Branding your coaching business is fundamental to reaching your business growth goals.

Are you wondering how to brand your coaching business in a way that sets you up for whopping success?

Maybe you already have a coaching life, but you're not reaching enough people.

Together we will uncover the importance of branding, how to choose the identity of your coaching life, and break down the steps for your branding plan. 

Why branding your coaching business is important

Marketing and branding are both important, but the difference between the two is what makes branding so important for your coaching life.

"Branding" is who you are; the person. And "marketing" is how you build awareness for that identity; the logo.

Both are important to expanding your reach and maintaining client loyalty.

As a solopreneur, you’ve got to stand out among 7.8 billion people. People buy from people not logos so branding is how you educate your audience about who you are.

How to brand your coaching business

Now that we understand the importance of branding, you might be wondering how you can brand your coaching life?

If you have a solid understanding of who you are, what your story is, and what you stand for, you're already halfway there.

Branding communicates those things in layers, allowing people to get the full sense of what it will be like to do business with you.

Successfully branding your coaching business will leave a mental imprint that immediately comes up when they think of your business.

So, let's come up with an effective branding strategy for your coaching business.

In our experience, there are generally four elements to keep in mind when coming up with a branding strategy.

Let's break these four elements down so you can create an effective branding strategy for your coaching life.

• Brand Value – What do you stand for? What is the reason you do what you do? Your “why”. Your brand values typically guide your actions, your decisions, and how you influence.

• Niche – What are you good at? When you tell someone that you are a life coach, the term is so broad that you will need a niche to communicate specifically who would benefit the most from your skills. An example of a niche for a life coach is a Health and Fitness Coach. You can view more examples of niches in your field by clicking here for inspiration.

• Target Audience – Your target audience is who will you be coaching. Will your audience have an age range or limit? Is your coaching life for an audience of a specific gender? For more information about your target audience matters and how to find one, check out this article

• Brand Identity – Your coaching brand will come to life with your branding identity; the brand identity is basically a physical or visual representation of your brand.

With those questions answered, you can confidently move forward in laying out your brand strategy for your coaching life. 

Awesome! Now, we are going to put all these elements together to create your brand identity. 

You will need a brand name, slogan, mission statement, logo, and color scheme for your brand identity. First thing's first, let's think of a name for your coaching life.

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What's in a Name

You may already have the perfect name for your coaching life—and maybe you do, but before you make a final decision there are a few things to consider.

For example, should you name your business after yourself?

Should you include your initials or family name in the title of your business?

Let's explore some issues people have when naming their business and how you can avoid them.

• Using your own name: If your professional coaching life fails, it may give a bad reputation to your name. If you try to start another business with a bad reputation to your name, you're already starting off on a bad foot with your audience. What if you decide to merge with another life coach? You will probably have to change your name to James & Janet's to make your partner feel included or change the name altogether. What if you get married or your legal name changes?

• Unexclusive name: If the name isn't unique, someone else most likely already has it. This is a name that can run into legal issues. One way to possibly avoid this is by registering your name properly. Each state is different, but you can learn more about the proper way to register your business name by clicking here.

• Too narrow: If the name of your business is too narrow, it might become irrelevant long term. For example, if in 1998 you named your business "Twentieth Century Fitness" by the year 2001, your business would have  become "irrelevant" because it was outdated. This is the main reason we now know FOX as Fox and not Twentieth Century Fox as it was originally called.

• Domain availability: A domain is the name of your website. Using your business name in the website link makes it easy to find you, but sometimes that domain is already taken. A quick fix to this issue is to check the domain before registering the name. Another way you can prevent this issue is by spelling the name uniquely. For example, you might choose to call your business Appl3 instead of Apple.

Great job on choosing a name for branding your coaching business life, but we need a catchphrase that captures the attention of our audience and makes it stick in their minds.

If I were to ask you what you wanted to eat and you answered, "Something…fresh" I would automatically think of Subway, and you want to know why? It's because they use the slogan "Eat Fresh".

Slogans are typically two to seven words long. Do you have a catchphrase in mind for your coaching life?

