How To Use Images for Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic way of generating and sharing useful, relevant, and consistent streams of content to attract a clearly defined target audience. Its goal is to lead customers into action to create profits for the business. Most marketers are utilizing content marketing. The truth is, it’s used by small enterprises to popular business organizations across the globe.

There are many tools used in content marketing. This could include data analytics, videos, and social media management software.

Likewise, images are also an essential tool for content marketers. Images are more than just a tool to paint a picture in your audience’s minds. A well-placed and carefully composed image acts as a storyteller and offers a way to elicit emotions, visions, and dreams. Lastly, it can also attract attention and determine whether a website visitor will stay on your page longer.

As using images is vital for a content marketer, here is how to use them in a content marketing campaign plan.

Set Up Accounts on One or Two Image Websites That You Will Use

It’s useless to overburden yourself with accounts on various image websites that you won’t have to use. Therefore, it’s ideal to research various image sites and then select at least one or two that are suitable for your business and can attract people within your target audience.

Once you’ve chosen your ideal sites, go on and set up your profile on each by finishing these steps:

Overall, if you’re in the construction industry, one way to market your services online is by taking professional-grade photos of construction projects that show the state of the project before and after completion.

Begin With Images That You Already Own

Another step for using images in your content marketing is to take inventory of and use some of the image assets you already own.  You’ll have more difficulty gaining steam with your new image-sharing accounts if you just began with nothing. So, go through your website or blog and take off images that you have made by yourself and upload some of those to your new profiles.

Likewise, one advisable tip you can apply is to use the cloud to generate and keep folders for each theme that your images are categorized, such as product shots, office shots, employee shots, and others. Remember to use direct and relevant file names for every image.

Adhere To Copyright Laws

Image trends today vary. If you use images outside of free image websites, you should know every visual you can find online is protected by copyright. Using copyrighted images is always an act of breaking the terms of law or agreement, even if made unconsciously or accidentally. In addition, illegal use or distribution of images can result in somewhat expensive penalties that can get you into legal issues.

So, how will an image be copyrighted? If you created the image, you own your creative work’s copyright. Yet, someone else has the copyright for other images you’ll see from another source. And so, it would require a license or written permission before you can use such images.

Yet, there are cases where you may not need to ask for a license or permission. Some instances are:

The image has a Creative Commons (CC) license. When you see this license type, read if it mainly allows you to utilize the image. You should also spend the time reading the terms and conditions of the CC license to see if your use is within what it’ll enable.

The copyright owner clearly said that you could use the image without restrictions.

The image that you’re about to get is in the public domain.

Optimize Your Images for Search Engine Optimization

Many people underestimate what images can do in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). The reason is that text is a more important factor in optimization. Yet, images have a solid potential for increasing your inbound traffic. The fact is that 36 percent of consumers have used visual search for shopping online, and over half of them prefer visual information to text when doing such activity.

Optimizing your images with keywords and descriptions allows visuals to be ready for visual search in search engines. Likewise, the image description should contain your focus keyword and be connected to the image’s content.

Conclusion

You can take note of various things for using images as part of your content marketing strategy.

For one, you can set up an account on the chosen image sites that you’ll use. Second, you can use images you already have. And lastly, you can optimize your images for SEO by adding keywords and descriptions to make them ready for visual search.

These are just some ways to use images for content marketing, so consider them handy for future reference.