Stock Photos for Instagram

Stock Photos and Stock Photography

Eye-catching Instagram posts with corresponding hashtags are the sharpest tool of the social media tool box. If you want to become an influencer or to establish a successful Instagram feed, you need high quality stock photos that are suitable for commercial use, i.e. royalty-free images that make such usage possible. What doesn't work on Instagram is clichéd stock photography. With such image content in your Instagram account, you risk offending the community and even causing a shitstorm with devastating effects on the company or product image. The right stock imagery and a constant flow of new images is key for modern social media marketing. Analysing Google helps to find stock photo sites with high quality images.

Stock Photography and Licensing

You need a valid image license that includes usage in Instagram marketing such as Instagram posts or Instagram feeds. Royalty-free, however, does not mean free of charge - the name is somewhat misleading - but simply that you no longer have to pay an annual license fee for each individual use of the stock imagery. You only purchase a royalty-free license once, and then use the stock photo for as long as you want. Many professional influencers and fuel their Instagram accounts and Instagram feeds with eye-catching high quality photos. Obviously if you run your own photo shoot with your DLSR camera or your iPhone then you are the owner of that quality content. Then there are Creative Commons licenses that have various levels of

Stock photos as Content

Self-produced Instagram photos shot with the iPhone showing employees or the production process definitely work well in an Instagram story. Only the technical and artistic quality of such photo shoots often does not reach the standards of stock images from stock photo websites. The big advantages of stock images are the low cost, the high quality, a high resolution and the choice of beautiful photos, that makes finding the perfect image on a stock photo site  an inspiring joyride. There are many stock photo websites or a community of photographers offering free images for bloggers or for instagram posts. Some of these free stock photos that can be found via Google are really free or with a Creative Commons license you just might have to mention the free stock photo site in the hashtags. But that is all very confusing and for real commercial uses such as the Instagram account of a company the risk involved when using free stock photos as Instagram photos is simply to high. The cost attached with free photos for social media marketing might be higher than expected. Finally the access to a constant flow of new images in a high-quality helps to build quality content for Instagram marketing with the most beautiful photos in a high resolution.