Tips on Using Pictures & Videos Enhance Your Hubs

When visitors come to your Hubs, you'd like them to stay for a while, for a few reasons:

1. You'd like them to read your work and not hit the back button. Although it's gratifying to write a Hub, it's even better when someone reads it, leaves a comment or feedback, and stays for a while to digest your content.
2. It might help you with getting traffic from Google. Google has several ways of analyzing how long visitors remain on any given webpage. Presumably, if they don't stay long, that means the page is not good. If they do, then that's a vote of confidence in that page. Google will send traffic to pages that it sees people staying at long enough to actually read.
3. If you've written a great piece of content and linked related products to it via the eBay or Amazon Capsule, they might even buy something!

That said, first impressions count. Creating a page that makes an immediate visual impression helps grab the attention of a potential reader, and make him/her an actual reader.

What can you do to augment your Hub with photos and videos?

• Include high quality photos and videos in your Hubs that help to illustrate and elaborate on your subject.
• Make sure the "view original size on click" box is checked in each of your Photo Capsules.
• Add at least five photos so that viewers will have the ability to view them in slide show form
• Upload photos directly through your iPhone using our app - this will give you a large body of original images to work with.
• When using others' photos, be sure to properly use and attribute them (this gives your work a professional polish and spares you any copyright infringement trouble).
• Add videos to the end of Hubs to satisfy the curiosity of readers who might want to learn more.

Here are a few examples of great Hubs integrating pictures published by fellow Hubbers:

• vespawoolf for Butter Caramels with Himalayan Pink Salt Recipe: Includes an alluring first image and guides readers through the recipe with step-by-step photos
• hush4444 for An Insider's Guide to the Kona Coast of Hawaii: Includes local photos taken by the author as well as useful maps
• Jow At Home for How to Disassemble a Grain Bin: Picture Tutorial: Is packed with helpful photos (taken by the author) illustrating the process described in the text.

How do you make a picture go to the right like vespawoolf does? All you have to do is click on the right arrow button in the capsule top bar or use the Hub Control Tabs by double clicking the capsule you'd like justified to the right.

The same can be done by inserting a relevant YouTube or Vimeo video. All you have to do is find a relevant video, copy the URL (link), and plug it into an inserted Video Capsule in your Hub. Here are a couple of Hubs that integrate relevant videos:

• leahlefler for Chocolate Slavery: Slave Labor in the Cocoa Industry: Includes relevant and meaningful (while still legally used) on a more abstract subject as well as a series of videos for readers who would like to view more in-depth explanations.
• habee for Gullah Gullah Cuisine: Features great original photos along with additional videos at the end with more information.

Spice up your Hubs like these great Hubbers have done. You'll likely be rewarded with more traffic, fans, and visitors in the long run!