DIGITAL - 20 Free Stock Photo Sites

Challenge for a social media marketer: Finding the perfect image for a social media post or campaign.

(StockSnap)

Big challenge: Finding an image that is free.

Bigger challenge: Understanding different licenses and copyrights of images.

Happily, Hootsuite posted a list of 20 free stock photo sites that will save time and energy in a quest for the perfect picture.

The list includes sites that have Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensed images.

The CC0 license “enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.”

Gratisography contains quirky images by photographer Ryan McGuire.

IM Free offers not only free social media images, but is a “curated collection of free web design resources, all for commercial use.”

Pixabay offers over 490,000 free images for both your personal and commercial use and includes illustrations and vector graphics.

The Morguefile was created in 1996, and offers photographs available free for the use in creative projects with a request to credit the artist.

New Old Stock provide the ultimate “Throwback Thursday” content with their hundreds of vintage photos from the public archives.

StockSnap curates stock photos from around the web and also uploads photos from select photographers in their network.

Visit the Hootsuite blog for the complete list.

DIGITAL - Tools to Create Awesome Social Media Images

(photo from Pexels)

Images get people’s attention and motivate them to click, like and share on social media.

They are one of the most important components of successful digital marketing.

To help you create awesome visuals, Social Media Examiner has compiled a list of free tools that give your images a professional look.

Start With High-Quality Royalty Free Images

There are now dozens of free image resources out there.

Pexels and Unsplash both offer thousands of high-resolution images for free and without the need for attribution. Unsplash focuses more on landscapes, while Pexels focuses on business and technology collections.

Find the Perfect Colour Scheme

Adobe Color CC takes the guesswork out of picking colours. It helps determine complimentary colours for your visual content.

Take Advantage of Pre-made Icons

With Flaticon, you get free access to over 144,130 (and counting) PNG icons which can be customized.

Reveal Optimal Contrasting Colour

ColorZilla is a Google Chrome plugin that allows you to see the hex, RGB code, official name, and gradients for any colour within a browser window. Use the Colour Picker function to find the best contrasting colour for a call-to-action button or to emulate a peer’s designs.

Find Perfect Font Combinations

With Femmebot, you can access 25 of the top font combinations from font experts and see how these combinations look with graphics and images, as well as formatting.

Put it all Together in a Visual Content Tool

Free visual content creation platforms like Canva, Google Drawings, and PicMonkey are great options to actually create the content after using the aforementioned tools.

Whether you’re working with videos, GIFs, infographics, slide decks, or posts, these free tools can help you boost your images along with awareness and engagement.

Read full post here.