What Featured Images Have to Do in Curated Stories | Towards AI
Choose the Right Featured Image For Your Data Science Articles
This article will discuss some suggestions on how to choose a featured image for your data science article. While I will focus on data science, the tips discussed here are applicable to any articles published on Medium’s website.
After spending lots of time and energy to develop the content of your article, it is now time to choose a featured image. Choosing the right featured image is one of the most important decisions you will have to make.
An appropriate featured image has the following advantages:
a) It highlights and summarizes what your article or story is all about.
b) It captures the minds of viewers and motivates them to click on your story, which in turn increases chances that your article will be read.
c) It increases the chances that your article will be distributed by medium’s curators to various topics. Curated stories get more views as your article gets distributed by medium and could be listed as a featured article. This would attract more viewers and readers, and more fans. For more information about this, see Medium’s Curation Guidelines.
How to choose the right featured image for your story
Your featured image should be chosen with a lot of care. It should be a high-quality image that immediately captures the attention of viewers and something that would motivate then to click on your story and read through it.
Choosing the right featured image plays a key role in whether your article gets selected and recommended by Medium’s curators to topics.
If you are using an image from a website, it is advisable that you obey copyright rules regarding the image. Make sure you have the right to reuse the image. To avoid violating copyright rules, you can actually create your own featured images.
Tools for Creating Featured Images
Some resources for creating featured images:
a) Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation Drawing Tools.
b) Use featured images from your data science projects e.g. graphs and other data visualizations produced as output from your code.
c) Use your cellphone to take a captivating featured image.
d) Use featured image from a website (make sure you have the permission to reuse the image so that you don’t violate copyright rules).
Most of my articles that got curated were articles where I created my own featured image.
I will now discuss some examples of featured images that I used in articles that got curated by medium’s curators, as well as examples of articles that were not curated because the featured image violated copyright rules.
A. Stories Distributed by Curators (I created my own featured image)
Distributed by curators in Data Science
2. A Basic Perceptron Model Using Least Squares Method
Distributed by curators in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Machine Learning
3. Extracting Data from PDF File Using Python and R
Distributed by curators in Data Science
4. Tutorial on Data Wrangling: College Towns Dataset
Distributed by curators in Data Science
5. Machine Learning Model for Stochastic Processes
Distributed by curators in Machine Learning and Data Science
6. Tutorial on Data Visualization: Weather Data
Distributed by curators in Data Science and Programming
B. Stories Not Distributed by Curators (I used a featured image from the web, without seeking reuse rights)
Not distributed in topics by curators
Not distributed in topics by curators
3. Mortgage Calculator Python Code
Not distributed in topics by curators
In summary, we’ve discussed some tips to be considered when choosing a featured image for any articles published on medium. Choosing the right featured image is key to attracting viewers and readers, and also determines whether your story will be curated or not.
To avoid violating copyright rules, it is best to create your own featured images. Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation are excellent tools that can be used for drawing or you could simply use your cell phone to take a beautiful and captivating image. If you are going to use a featured image from a website, make sure you have permission to reuse the image so that you don’t violate copyright rules.
Other Useful Links:
Beginner’s Guide to Writing Data Science Blogs on Medium
Data Science 101 — A Short Course on Medium Platform with R and Python Code Included
10 Questions to Consider Before Pursuing a Career in Data Science