Time Taken: 2 hours to browse, select, purchase & download)

  • Ribbons so that I can place the corresponding “blog type” on each of the images. (Cost: $3)
  • Web elements to add nice styles to each image (Cost: $6)
  • A new Font to make all the images unique & recognizable to my blog style (Cost: $8)

The good thing about Graphic River, is that they are high-quality graphics, yet extremely cheap.

The bad thing is, that even though I purchased stuff, I pretty much only used the base templates because I lost momentum quicker than I thought I would :)

So final result?

I created the following featured images, and will be slowly redesigning my older blog posts when inspired to do so, and then re-promoting the older blog posts via social media.

Just a few of the completed featured images that I’ve done so far (but there are many more throughout the blog)

Counteracting Negative Thoughts
Counteracting Negative Thoughts
PEO Essential Fatty Acids
PEO Essential Fatty Acids
Post-Panda SEO
Post-Panda SEO
3 Herbs Parasite Cleanse
3 Herbs Parasite Cleanse
Dance Like Nobody is Watching Salty Rain
Dance Like Nobody is Watching Salty Rain
Recipe for Depression
Recipe for Depression
Affirmations via SMS
Affirmations via SMS
WP Checklist High CPU Usage
WP Checklist High CPU Usage
Daily Habits for Automatic Health Cheatsheet
Daily Habits for Automatic Health Cheatsheet
Breaking Bad Habits Without Struggle
Breaking Bad Habits Without Struggle
Cure Emphysema Naturally
Cure Emphysema Naturally
Songs that put me in a Good Mood
Songs that put me in an Instant Good Mood
Miraculous Self-Healing Body
Our Miraculous Self-Healing Body
Do what you can Do
Don’t be addicted to the Results
No time to be Sick
No Time to be Sick?
Salad as the Main Dish
Making the Salad the Main Dish
My Fave WordPress Plugins
My Fave WordPress Plugins
Vegan Raw Dairy or not
Vegan or Not, Dairy or Not, Raw or Not

References[+]

Penny (PennyButler.com)
Penny (PennyButler.com)

Truth-seeker, ever-questioning, ever-learning, ever-researching, ever delving further and deeper, ever trying to 'figure it out'. This site is a legacy of sorts, a place to collect thoughts, notes, book summaries, & random points of interests.