We are making so much progress, and I can't wait to see the completion of your ideas in the end!

Along with a slogan, businesses typically have a mission statement. Everything we discussed earlier including your niche, your target audience, and your purpose, will all be included in this statement.

Your mission statement is not something you advertise, but it is needed to explain why your business exists.

Logo and Color Scheme

We got through the boring part of branding, but now it's time for the fun part! Let's talk about the logo for your business.

The logo and the color scheme of your business go hand-in-hand so we can kill two birds with one stone. Haven't you always wanted to design your own logo?

Some people prefer to purchase a logo instead of making their own, but let's explore these options together.

Whether you want to purchase your logo or design it yourself, deciding on a color scheme is still our next step.

Why is a color scheme important? It seems like such a minor detail that it shouldn't matter, right? Well…not quite.

The Importance Behind Colors in Branding

I learned the importance of color scheme from Rebecca Kowalewicz, the Vice President of Clearbridge Branding Agency. She wrote the article, "The Colors of Branding" for Forbes magazine and I would like to share what I have learned with you.

The color scheme is important in business branding because it reveals the value and character of your brand. Since colors are associated with value, they connect with your audiences' emotions.

Kowalewicz also says that most of the time your brand will consist of three colors: the base, the accent, and the neutral color. The base color is normally used for the name or the focus of your logo, and the neutral color is used for the background.

Businesses can choose to alternate the color scheme, but the accent is used to decorate your logo and is not the main focus. Think about Netflix, for example. The word "Netflix" is in bold red and the background is black; but sometimes the word "Netflix" is white, and the background is red.

Your brand colors are probably going to be used on your uniform, business cards, website, flyers, and logo. That's why it's important that you consider them carefully.

Remember that your brand gives people an insight into who you are as a life coach. That's why it's important to review the meaning of the colors together.

Meanings Behind Colors in Branding

When you walk into your local market, have you noticed how it is decorated with red during Valentine's Day? Well, this is not a coincidence.

Business uses certain colors to connect with people's emotions. Since red is typically associated with passion, this is a smart way to increase purchases during Valentines.

Red also represents energy and danger. It's no wonder why brands use red to emphasize urgency.

Have you heard about the little girl who called the fire department when her house caught on fire? The dispatcher on the line asked her how to get to her house, and she answered, "Duh! Big red truck!"

Okay, that's just an old joke—but it does reveal the truth about the color red. Even little kids' memories improve when they associate objects with colors. So, what colors should you use for your logo?

As a life coach, you may want to consider colors like green, orange, and yellow.

Have you heard of Starbucks? Of course, you have. The two colors they use for their brand are green and white. Green typically represents health, growth, and safety. If you want to give your audience a sense of security and safety as a life coach, then this may be one of the colors for your color scheme.

Orange symbolizes positivity, warmth, and optimism. Some businesses use orange with yellow, which relates a message of joy, positive mentality, and inspiration.

Color scheme choices are endless... At the end of the day, it's up to you, but you can find out all the different color scheme combinations and what they mean by clicking here.

Designing Your Logo

You have a name for your coaching life, and you have an idea of the colors you want to use in your logo.

How about we look at some options for designing your logo.

You can create your design from scratch, you can use logo design websites, or you can simply pay someone to do all the work. Which option sounds more pleasing to you?

If you want to create your logo from scratch, one way to do that is to use a software or app like Adobe Illustrator. This gives you full control of your design and you are not limited by what you can do.

If you use software like Adobe or Photoshop, you can create your own text font and style with the tip of your finger—literally. However, designing a logo from scratch isn't for everyone.

If you're not willing to watch countless tutorial videos to figure it out, you may want to use an online logo building service.

Canva is a popular one. The logos are simple to create. Just type in your business name, choose your industry, and the fonts you like. The downside is that you are limited when it comes to the designs and they look stock and unoriginal. 

You are stuck, a blank page and no idea what to write. Or, you are overwhelmed by what many ideas, so many topics and you can’t even come out with the ideal topic. If only this was already done and plugged into a social media content calendar.

