Where to Find Quality Images for Your Press Release
You know that images are a critical component of online content, including your press release. Visuals are processed more quickly than text, and people respond better to content when there are images within the information. Visual content is shared more often than text alone and press releases that contain images tend to outperform those that don’t.
However, simply throwing an image or two into your content isn’t enough. Poor quality images can actually harm your brand credibility and negatively impact your press release results. It’s important to make sure you use quality images. The following locations are useful to help you find unique, relevant, and quality images for your press release.
Google Image Search
Use this free tool to find images. You can filter by commercial licensed images in their advanced search feature. If you find an image that you want to use but it’s not commercially licensed, consider reaching out to the owner to see if you can use it in your release. Ask for permission.
Flickr
Flickr has a number of options. To find images that are free to use commercially, head to your settings and look at ‘advanced search’ options. Make sure you’re only viewing images in their “Creative Commons”. The rights for the photos will be listed next to the photo.
You may need to provide attribution to the photographer within your press release. There are literally thousands of photos to review. Use keywords to help you find relevant photos. Note: with any of these online photo searching tools you may want to make sure you have “Safe search” on so that you don’t see inappropriate photos – and you wouldn’t want to use them in your release anyway.
Stock Photo Sites
There are a handful of quality stock photo sites. Morguefile.com is an aggregate site that offers both free photos and images from stock sites like Getty, iStock and more. Start with the free search to see what you can find. Getty is quite expensive, but the price may mean that the image isn’t overused online. You want to avoid using photos that journalists and your audience have already seen a hundred times.
Public Domain
Public domain pictures are another option. Check out sites like http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ and http://publicdomainarchive.com/. You’ll generally find older, vintage, photos but they may be relevant to your release. Pixabay, http://pixabay.com/en/, is another free image site to consider.
When choosing images make sure they are unique, relevant, and timely. Make sure any technology in the photo is appropriate and that you’re not using the same generic image that hundreds of others have already used.
When in doubt, hire a photographer and get a collection of headshots and relevant product images that you can provide to the media and keep on hand for future press releases. It may cost you a little more, however the investment can be a valuable resource for your press release marketing campaign.
