A picture is worth 1000 words

1. Use Your Own

Nothing beats your own photography, and we work with some great freelance photographers who don’t charge like a wounded bull. If you have it in your budget, then your own images will beat stock images every time.

2. Take Your Time

If that just isn’t an option, be a little bit careful when you choose your images from the collections shared below. They are popular, well used images. We recommend that you spend a little scroll-time and don’t choose the first image that makes you say “Oh! I like that one!” Chances are that countless other people had the same reaction and have used the image inside your industry already.

When you find an image that you like, do a quick Google image search, and see where it shows up already. If you see a competitor uses the image on their site or in their marketing, start over. You don’t want to dilute your brand. They beat you to it, and that’s OK.

3. Find a Relevant Image

Always use an image, but always, always use an image that reflects the topic of the content you are writing… or serve as an illustration of the written word.

If you are using a random image just because your media manager told you to always use an image, you’re doing it wrong.

4. Check the Licence

Before using the image, check what you are allowed to do with it. If the copyright owner asks that you credit her, then be sure and do that. If the licence is for non-commercial use only, then it’s likely no good to you. In a nutshell, respect other people’s copyright.

Ideally you are looking for licences that grant irrevocable license to download, modify, and use photos for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission or attribution.

5. Name the Image

Once you have found and downloaded your image, rename it to something that suits the content you are writing. Not only will this help you find the image again later, it is great for search engine optimisation (SEO)

6. Brand the Image

Assuming you checked the licence and you’re confident that you are allowed to modify the image, go ahead and drop your logo on it in your favourite image editing software.

You can either drop it in as a watermark, or you can be a little more subtle and drop your logo onto an element in the image… a mug on a desk, or the side of a van. Whatever the image you are sharing lends itself to.

Now, when your article or page gets shared, there’s your brand for the world to see.

7. Resize the Image

When you downloaded your image from a stock image site, it was very likely quite a chunky file size. Stock images tend to be high resolution with files often reaching double figure MB sizes.

Start by resizing the image dimensions. If your downloaded image is 2600 pixels in width, but you only plan on displaying it at 250 pixels on your site, reduced the dimensions before uploading it. Don’t compromise your site’s load time by saving yourself the 5 minutes of image editing time!

Search engines hate slow load times, and images can have a huge impact.

8. Compress the Image

An image file contains a lot of information that you just don’t need for your post. Where it was taken, when it was taken, what camera it was taken on…

You can save some disk space and load time by stripping out this “EXIF” information, either in your favourite editing software, or through a third party app like ImageOptim.

Don’t go too crazy on reducing the quality of the image itself though. You probably don’t need it to be quite so “high res” unless your leads depend on high resolution imagery, but do remember that many members of your audience will be carrying a “retina display” in their back pocket. You don’t want your site to look low quality with granular or pixilated images.

9. Tag the Image

This part applies to images that you are loading to your own site – it’s not an option for your social media.

You have already given your image a descriptive name, so when it comes to uploading it to your site, you want to be sure to give it some friendly tags.

The tags you want to pay attention to are the title, alt text and caption.

The title tag is what many users will display as a “tooltip” when site visitors hover over an image

The alt text is what a browser will display if the image won’t display for whatever reason. It is also great for your SEO. Always, always use the alt text tag on every image on your site.

Finally the caption is what is shown on the front end of your site to visitors wherever your web designer has put that information.

Some people like captions and some don’t. In deciding whether to use them or not, are in mind that they are read on average 300% more than your post itself!

10. Place your Image

The image should be placed as close as possible to the text to which it refers. If, as in this article, you are only planning to use one image, place it at, or near the top of the page.