Totally relatable.

These are the types of scenario content creators experience from time to time. The thing is, if we continue like this, what used to be fun for may become a chore. No, we don’t want that. We want to reap the rewards of what we love doing while enjoying the process.

So what’s the Solution?

There’s no doubt that blogs and social media are essential platforms to create content. This implies that we shouldn’t only worry about creating content, but working on strategies to keep these content organized. From scheduling and timing posts to keeping up and monitoring deadlines, we should keep our contents organized. We can achieve this by creating content calendars.

Why We Need Social Media Content Calendars

A content calendar is arguably the best way to manage and organize your contents online. Some of the challenges we face are planning content, worrying about consistency and doing everything by ourselves. Editing, writing, social media design, marketing and possibly another job and responsibilities that require our time and energy.

But it doesn’t have to be so hard or complicated. There are several successful blogs with fantastic content that people devour at a high rate. These blogs amidst other reasons achieve this because they plan and prepare their content. Thankfully, you can too with a content calendar.

However easy creating a content calendar that schedules and plans our posts may sound like, the point is to stick to it. If we don’t stick to it, it might work out in the end.

Download our Ultimate Guide to Delegating Here for More Tips & Tools on How to Delegate as a Solopreneur

In summary, a content calendar can help grow our blogs and social media. It’s like a system to keep our contents on the track without suffering bumps or oversights that could be avoided.

How Content Calendars Can Help Blogs and Social Media Grow

1.     Keeps Us Organized

How many times did you have a blog post idea and forgot about it after another topic popped up in your heads? Now, imagine if you start writing all your content topics ideas in a place (whether a note and a pen or electronically), won’t it be easy to find and work on them?

Instead of mismanaging content ideas, we can use a content calendar to write down our thoughts and plan. Would I need a graphic designer to execute this topic?

Should I start finding links I’ll be adding to this topic when I write it? This way, we can store topics and plan what we need to execute ahead before it gets overwhelming during a rush.

2.     Helps You Stay Consistent

Research confirms that people achieve their goals when they write them down. Writing down goals is the first way to stick to them and hold ourselves accountable should we lose focus.

A social media content calendar will allow you to plan your posts. We can write down posts ideas and assign dates, set deadlines to them. This reduces blogger’s block or racking our heads at the dying minutes for a new topic.

3.     Can Help Re-strategize Your Type of Content

All content creators want engagements, and having a content strategy is the path to get there. This way we can understand our audience, what they like and how we can improve. To get the results we want, each of our contents needs to be deliberate, organized and optimized for the SEO.

A content calendar can help us work on this. For example, if you're a food blogger and you find that the recipe for seafood got lots of engagement, plan to write another recipe for seafood.

4.     Organize Your Writers and Contributors

If you have people who write and contribute to your blog, a content calendar is a way to track them and organize them. In essence, they're working when you need it. We can write down topics idea, assign topics to writers or collate posts from our contributors and plan how and when you'll post.

Also, a social media content calendar will help us review posts before they’re published and make it convenient to share our strategy with our teams.

5.     Foster Creativity

Content calendars apart from making your works easier and saving time will also improve our creativity. When you aren’t overwhelmed or always in a rush, you'll have space to think up new creative ideas.

Also, it helps us assign a purpose to everything we want to publish or post. We'll be posting because we've planned why we need the post, and how it can help us with engagement.

How to Build a Content Calendar

We can decide to build a content calendar ourselves using tools like Google Sheets. However, there are scheduling and social media management tools that help plan posts ahead. Yet, knowing the basis and need for a calendar is just as important as using the calendar itself.

The following are tips on how to create a social media content calendar;

1.     Conduct a Social Media or Blog Audit

Before using that scheduling tool or template we download, know what channel we're posting on, who our audience is, what they want. Also, we need to know which platform gets the most engagement for your content and what content is best for each platform type.

 For example, a longer content won’t get much engagement on social media compared to a shorter one. People prefer easy-to-read information on social media. Also, we need to decide what format our contents will be in, audio, video, text?

