Stock Photos are Dead: Create These Blog Images Instead

Illustration by Laetro

The use of images in your blog posts is a no-brainer.

Images are an easy way to break up chunks of text, add context, or give your readers a more accessible medium through which to digest your content.

With the growth of written content online, it’s harder to have your content be unique from others. Writers need to adapt to the changing landscape.

How can you continue to engage your audience when so many bloggers have written on the same topics—and will continue to do so?

The answer is original imagery.

Blog Image Trends: Why Stock Photos Are Dead

With more content available on the web every day, it’s more important than ever to stand out.

While finding ways to put a unique spin on your blog post topics is critical, there are only so many angles on one subject. You need other types of content, such as photographs and illustrations, to make your mark.

Unfortunately, stock photos just don’t cut it anymore when you have the resources and time to make an impact.

stock photos are dead- use these blog images instead — Illustration by Laetro

This reason is in part because blog images don’t only live on your blog. They make the rounds on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest whenever your posts are shared. Chances are, your users have seen similar stock photos many times already, and they’re bored with them.

With so many articles to read, videos to watch, and social media news to ingest, the average reader won’t spend hours looking for the best article on your topic. They’ll choose the most visually appealing option nearly every time.

This is backed by visual content statistics, such as those collected by Venngage. When surveying marketers on content that helped them reach their marketing goals, original images performed best 40% of the time compared to stock photos at 13%.

So before you use stock photography in your next blog post, ask yourself:

Will my readers interact with the same stale image they’ve seen numerous times when researching this topic? Or will they choose to interact with an original image that more perfectly captures the content?

Top Reasons You Should Use Interactive and Original Images on Your Blog

Your goal as a digital marketer is to increase conversions.

So how do you do this even better than you already are, given the changing online landscape?

There are plenty of ways to drive traffic to your website. But what’s more important is driving the right traffic—the users who will engage with your content.

Images can help. According to BlogTyrant, images can up conversions by over 300%.