*Disclaimer* The content below may cause several hours of procrastination.
A picture is worth a thousand words. No matter how many times we hear it, we know it’s true. Instagram and other social channels have benefited immensely from feeding into consumers’ desire for highly visual content. As well, marketers are increasingly taking advantage of creative content marketing photographs as a tool for brand storytelling, and connecting with their target personas on an emotional level.
People usually associate change with the New Year. Gyms always state that their busiest month is January, filled with people looking for a fresh start. You don’t need to wait until January to switch up your content visuals, the summer is a perfect time. With summer typically being a quieter time in the business world and busier time in the personal world, you can utilize unique and evocative photography to stay engaged during this season.
Low quality pictures, snaps from your phone, copying from another site, or cringe worthy cliché photos are no longer adequate. Of course hiring a photographer to travel the world to take breathtaking professional photographs is not an option in most budgets, so instead here are 5 websites with amazing free content marketing images. Yes they are free. No strings attached!
1. Unsplash
Unsplash is a great example of a company who overcame a challenge and flipped it into an opportunity. Mikael Cho founded Unsplash in 2013 to solve his frustration on the difficulty of finding satisfactory stock photos. After hiring a photographer to capture stunning photos for his company, he posted the outtakes online for anyone to use at no cost. Now as one of the largest photography suppliers on the internet, there is no shortage of versatile images for you to use.
2. Burst
Built by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs; Shopify created Burst. Burst is a platform of high resolution images that is continuously growing with photos and new categories reflecting trends in ecommerce and retail. Their library might not be enormous today, but it will save you time when searching for quality over quantity.
3. Gratisography
Quirky, creative, unique, thought provoking, authentic, and arresting are all words that will come to mind when looking through Gratisography’s collection. Their funny, off the wall type photos will guarantee a laugh (or at least smirk) from your customers. Their goal is to help you stand out in the world of boring stock photos and connect to your audience with the most interesting photos. The ones with a personality, a perspective, and a story to tell.
4. Pixabay
Pixabay was founded in Germany in 2011, with over 33,200 active image authors. Pixabay is an international interactive online community, supporting over 20 languages giving you a global perspective. They differentiate with their types of marketing content, with a library of photos, videos, illustrations, and vector graphics.
5. Stockvault
A pioneer of photo sharing, Stockvault was founded in 2004. With an enormous library of photography, they make it easy to search their categories with their intuitive drop down menu and blog posts. Another great feature is the ability to see their Most Popular, Most Downloaded, and Most Loved images. Whether you want to get an idea of which photos most people are drawn to, or to stay clear of the most downloaded and search for the most original!
I hope that I have inspired you to spark some change in your content marketing photography this summer. Have fun!
