What’s With the Same Ol’ Same Ol’ Pix in Your Medium Articles?

Images matter because it has the power to make readers read your post or skip it

Do you know the choice of featured image for your post is crucial in being able to entice a reader to click on your post?

You do?

Well, then congratulations on that! As content marketer Kelsey Libert says: “Coupling a powerful headline with an attention-grabbing image can make for a very effective pitch for reading the content.”

🍕 So now we know the secret sauce of a great post:

Great title + Appealing featured image + Compelling content = Many 👀

Considering this is elementary, dear Watson pray tell me why writers use the same tired old images that make me want to bash my head from frustration.

I think the woman in this repeat offender pic#1 knows exactly what I’m talking about!

Ughhhh!

Guys, what are you doing?

If you even spend a little time reading on Medium then you know this image has been done to death and then some.

And still, it persists even though at this point I can’t bear to look at it anymore.

Repeat offender #2: I get it — the girl in the pic below is either sad, sulking, or pondering on whatever problems life is hitting her with. But is this the only pic available to convey that message?!

Repeat offender #3: I love to read, you love to read, even the dog loves to read!

📚 Cute as the dog may be, I feel it has been used far too many times for exactly that reason. I love dogs but seeing the same pic so many times in the past year makes me wonder if writers even scroll beyond the first page of searching up reading on Unsplash.com

#4 — The one with the pennies lying around to signify money growing or something like that. Hey there, I’m not a kid who loves to collect pennies in a jar and I don’t find a done-to-death pic like this to be very inspiring not to mention motivating at all.

Btw, it took me at least $20 in membership fees, not pennies, before I started making 💰 (if you consider $100 mucho dinero).

#5 is one busy lady because she seems to be everywhere. Maybe she is looking miffed because she seems to be the brand ambassador for many posts that have anything to do with senior citizens.

“Dang — but don’t y’all know that age is relative? Basta!”

To be honest, when I first saw the pic below I thought it would go great with some of the stuff I write about. But when I see this repeat offender #5 plastered on posts every single day, I have now come to associate it with death and suffering.

Maybe I am not in the mood to read those so I tend to give posts with this featured image a wide berth.

Sometimes when I see a haphazardly written article or a limp headline, and an equally limp image, with no spell check and no heart in it whatsoever, it makes me wonder whether the writer is clueless or in denial considering that there are over 534,000 writers on Medium and 2.3 million stories posted in 2021 alone.

💡 Newsflash: Haphazard doesn’t cut it if the idea is to stand out.

So here are some questions that I’m pondering as to why the same old tired and boring pictures are being used over and over again:

• Is it because some lack the patience to go beyond the first page of Unsplash, Pexels, or x,y,z stock photo websites?
• Or is it because some just don’t know there is a second page to it?
• How come everyone knows how to present their best pix on social media but doesn’t put even the minimum of effort into their choice of images?
• And what’s up with forgetting to credit the image? Is it like a new ‘thing’?

⭐️My advice for what it’s worth: Spend some time choosing your images.

⭐️Be unique and take your own pix like some of my writer friends Michele Maize (The Sober Vegan Yogi), B.R. Shenoy, William J Spirdione, Monika Sharma, Victoria Gregg, Dr. Preeti Singh or artwork like Sara Larca and Monoreena Acharjee Majumdar

⭐️Create your own on Canva like Carmellita and Julie Gaeta

⭐️Or buy a membership at one of the many stock photo websites.

Do you have any pix that get your goat from overuse? Please share in the comments!

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