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(I will never rent, trade, or sell your information) * = required fieldIf you’ve got a website, blog, or e-zine, I’m sure you are interested in making it exciting and compelling to your visitors. A snazzy graphic design is certainly one easy way to dress up your text content, but another way is to add illustrative images to your online materials. This might be a no-brainer to you, but you might also feel unsure about the proper use of images and their preparation – enough that you don’t really utilize them regularly.
When selecting images to use for your online materials, you have a lot of choices. One of the simplest is to take your own photos. With a digital camera, you can grab photos of yourself, your staff, your place of business, products, etc. This is a quick, easy, and inexpensive option. There are a few things to keep in mind, though.
Professionalism – If you are using the snapshots in a casual way – in your blog or e-zine, for instance, having a less-than-polished image is just fine. As long as the image is clear, decently composed, and properly lit, it will work great for these applications, and the “I shot this myself” look is actually gaining appeal in the current “DIY” marketplace where too-slick advertising is less trusted. However, if you are planning to use the images on your main business website, especially if the photos are of your products for sale or headshots, you should consider getting a professional to take the photos for you. You want your main website to look very professional, and good product images will definitely help you sell more, so you shouldn’t hesitate to invest in them.
Appropriateness – When taking casual images of yourself, staff, or your workplace, keep in mind that your customers will be looking at these images. The amount of “personality” you include will depend on who your customers are and how you are positioned in the marketplace (what your brand image is). Showing a group shot from an office party is probably alright, but a photo of your staff in the midst of drunken debauchery might not be the best image to project in your company communications. (This also goes for social networking photo galleries as well – keep tabs on the Facebook photos you are “tagged” in, and if you use Facebook for business networking, “un-tag” yourself from any inappropriate albums.)
Other options for images are clipart and stock photo websites. There are many decent and affordable sources for “royalty-free” images (which is what you want to be looking for). Try a web search for “royalty-free photos”, “royalty-free images”, or “royalty-free illustrations” to find more than enough options.
When selecting images for your communications, whether they are your own photos or royalty-free images, choose pictures which illustrate your text in some way, whether literally (a reference to your new storefront includes a photo of your storefront and awning), or metaphorically (an illustration of a light-bulb when giving hot tips on your blog).
If you have a professional web developer who is preparing the images for your website, etc. She will have the expertise to optimize the images for display. The best thing you can do to guarantee that your developer will be able to make the most of your images is to provide them to her in a high-enough resolution. Depending on how the images will be used, your developer will be able to tell you how large they need to be, but a general guideline is that if you want to use an image on your website, blog, or e-zine without cropping, sending an image of 300-500 pixels (width & height) will give her plenty to work with. (If you want the image cropped, send an even larger file.)
If you will be posting images yourself (because you use a content management system to update your website, or you create your own blog posts or e-zine issues), you will want to understand the basics of posting images online so that you get the best results.
You should become familiar with using an image editing program to do the following:
The main thing to keep in mind is that you want to make your adjustments (such as color correction and cropping) to your largest version of the image file, then create a re-sized version in the correct dimensions for your online use. Make sure you match the image size (width & height in pixels) to the pixel space you plan to use it.
Some content management systems, blogging platforms, etc. will handle resizing for you automatically, but if yours doesn’t, learn how to do this in your image editing software and your results will be much better, I promise.
Images can help break up long expanses of text content, add visual interest, and make your communications more appealing and professional. If you need help figuring out how to use images better for your online communications, contact me for assistance.
