Vivid imagery, stunning colors, inspirational content are all key features that set apart a good website or blog from an average site. We all like catchy items. Ask a woman why she bought a certain outfit or fashion accessory and nine times out of ten she will tell you that it "caught her eye" We are visual people in many ways and this includes our online experience. But just like in the real world there are limits to how far we should go in trying to attract attention to our social media sites, the design elements of social media websites is a topic for another entry.
Having quality images on your website, blog or the social media site of business is important. Anyone will tell that when a site appears unprofessional people quickly move along. So how do you obtain quality images. Well unless you are a photographer or graphic designer you will likely have to outsource your material. Outsourcing is key. A business can never engage in copyright infringement. The costs of doing so can be outrageous.
The dangers of using social media sites is we can often forget to provide the owner with the proper attribution. On a blog you may want to re-post another person's article. If they grant you permission great but you should never do so without providing a link. Even this is dangerous and does not even fall into the grey area of fairuse. Fairuse is simply the using a portion of someone else's work while giving them the proper credit. Until laws are more clearly defined this is a tricky subject.
So where do you get images for social media legally. There are a number of stock sights which are of use to businesses and bloggers. I have used them myself on occasion and their fees are relatively inexpensive depending on the purpose of their use.
iStock, Shutterstock, Corbis
Here is a good article which may provide some insights on what you need to know about copyrights.
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