I recently posted freeeee stock pictures for your business or blog that you can use because I love you and all the hard work you put into your website + blog. Then I thought maybe devoting a whole blog post on the number of ways to use stock photography images within your site would be a great idea! I compiled a list of eight ways to use stock photography to help build your audience and easily add a dash of beauty to the lovely brand you have created.
Pin the image below to your favorite board + follow me on Pinterest by clicking here!
1 | Pins For Pinterest
Pinterest is my love language. If Pinterest is your love language then you should go visit my page and follow along so we can pin each other’s stuff and love Pinterest together. Creating a pin that goes viral is every blogger’s dream and is heavily based on the images that are used to create the pin. Having quality stock photography in your blog posts gives your readers aesthetically beautiful images from your posts to pin on their boards.
2 | SOCIAL MEDIA COVER PHOTOS + HEADERS
You get one chance at a first impression from someone who stumbles upon your social media. Make it a good one with beautiful stock photography as your cover photos/headers/profile pictures. Below are my Facebook and Twitter sites that I am still perfecting, to be honest. But having beautiful stock photography as my cover photos make a much better impression than having a picture of some random flower that does not pertain to my brand (I have done this before, so I’m making fun of my past self). If you’re a florist, that’s perfect! But I’m not. So having stock photography that applies to what I’m providing for others is pretty key in having that wow factor for your social media pages.
3 | BLOG POST IMAGES
A picture is worth a thousand words and as much as you need incredible content in a post, your post is not as share worthy or pin worthy without photography to back up the incredible content. Whenever I finish a client’s website or blog, I typically screenshot the home page of their site and put it in an imac stock picture so I can showcase the site to my readers. There are hundreds of ways you can incorporate stock photography in your posts and I’m sure you have seen other bloggers use these types of images in their posts!
4 | CREATE IMAGE BUTTONS TO SOCIAL MEDIA OR OTHER PAGES
I have seen so many bloggers and business owners pull off this tactic quite well. These buttons were made in Photoshop by me just to demonstrate this way of using stock photography, I do not personally use them! You can put buttons similar to these on your blog sidebar, in the footer area of your site, near the end of your blog posts, and other ways as well.
5 | ANNOUNCING A SALE OR BRAND LAUNCH
This is obviously an old brand of mine, but I used stock photography for a poster for the launch. To announce the big launch I used this stock photography image (which is the pinnable image I showed in #1 in this post) and added type to it in Photoshop.
6 | CREATING A HEADER FOR YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE
Tons of websites have headers similar to this one on them. I have a header using stock photography on one of my old FAQ pages shown below! It’s simple, and I love it. You can use headers to emphasize branding throughout your website + all sorts of fun stuff.
7 | — USE IN A SLIDER FOR YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE
I have a slider on the home page of my website where I use stock photography. This is one of the first impressions people have of your site, so make sure you get some solid stock images to show off in that spot! Maybe even add some text so that you can tell them what the image link leads to (if you decide to insert links for those images, that is).
8 | — USE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY IN YOUR MEDIA KIT
Do you have a media kit? If you’re making money from your blog or small business than you probably do. Basically, a media kit is a bunch of boring words on a page but definitely needed so your audience and potential clients know the details about your design process/site stats/demographics etc. Adding some stock photography in between those boring words makes your media kit a lot more readable which is fantastic because you definitely want the people you are sending your media kit to to read the majority of it!
Of course, there are more than 8 ways to use stock photography but I wanted to give you guys a solid list that may inspire some great ideas for your future blog posts! If you would like to have 26 free stock photography images sent straight to your inbox then click this link or fill out the form below so I can send them your way!
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