Good morning guys, this is @bait002 the founder of the offline minnow school where minnows are mentored and groomed. Those who have been following may have noticed the changes in the scope of what I blog about. The aim is to get minnows to actually write like champions that they are. The golden maxim through this blogging serious would be;

write as though you have a reputation to protect because, you truly do...

What to expect in this series

• where to find images.
• how to select good images.
• technical aspect relating to format and web compatibility.
• legal issues about images.
• Lastly, some additional tools to use.

How to select good photos that work for your brand

The next thing I would be going to on that list is how to select images that would suit your posts. Images, affects your brand in a lot of ways. I remember when @lukestokes told me not to use the same images on all my posts: I used to do that a lot when I first started the offline minnow school. Truly, similar images, though they gave me a brand made all my contents look similar and I had to change that based on that advise. The focus here to to build and protect your brand.

what is a brand?

According to David Ogilvy "brand" can be defined as;

An intangible sum of a commodity's attributes: its name, mode of packaging, and cost, its history, its feedbacks, and the way it is being advertised.

The moment someone gets on your blog they will get a particular feeling or simply put impression that has a great impact on how well they will interact or engage with your content, whether they will follow you or bookmark your blog. Images will play a big role when it comes to that.

The first and fundamental step is to avoid using stock images that are popular to the point that a lot of internet users can easily tell where they are from. In a nutshell;

you may use images used by others but never drift too far from originality...

Getting original images could be quite difficult but the flair they give makes it worth the stress. You could even ask friends do that for you (if you have super designer friends like some). On Steemit most use Pexels and Pixabay but you will always find those images in other contexts.

Images enhance brands, the essence is to seperate and distinguish your blog from every other blogs that handle the same topic (in the same niche). I'm sure that's what you really want.

No one visits you when you're 10 miles away when they can get the exact product you offer 2 minutes from them.

The sentimental world is gradually dying. We now live in a world or competition and economics where everyone just wants what best at a very minimal stress level.

When you visit some of blogs owned by minnows, what you see is a mix of images with nothing associating them to either the post in question or even the entire blog itself.

There's nothing good about filling your blog with a lot of photos. People came to a blog to read not to have a gallery sensation. I've come across minnows who post a bunch of images with only a few line of texts. Even Vloggers still see it fit to put a reasonable measure of texts, for example @exyle. If all you do is post a lot of images with little or no texts at all, know that you're not doing your blog any good.

Try to make a plan of what you want to communicate with your images and remember that images will have its way of speaking to different segments of the community. Memes, images, graphics, quotes and so on. They all do different things in the context of blogging. If you visit any hot tag, you would notice the huge difference between how minnows use images and how experienced steemians (whales) use images, even though they are all in the same niche.

Thank you so much guys, this is Bait and I'm bringing words from the offline minnow school.

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For those who seek to know what this project is all about, you can read that below;

PHASE 1:

At this stage, we teach some minnows at our offline classroom to help attain self-sustenance. These minnows will then work with us as a team, reproducing other minnows. Currently, we have just wrapped up with Phase 1. And Phase 2 which is more demanding kicked off already. We have already recorded a track which you’ll find @theminnowschool. We are also in the process of recording a next track but the negotiation is still ongoing.

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PHASE 2:

This basically is the core of the vision is to raise steem-backed entrepreneurs of young people. The method through which we execute the absolute idea goes as follows;

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• SKILL ACQUISITION PROJECTS: where various skills will be taught to foster the emergence of new entrepreneurs that thrive on voluntarism.

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• THE MINNOW SCHOOL TALENT HUNT: we greatly hope to give minnows who are not really writers but have other gifts such as singing, painting, dancing, acting a platform to express themselves and get their creativity beyond their minds. Basically, we are giving these young people a voice and ultimately awaken the writer in them.

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• THE MINNOW SCHOOL ART/MUSIC EXHIBITIONS: here talented young people will get to showcase their talents and the value they have to offer to the community. We will be sponsoring art projects and professional music careers will emerge with this.

One of our sponsored recording session