Last weekend an image popped up on my Facebook feed, and I immediately shared it….. It seems I wasn’t alone… The Strand Cakery a small business in Cornwall, (UK), must be pleased… As at 13th June, 43,771 people have shared the image of their cupcake bouquet. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be an enormous company with a huge advertising budget to get phenomenal reach with your social content.
It got me thinking about the importance of visual content and why great images are so important… There’s a reason that Instagram was the fastest growing social network of 2014.
We all love and respond to images! In fact,
So I thought I’d produce a super quick guide with some tips for using images in your content marketing.
- Ensure that your image fits and supports your text content.
- Quality matters; bad images will make your business look like an amateur outfit.
- Use original imagery wherever you can.
- Set up accounts with stock imagery websites, consider Shutterstock, iStockphoto, Bigstockphoto, Dollar Photo Club.
- Familiarise yourself with how and where you are entitled to use the images you purchase from stock imagery websites.
- If you use stock imagery, choose carefully and ensure the images you choose support your brand and your key messaging; aim to keep a consistency with the types of images that you use.
- Never simply download images from a Google image search to use in your own content. You will undoubtedly be infringing upon somebody’s intellectual property.
- Never size up imagery, it will become blurry and pixellated; always start with the high resolution version of your chosen image.
- On the flip side, ensure the images you use in your website or blog are “web ready”… Without sacrificing quality! Your page load time impacts on how your website is ranked in search engines, large image files can slow down the process.
- Consider using infographics. You can create these yourself using platforms such as Piktochart, but you will often find that many infographics already produced, will include a footer with HTML code that you can copy and paste into the text editor of your own website. Please credit the original source.
- Optimise your images for search engines. When you upload your image to your website or blog, give it a description and an “alt” tag. Google doesn’t recognise IMG 1234.
- When you’re reusing content across your social networks, make sure the image size fits the platform. Check out this GUIDE from Sprout Social.
I’d love you to connect with me on Instagram, to discover how I’m using images. Please pop over and give me a follow, if you like what I’m doing, please send me a little love heart!
