By Jennifer Henderson
Last month, Twitter announced a big change: any media attached to a Tweet will no longer count as part of the 140 characters (see our blog post “New Changes to the Twitter Character Limit”). Twitter incorporated this change because the company recognizes that making social media more visual is important for engagement. With regards to images, in particular, Twitter states that Tweets with photos get 313% more engagement.
But, it’s not always easy (or cheap) 
to find images to include in your marketing efforts. Stock photo services provide access to quality images often at a premium price. However, with a little digging online, you can find quality free images.
As a starting point, Hootsuite put together an excellent list of 20 free stock photo sites. This list provides a treasure-trove of resources. Many of the sites provide images that are royalty free and covered under Creative Commons CC0, meaning they may be modified and used commercially and in printed format. I especially enjoyed looking through one of the featured sites–http://gratisography.com/. Ryan McGuire’s photos are interesting and colorful, and I liked them so much I included one in this blog post.
Resources for Free Images
In addition to Hootsuite’s recommendations, I’ve had luck with the following resources for free images:
- www.flickr.com/commons
The site states that “The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives.” Participating institutions include The Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution. - www.openclipart.org
Sometimes, clipart can be used to illustrate your point in a creative way. I like this site because some of the clipart can be edited. For example, I used a calendar icon from the site and added an important deadline to include in a reminder email for an upcoming association conference I was helping promote. The site states that “We try to make it clear that you may use all clipart from Openclipart even for unlimited commercial use. We believe that giving away our images is a great way to share with the world our talents and that will come back around in a better form.” - NASA’s image gallery
It is so much fun to look through the NASA images. And, even if you aren’t promoting something scientific, the images can be used to add visual interest and convey concepts like “Reaching for the Stars!”
If you ever doubted the need to include visual components in your marketing efforts, read “37 Stats You Should Know About Visual Content Marketing in 2016.” The first stat listed–“Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%”–is enough to make me want to always include a pretty picture. Where do you find the images you use?
*Photo credit: Ryan McGuire http://gratisography.com/
