Where to Get Free Stock Images

The best images are those specifically taken for your blog or social media post. But let’s face it, most business don’t have the time, skill, or resources to do that. The second-best option is a carefully-chosen stock photo. Most stock image sites require you to pay, either a subscription or per picture. But we’ve collected a list of 17 sites that offer stock photos for free, so you can get your post’s picture fix without shelling out your hard-earned cash.

1. Pixabay – one of our personal favorites, with a wide variety that includes both pictures and illustrations.
2. Gratisography – if you want quirky pictures, this is the place.
3. IM Free – some of the photos require you to attribute them to the creator, but the photos themselves are great.
4. Burst – great photos sorted into categories and all free for commercial use.
5. Picjumbo – over 600 high-resolution images.
6. Unsplash – they add 10 new photos every 10 days, and are great if you want soft, artsy images.
7. Negative Space – a great selection, and you can even search by color.
8. Kaboompics – bright, modern photos.
9. FancyCrave – they aim to provide “stunning, emotionally-driven” photos.
10. RawPixel – has images, vectors, and .psd mockups.
11. StockSnap – beautiful photos on a wide variety of subjects.
12. Startup Stock Photos – if you want business-related photos, this is your place.
13. Splitshire – includes images and videos, all stunning.
14. ISO Republic – thousands of great pictures sorted into categories for easy browsing.
15. New Old Stock – a great place to get vintage-style pictures.
16. Pexels – curates stock images from some of the other sites on this list, so it’s a great one-stop stop to search.
17. Life of Vids – these are actually videos and not pictures, but they’re free to use.

6 Great Social Media and Digital Marketing Resources

One of the most important things to do as a social media marketer is to always keep learning. The internet is always changing, and if you want to be successful, you need to make sure you know what the new best practices are and have some way to learn about new tools and strategies.

Here are 6 of the resources we use to keep ourselves educated about social media and digital marketing.

Hootsuite’s Blog

Hootsuite is a social media scheduling tool that we use here at Ely Social, and their blog is great. It covers everything from the “why” of using social media to tools, tips, tricks, suggestions, and advice for successful social media marketing. (They also do amazing webinars.) They explain everything in simple terms, so if you’re looking for a beginner to intermediate resource, this is the blog for you.

Buffer Blog

Buffer is a service similar to Hootsuite, and their blog offers similar things. While Hootsuite focuses more on advice and tips, though, Buffer is a huge fan of lists and step-by-step articles, telling you about all the coolest tools and giving you detailed instructions for doing various social media things. This is another good beginner/intermediate resource to follow.

Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner may be one of the most comprehensive social media marketing sites out there. They have detailed guides, extensive reports, and instructions for using features you didn’t even know existed, and none of their posts are shorter than 750 words. They also post a LOT. If you’re looking to dive deep and get advanced information, this is where you want to be.

Digital Marketer

Digital Marketer covers all aspects of business in the digital age, from blogging to social media to traffic and conversion rates to landing pages. You may find not all of their articles are useful to you, but their blog is incredibly comprehensive and you’re sure to find something that you can apply to your business.

SEMrush

This resource is more about digital marketing than social media – SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, and the SEMrush blog talks about all topics related to search engine marketing, from content marketing to tools and strategies to, of course, search engine optimization (SEO) for your website.

Yoast

Yoast is a SEO plugin for WordPress, but even if you don’t use Yoast itself, the blog is a great resource for all things SEO and website organization.

Those are our favorite resources to keep learning about social media marketing tools and best practices. Did we miss your favorite? Leave it in the comments!