Having a tough time picking the right stock image?
Unless you have (or are) an excellent photographer, finding stock images is essential to marketing in the 21st century.
Check out these 5 important tips to choosing wisely! Great infographic from MyCleverAgency.
- Avoid clichéd images.
- Make it personal with people and animals.
- Keep it relevant and up-to-date.
- Choose consistent colors.
- Ensure the image works with your format: portrait or landscape.
What’s your greatest challenge in finding images for visual marketing? Let me know in a comment. I’m working on some ideas to help you save time finding the right stock image!
Hi Louise,
Love this post and infographic! The 1st point on the infographic definitely makes me cringe when I see a website full of those stock photos. People want to see the “real you”. Don’t show me a whole bunch of smiley white teethed people that are pretending to work in an office. They creep me out! LOL
Take care,
Lillian
That’s so great, Lillian! Thanks for sharing your perspective. Love it!
I get most looks when my images are both relevant and humorous. Sometimes the message is so serious that humor is not possible.
In my business relevance has to do with something my program parents are concerned about in their lives or for their children.
I am fully aware that in my business, which is Catholic parish religious education, prospective clients shop around through the web for local possibilities. I provide a web page, blog, facebook page and twitter. Also a monthly e-newsletter.
I should do a survey to see what most interests/concerns my clients so I can provide RE connections to these interests/concerns.
Right now, I do educated guessing based on my personal interactions with the clientele.
You sound very thorough, Frank! Taking a survey is an excellent idea. Going by interactions with your audience is also smart, and probably more than most people do! Keep up the good work.
I really like your point about avoiding cliche images. Like you said, it can give the perception that you’re trying to talk about something tired or boring. However, I’m also not sure if I could even pick out the cliche images on stick photography sites. Are they just things that seem very dorky or unnatural? Those are the types of photos I’d probably want to avoid anyways.
Yep! A lot of smiling business people photos are just not realistic – that sort of thing.
One of the things that you mentioned that I would do is make it personal. I’ve been thinking about doing up a business website and it needs some pictures to populate it. Going with pictures of people would make the website more people-friendly.
Absolutely, as long as they’re real people and not posed models 🙂