My blog readership quadrupled when I used awesome titles.

The first thing your reader sees is your featured image. We live in an age where visual stimulation is king. Having a good title isn’t enough. It has to visually captivate the reader.

By improving the visual experience, you instantly give your reader more incentive to click your link over that tempting cat video.

Let’s get started.

Step 1

Create a Photoshop document (It’s only $9.99 a month and there’s a free trial here. If you insist on using an alternative, you should be able to follow along).

Set the dimensions to 2350 pixels by 1230 pixels. 

This is the size Facebook will use to show your featured image.  With these dimensions, your title will be perfect for social media sharing.

Step 2

You need excellent stock imagery.

• Pexels is the best free stock imagery website out there. You should usually find what you need.
• Pixabay is up there with Pexels. I use these websites interchangeably

Choose photos that have decent space above or next to the subject. You’ll need the room for your title.

I picked this one:

Drag it into Photoshop and press enter.

Hopefully this lion doesn’t scare any viewers off!

Step 3

Go to your layers panel and lock your background layer. This isn’t vital but it makes things easier.

Now for the fun part. This is where you get to be creative.

On the left sidebar, find the type tool. You’ll find all your options in a bar at the top of your screen.

Every title will look a little different, so you have to just start creating. I’ll guide you through the process of this specific title.

Try to use colors that compliment your photo or it won’t look quite right. I started with a bold san serif font and made it a dark brown to match the browns of the photo. You can go to Window > Character to get more typography options.

Experiment with different fonts, sizes, and colors. For this title, the orange complimented everything else.

Another thing to mess around with is opacity. It produces a wonderful effect when used wisely. You’ll find this option in the layers panel.

To top it off, add a white gradient near your title.

It makes your title more visible and gives a professional touch. You’ll do this with most of your titles. You can go here to learn how.

Save it as a JPEG and you’re done! Upload to your blog as your “featured image” and it’ll always be what shows up when you share you blog posts.

With titles, it comes to your own creativity! You just have to start.