2.     Build a Content Strategy

We need a content strategy. What type of post do you want to produce for your social media channel? How are we sharing them? How frequently do we want to be posting? These are questions that’ll help organize content calendars.

Also, it is helpful to note and plan the type of content we’ll be sharing. It could be blog posts, videos, infographics, news announcements.

Further, we also need a strategy as it can help make our content calendars feasibility. For example, if you know you'll be posting pictures twice a week in the coming week, start finding ways to get a graphic designer or stock images on the internet.

3.     Establish Your Posting Schedule

There is always the best time to post content. For example, a post about the best stores to buy the perfect gift for Christmas will do well in December than in June. We should always try to find the best time that fits our content.

Social media like Facebook, Instagram have in-built analytics that help track the best time to post, which post got the most engagement and information that can help us schedule posts accordingly.

We can use scheduling tools to schedule our posts ahead after writing them. As we go on with our daily activities, the post we planned five days ago has been posted and getting engagement from the audience.

4.     Have a Content Repository

As stated earlier, sometimes you lose and forget topics you want to talk about because you didn’t store them. Apart from that, topics you’ve already worked on can be stored and written down too.

A repository is exactly what it is -- a place to store all topic ideas so that when building a content calendar, we know what content you're choosing from.

It could be a notebook, a Google doc or spreadsheet. We need to make sure it’s detailed. We may include in the repository the following:

•         Title of content
•         Content format
•         Images (this is feasible when you use electronic tools)
•         Snippets (especially for social media posts)

5.     Find out What You Want for Your Calendar

Different content creators with different needs right? While I may need a content calendar with topics and dates only, you may need a calendar with the following:

•         Due dates
•         Publish dates
•         Writers assigned (for those with writers and contributor,
•         SEO keywords, platform (for those with more than one platform)
•         The status of each post (Published, approved, written, edited, draft)
•         Links and so on

Identifying how your social media content calendar will look like will help you create a perfect one or choose a perfect template.

6.     Start Building or Filling out Your Calendar

There are several websites where one can get free calendar templates. Also, we can use tools like DivvyHQ, CoSchedule, Google Calendar and Trello to plan posts and schedule them.

With tools like these, we can easily customize to our taste and brainstorm to our fill. Check this post out for awesome tools to use as content calendars.

Now let's start filling up this calendar, publish and due date, the topics, SEO keywords and other information we want to include.

7.     Stick to It

No doubt, it may be hard to follow our calendars, especially if we're starting. That’s why it’s best to set workable goals, goals we can quickly meet. The point of the calendar is to get rid of the stress and have a space to breathe.

You Don’t Have to Do the Job Yourself

Hiring a social media manager can help our businesses. Apart from being professionals in such areas, they reduce the workload;

•         Improve customer service
•         Help us develop relevant content
•         Schedule our post
•         Understand our analytics and come up with strategies to reach target customers
•         Monitor, listen and engage our audience and much more.

That means all the workload doesn’t have to be on our shoulders. We can hire a social media manager and in return, we have someone monitoring or promoting our business. Someone with professional skills that understands what works and what doesn’t.

Worried about investing in social media? Don't be! You'll reap favorable results from one. Want to know how to hire a social media manager? Click here.

Time to Get Your Blog and Social Media in Order

Hopefully, you’ve now realized the benefits of content calendars – why you need it and how it can help. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to create one!

Having a social media content calendar can help with planning, managing time and reducing workload. It’s best we start considering using one now for positive results. We can build one using Google sheets or use paid tools like Trello and CoSchedule.

Meanwhile, sticking to the content calendar is the goal. Are you meeting our goals? If you have a team, is your calendar clear and comprehensive?

In conclusion, remember success doesn’t happen overnight. Hopefully, the tips above will help create a plan that works well and gives results that make every time and input worthwhile.

Related Articles:

Using Stock Photos for Marketing?

