AP 0790: Why Do You Put Your Name and Date on Blog Images?

AskPat 790 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn, here. Welcome to Episode 790 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Andre.

Before we get to that question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is www.ZipRecruiter.com. If you're looking to hire people for your business, posting a job in one place isn't enough to find quality candidates. Now, with Zip Recruiter you can post your job in one place, www.ZipRecruiter.com, but actually it will send it out to 100-plus job sites, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, all with a single click. You can find candidates in any city or industry nationwide. Just post once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to Zip Recruiter's easy to use interface. They'll screen them for you. It's just super easy to use. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people who have used Zip Recruiter since sharing it here on the AskPat podcast. Right now you can actually check it out for fee by going to www.ZipRecruiter.com/Pat. Again, that's www.ZipRecruiter.com/Pat. Try it for free.

Here is today's question from Andre.

Andre: Hello, Pat. May name is Andre. I have a website at www.ASmallInvestment.com. I've got a question about blog post images. I noticed on your blog post you have your name and the date. I was wondering, why do you put your name and the date on your blog post? Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I looking forward to hearing it on your show. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Andre, thank you so much for the question today. Again, this is related to blog images and why I have my name and date on them. The name and the date that you see on the SPI blog that is on top of the image that's used, the hero image at the top of the blog post, is actually automatically generated. That's simply text that is automatically generated based on when the post is published. It just uses my name as the author. If somebody else were to come on my team as a writer and sign up through WordPress and be the author of that blog post, then their name would show up instead.

That's not necessarily related to the image. It just happens to be on top of the image. There are other images within blog posts, in the middle of them, and at the end, that do not have my name or the date on them. There's no sort of time stamp on that image, per se. Although, I will say there are some brands out there like Gary Vaynerchuk, who will put his name on his images. Not necessarily the date, unless the date is relevant to that image, but the name, and sometimes a signature. That's a way to brand your images. Especially important when you do social sharing. If you go to Gary Vaynerchuk’s profiles on his social media platforms you'll see “Gary Vee” sort of scribbled throughout there. I have done that before. There's no true benefit of doing that. You won't see an ROI necessarily from doing that. I think in terms of implanting your brand in the brains of those who are following you on social media, and on your blog, that's something that you could do if you like, but not necessary.

The name and the date however, is related to Google Authorship. Just making sure that Google knows that date is on when the blog post has been published, which is really important. Actually, very important. Making sure that date shows up there is going to help Google and their search engines understand that your content is more relevant to the current date. Also, the author there if people look up your name they're going to be able to find that piece of content at some point throughout the search engines as well.

Andre, I hope that helps. Again, the hero image at the top, having the name and date on it isn't very important in terms of the image itself. Having your name and the date on your blog post somewhere is really important. It just happens to land on top of the image that I use for my blog post at the top. All right, Andre, thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.

For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to www.AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day and start the week by Cardinal Newman. That quote is, “Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.” All right, guys, take care. See you in the next episode. Bye.