You’ve no doubt heard the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In the digital marketing world, we know that our words matter -- but so do the images we use to accompany them.
In fact, data shows that images make online articles a lot easier to digest. One analysis found that articles containing images receive 94% more views than articles without images. On platforms like Facebook, posts with images also receive the most engagement. Images also help us to retain the information we read to recall later in a way that can’t be replicated with text alone.
Basically, you can’t expect anyone to be interested in what you have to say online if you don’t provide something with visual interest. Using images in blog posts or on webpages can break up the copy in attractive and easy-to-comprehend ways. Plus, the images you choose can say a lot about your brand. If you pick wisely, you can instantly communicate what your business is all about and make a positive impression on your target audience.
Conversely, using the wrong kinds of images can potentially hurt your brand perception or even leave you open to legal liability. And when you provide B2B fulfillment services in the digital marketing sector, you need access to a wide range of captivating (and legally obtained!) graphics that can provide the versatility your clients deserve.
After all, humans are highly visual creatures -- and we rely on pictures to tell our stories. At Semify, we wanted a better way to serve our clients and our network of publishers through our content creation. This is what prompted us to recently make a switch in our choice of image provider for 2021.
Storyblocks, our new image provider, is passionate about bringing ideas to life through the use of high-quality visual media. With Storyblocks, we’ll have a more robust library of images to integrate into both our own content and the content we create for our clients. This will allow us to deliver even better results, particularly in regards to post engagement and time spent on-page. We won’t be limited to static images either, as Storyblocks offers video footage (including animation!) that we’re excited to try out for our clients.
Another feature that swayed our team to make this decision is the stronger licensing and copyright protections provided by Storyblocks. Over the years, we’ve learned to do our due diligence in regard to our image library. While we once felt comfortable with the contractual protections offered by our previous image provider, we now feel the need to bolster our legal protections as we move forward. Our old images, from Adobe Spark, were CC0 licensed, based on Adobe filters. If you have any questions about licensing or legal stuff, please let us know. As we plug along through the ongoing pandemic and ring in the new year, it’s more important than ever to ensure our team, our clients, and our network of publishers are safeguarded from any potential future legalities stemming from image use. We’re confident that our new provider offers the security and peace of mind we all need without ever sacrificing our image quality.
Best of all, we’re integrating these images right into our dashboard, making it easier for our team to create visual assets and graphics that perfectly align with client content. For the sake of both efficiency and job satisfaction, this change simply makes sense. We’re thrilled about reducing the number of clicks it takes to make something truly special to accompany our content -- and about having total control over how the database is designed. Storyblocks says that it can give us “the power to create without limits,” and we feel invigorated to explore that creative freedom.
At Semify, we’re especially interested in creating freedom. We believe that growing together creates the freedom to do more, have more, and be more. And we’re confident that we’ll be able to build on what’s possible with our new image provider -- all to the benefit of our customers.
You’ll start to see images from our new database right away. We’re continuing to improve on our interface and on the capabilities of what we can do with our visual media, so we’d love to hear your feedback once we’ve switched everything over to Storyblocks. We know that this more abundant library of images and video content will allow us to better serve our clients and create even better marketing content for businesses (including our own!). To learn more about this change or to find out how our content marketing and white label SEO services can help your agency grow in 2021, please get in touch with our team today.