A picture is worth a thousand words! Whether that being a photo or a simple image. Although websites compete for visitor's attention, sometimes, a plain text with a relevant photo may not be enough to motivate these web surfers to stay longer on your site, post, or tweet. This necessitates you to include compelling and attention-grabber images! How can this be done?
Not everyone can afford a professional photographer to take a couple of photos for their website. If your budget is on a shoestring, you can always turn to royalty free images. These photos come in different niches to fulfill its purpose in your campaign.
Even with just a simple tweet on Twitter or a post on Face book (without a photo), you can thrive on social media by grabbing an effective image to emphasize or highlight a particular point. So, how can you find quality images with no copyright infringement for your website and social media?
Tips to Find Free Stock Images
Social media and blog are often the avenue of sharing photos, experiences, and stories. When it comes to photo, you have to be wary about copyright. If you do not want to get into trouble some time later, then it is best to practice finding free images safely.
Google Search. You can use the search engine like Google in finding free images. If you opt for this option, you just have to click on the 'search tools' and click on 'usage rights'. Afterwards, hit the 'labelled for reuse with modification'.
Enhance the image. Now that you are done with the photo selection, you might want to spice up the image. In view of this, clipart would be of great help. Cited from Out & About Marketing, here are some of the great open source clipart.
https://openclipart.org/
http://www.clker.com/
http://www.vecteezy.com/
Take your own photos. This is a sure way of not getting involve with any copyright issues. You can always have a bucket of these if you choose to.
Search for free stock photo websites. There are lots of stock photo websites where you can find legit and absolutely free images. Just be careful in finding these free websites to avoid unnecessary charges.
The Free Stock Images Websites
Finding photos that can be used in social media can be difficult to find; but not with free stock photo websites. You just have to be diligent and patience in finding the right one.
Shutterstock. This microstock agency is founded by Jon Oringer back in 2003. It maintains over 40 million of royalty free images, illustrations, and many more. Other photos also come in premium.
Death to Stock Photo. If you are tired of the typical stock photos, then you can turn to Death to Stock Photo. With an exclusive membership, you will receive an e-mail with a zip file of free stock photos.
Gratisography. Whether you are looking for photos for personal use or commercial use, you can find an inspiring photo in Gratisography. All of the images found in this website are free of copyright restrictions. Since there is no search bar, you have to scroll though.
Others. There are other free stock photo websites that you can visit such as Free Pixels, BigFoto, iStock, and Hubspot.
Conclusion
Finding the images for social media can be a tough one. It is due to the fact that a lot of photos have copyright and is no way you would like to deal with its issues. If that is the case, you can scan on the free stock images available in the web.