Adding Compelling Images to Your Content Marketing

Without Breaking The Bank – Or The Law

Blog posts and social media posts perform better with images. When BuzzSumo looked into this idea, they found that articles incorporating an image every 75 – 100 words get shared twice as often on social media as posts with fewer images. If you only post text updates on Facebook, you’re missing out on potentially 2.3 times the engagement that post could get if you added an image to go with it.

Do you have an important message to share? I ask because when people read information, they likely remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. This is important as buyers rarely ever see an image or ad and then go directly to the source to purchase. Repeated exposure with consistent messaging helps guide prospects down the sales funnel, so information retention is a really big plus, wouldn’t you say?

Let’s Hear From Marketers

What are the sort of visuals being utilized by marketers? Photography, video, screenshots, infographics, data visualization (charts and graphs), comics, memes, visual note taking and the ever popular Gif all top this list and with good reason:

Content with relevant images reportedly gets 94% more views than content without
On Buffer, tweets that include an image receive on average 150% more retweets.
50% of internet users have reposted an image they found online
Photos showing faces get 38% more Likes than photos not showing faces.

Here’s the rub: Creating your own images can be time consuming and expensive. Stock images can cost anywhere from $10 – $50 per photo and thats just too much for many start ups or small businesses. However, simply grabbing a photo off of Google Image search will likely only land you in hot water with copyright holders.

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It’s All In The Wiring

The human brain is wired in such a way that we process visual cues much faster than text, 60,000 times faster in fact! Knowing that, wouldn’t you want your blog or social channels offering big, beautiful, high resolution images to match the copy you’re creating? Of course you do! What if I told you that there was a way for you to have a never ending supply of imagery and inspiration?

There are plenty of stock photo sites out there that offer Creative Commons images for commercial use. With Creative Commons licenses, photographers can decide how their mages are used. As an example, a CC0 license means the photographer has relinquished all rights while a CC 2.0 license means that you must provide attribution.

There are also Public Domain images which are works whose copyrights have expired or whose creators have relinquished all rights to the works. These are free for personal or commercial use. There is only one exception to the “free for all use” policy for public domain photos: If you’re using an image of a recognizable person, you may need to get his or her permission to use the photo.

Favourite Free Image Sites

Not all sites offer the ability to search their databases for specific themes or subject matters. Some sites prefer you add your email to a mailing list so that they can send you monthly or weekly images. Either way, the selection is often incredible and there’s never any of the cheesiness that you find with the typical stock image catalogs.

In no particular order, here are some great, free image sources. Enjoy!

~ Screenshot of Google Images page