11 ideas to help you select more inspiring images

A picture says a thousand words. We all know that saying right? It might be because of our evolutionary primal development, which makes us all pretty darn shallow, but heck I won't get too philosophical about it... The human brain processes visuals 60,000x faster than text. This means selecting quality images is crucial for digital marketers in order to gain more clicks, web traffic and conversions. 

Unfortunately, most marketing teams, due to a lack of time, budget and skill, struggle with consistently selecting good images to go alongside their content. In this blog post I have outlined some tips for you to keep in mind to hopefully give your content the bang you desire.

Firstly, before you think about the image, think about your title. My top tip is to ensure that your subject title and image work in harmony. By doing this it allows you to create more playful titles, with the added bonus of also creating more playful images to go along with it.

Secondly, think about what emotion your story is trying to convey, is it a happy story, a powerful story, are you trying to make people feel safe, are you trying to inspire or excite you audience?

Here are some examples of images that represent popular emotions/ trends that I think work quite well:

• The Beach

People love going to the beach. For some illogical reason people associate a day out to the beach as winning in life. These images will make your customer feel happy.

• Stunning nature photography

Beauty inspires us, but so does nature. So if you’re story is inspirational you might want to consider using something to do with nature. Obviously the more aesthetically pleasing the image is the better.

• Blurry lights

I’ve picked this as a category as it’s a bit of trend and seems to work quite well generally. Would work well for a general inspiring message. Kind of makes people feel safe too.

• Wooly jumpers

There’s something about wooly jumpers, they seem to work well in adverts. They make people feel warm, safe and happy. I once wore a wooly jumper in high school and got the piss taken out of me. Ever since I’ve been too scared to ever wear one.

Probably works best for B2C.

• The funny animal pics

Animals are emotional creatures and humans love them because of that. These lovable little creatures will make your post more playful, funny and ultimately more clickable. Go ahead and try experimenting with them.

Probably best for B2C but I wouldn’t rule out experimenting in your B2B strategy too.

• Hot air balloons

Inspiring, exciting, colorful, and makes people feel happy.

I imagine these pics are just as good for B2B as they would be for B2C.

•   The Forest

I love forests. They are awe inspiringly awesome.

•   The sunrise/ sunset pic

I think these work well for product marketing, or if you’re try to convey power. Can you feel the power?

•   The organised office
  

A type of image that you are likely to find quite often. We all strive to be better organised in our work, and these type of images capture that well. 

• Raindrops on window

To be used to make your reader feel safe.

•   Whooshing city traffic
  

To be used to excite your audience.

Of course the big problem is where do you source these images? I recommend that you source them from a stock website as it’s essential your images are high res, plus those websites usually will have a nice selection for you to pick from. Here are some of the best free stock sites I’m aware of –

1. Stocksnap has a lovely selection and very good search functionality, most of the pics that I have used in this post have come from there.  

2. I came across Corbis Images recently. I think this is about as good as royalty free stock images gets. But I think they are being bought over in May, which may mean their pics won't be free anymore. Boo!

3. Unsplash is absolutely stunning and is probably the pick of the bunch from this list.

4. SplitShire has a nice selection too, but I found it to be not so user friendly. Might work better on your computer browser though. 

5. IMcreator is my ^5th choice 

6. Gratisography is a nice quirky alternative 

7. Don’t completely rule out flickr too.

What do you think of this method of selecting images? Do you think it would help you? Can you suggest an alternative method to picking images. Let me know by leaving a comment below.