It is a good practice to put your blog’s name on your screenshots so that people know that you are their original creator. Branding screenshots will also ensure that you reap the SEO benefits when they are shared on social media or linked to other blogs.
If you are a content creator or a blogger, chances are you take a lot of photos and screenshots to post on various platforms. If you post screenshots often, you probably miss out on the opportunity to brand them with your brand identity.
By not branding your images and screenshots, you are not only making yourself vulnerable to theft but also risk losing out on the potential backlinks your illustrations may get. The danger is real because visual elements do get more backlinks than giant walls of text.
This problem plagued me too. I am a tech writer and mostly create how-to posts. I probably take around twenty screenshots per day so I was looking for quick ways to put my blog’s name on the screenshots.
Of course, I could use something like Adobe Photoshop but that feels like using a cannon to kill a small bird.
Thankfully, I came across this awesome screenshot and annotation app called CleanshotX.
CleanshotX makes it super simple to put your brand identity or literally anything on your screenshots so that if people encounter your illustrations or diagrams, they know it came from your website.
Let’s now learn how to quickly put your blog’s name on your visual assets, including screenshots using CleanshotX.
Branding your screenshots using CleanshotX
I will show you two methods through which you can brand your screenshots:
Method 1: Using a PNG overlay on the screenshot
In the first method, I first create a PNG image (with a transparent background) of my blog’s name using Excalidraw. This is what my blog’s PNG signature looks like:
I keep it saved on my computer and also copy it on my clipboard for easy access. Instead of a blog signature, you can also use your logo or other brand identity elements.
Also read: The Ultimate Excalidraw Tutorial for Beginners
I then take a screenshot of the area I want to capture using CleanshotX. After the screenshot is captured, I open it in CleanshotX to annotate it.
There’s a feature in CleanshotX that allows you to add additional images/screenshots to the one you are editing. Since I already have my blog’s signature copied on my clipboard, I simply press Command + V to paste it.
Pasting the blog signature puts it right below the original screenshot, like this:
You can, of course, make your logo small or large or move it around depending on your requirements.
Congrats! Your screenshot has been branded. You are now ready to post it wherever you want.
Method 2: Using the background wallpaper
If you want to go overboard with branding, you could make it so that your blog’s name appears in more than one place on your screenshots. You could do this by creating a custom wallpaper that contains your blog’s brand.
I went ahead and created this simple background in Excalidraw:
CleanshotX supports adding custom backgrounds so you could put this (👆) “wallpaper” as a background to your screenshots. This method is useful if you repurpose your screenshots for different social media platforms.
Also read: 17+ Awesome Excalidraw Tips for Insane Productivity
Different social media platforms have different requirements for aspect ratio. CleanshotX makes it super easy to resize your images so that you can upload the same images to different platforms without them getting cropped.
This is what my original screenshot looks like in a 16:9 aspect ratio:
And this is what it looks like in square (1:1) aspect ratio:
Not bad for such over-the-top marketing.
I’d say both look fantastic and promising. Plus, you can customize your wallpapers however you like (maybe put in some gradient, paint it with your brand color, or some abstract art) to dial in your blog’s identity.
Things to improve
My only gripe with CleanshotX is that this entire process isn’t frictionless. I would have loved it more if the flow was as seamless as just taking the screenshot and pasting it in the article or on Twitter.
This could have been achieved if they had an option to automatically give a user-defined background to the screenshots without a user needing to do it manually every time. If they put in such a feature, it would eliminate this 10-second drudgery.
But till the time this feature isn’t implemented, this is the best we have.
How to get CleanShotX
The only letdown in this entire process is that CleanshotX is not free. It costs $29.99 as a one-time payment. The price of $29.99 seems a little steep but keeping in mind that CleanShotX packs the entire screenstudio including screen + webcam recording and much more, I’d say it’s worth it.
CleanshotX doesn’t offer a free trial either but there’s some good news.
It comes bundled with the SetApp subscription which is like Netflix for Mac apps. For a monthly subscription of $9.99/month, you get full access to 240+ apps for Mac. CleanshotX is one of them, along with Bartender 5, Text Sniper, CleanMyMac, and a bunch of others.
The good news is that SetApp offers a free trial of 7 days during which you can try all of its apps (including CleanshotX) and if you are not happy with the service, you can cancel before the trial expires.
Click here to get a FREE SetApp trial of 7 days.
Wrap up
I hope the above two methods helped you learn how you can put your blog’s identity on your screenshots.
What other apps do you use for this purpose? Please do let me know in the comments or on Twitter.