Everything You Need to Know About Using Images in Your Substack Posts
Literally everything. 😁
This post is part of the Unstack Substack Video Vault—a growing library of simple, practical tutorials you can come back to anytime you need to set up, fix, or fine-tune your Substack. Video Vault content is one of many fabulous paid subscriber perks.
Of all the things that can make or break a Substack post, images are definitely in the top five.
Thumbnails are the first thing visitors see when they land on your homepage. Then, after they’ve clicked through to your post, their eyes are naturally drawn toward your in-post photos.
It helps knowing what to actually do with them to maximize their usefulness.
Substack gives us just enough tools to make things look great…and just enough mystery to make you second-guess every click.
Somewhere out there, I hope a confused writer stops rage-clicking “align left” or learns how to resize their 8000-pixel headshot because of this post. 😁
The following video tutorial is my “no stone left unturned” walkthrough of using images in every possible way in your Substack posts.
Today, we’re talking about:
Image placement
Resizing
Captions
Galleries (multiple photos in a pretty grid)
Thumbnails (to make your homepage visually appealing)
Alt text (make visual content accessible to the visually impaired by allowing screen readers to read the description aloud)
Hyperlinking (click an image to take you somewhere else, like perhaps your Amazon book page)
Watermarks (for branding and copyright)
And little behind-the-scenes tweaks that make your posts feel polished instead of pieced together.
Whew! That felt like a lot!!
This one lives inside the Video Vault for paid subscribers because it is very robust and covers a LOT, but let me say this upfront:
I am NOT precious about access. If you upgrade and binge this tutorial, get exactly what you came for, then cancel and head back out into the world a smarter Substacker…we’re good!
My goal with the following tutorial is to make sure you finally understand how to use images without guessing, Googling, or wanting to throw your laptop across the room.
Grab a coffee… below is a 29-minute tutorial (with lots of cute dog pics as examples). Time stamps are included in case you want to skip around.