Our Review of the Best Online Scheduling Tools

How to Know When You Need To Hire A Virtual Assistant

Here are my top tips for knowing when you’re ready to hire your first freelancer

1. You’re turning down work.

    If you’re so busy that you're actually turning down work, then you need someone to take some of that work off your plate so you can focus on your clients

2. Your clients, customers or suppliers can’t reach you.

    If you’re having trouble keeping up with emails, returning calls, placing orders or scheduling appointments, it’s time to hire a VA!

3. You need someone with specific skills.

    Want to up your SEO game or have new headshots?  That’s the perfect time to hire someone to help you in your business.

4. Your business isn’t growing.

    It may seem counterintuitive, but if your business isn’t growing, it’s probably because you simply have too much on your plate and can’t put your full focus where you need it.

5. You don’t like Mondays!

    (Or any other day anymore!)  If you’re stuck doing administrative tasks, or things you hate doing, pretty soon, you’re going to start dreading working every day!  Remember the spark and excitement of your business when you first launched? I still feel that, every day! If you don’t, it’s probably because you’re too busy doing things you hate, instead of focusing on what you’re good at and you love doing.

6. You’re launching a new product, service or online course.

    If you can afford it, hire a great copywriter!  It really will make all the difference to your launch, the number of conversions you get and the sales you make.  Seriously, it’s all in the copy!

7. You want to be the CEO of your business, not the Employee.

    If you wanted to be the Employee, you’d go get a 9-5, right?  Being the CEO means working smarter, not working every hour possible!

8. You don’t have time to spend with your loved ones.

    Why did you start your business?  I bet it wasn’t so you could work more, restless and see your family and friends less was it?!  Remember, this is YOUR business, design it in a way that works FOR you.

9. Your freelancer costs less per hour than you charge.

    Let’s say you charge $200 per hour for your time with a client.  You’re unsure whether or not to hire a virtual assistant to help you with the day to day running if your business.  Your potential VA costs you $20 per hour. If you book a client in for an hour, you’ve made yourself a profit of $180.  Worth it? Absolutely! Any time you can get paid MORE than your freelancer costs, you’re winning!

Conclusion

Hiring your first freelancer or outsourcing a project to someone can seem scary!  But there are many occasions, opportunities and real reasons why hiring a freelancer is actually the better option.  

For me, it has given me time back in my day, let me focus on doing what I love the most (helping my clients to succeed online and creating valuable content!) and it's one of the best things I ever did!

If you’re still unsure, just start speaking to a freelancer and see how you feel about it then.  Have a rough idea of what you want them to do and just have a chat! Ask for references or testimonials, see examples of their work and always keep a great line of communication open while you work together.

Finding the perfect VA or freelancer for your business will change your life - and your business!

Need some help to pick the best social media for business?

We’ve mentioned marketing strategy before and I’m sure we’ll mention it again. There are a million things to consider when putting together a marketing plan (like stock photo sourcing). One of the first and most overwhelming for many solopreneurs like you is picking the right social media platform. There are many options, from generalist giants like Facebook to more niche networks like Goodreads. How do you know where to find your audience, how to most effectively present your products or services, and what site is the best fit for you and your business? Unfortunately, that’s not always an easy question. Picking the best social media for business doesn’t always follow a “check the boxes” formula. However, here’s a game plan to help you figure out where to go.

Define Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who you’re trying to reach. Using tools like Google Analytics, Survey Monkey and Google Survey you can figure out what demographics describe your audience. The characteristics that you can discover with these tools include things like age and gender. These characteristics will help you figure out which social media networks to focus on. You should also take some time to visualize an ideal client. Who are they, what is their income, what are their pain points, and what are they looking for?

If you aren’t sure how to go about defining your target audience, this is a great time to step back and bring in a professional. This first part of your marketing plan is foundational and will make all other forms of marketing easier. Everything is built on the combination of who your target market is with what you’re marketing to them. If you don’t know either of these, we can help you get a clearer perspective before moving forward.

Discover Where They Are

Picking the best social media for business starts with finding where your audience is hanging out. Now that you know who your target audience is, how do you find them online? You may get some hints from the survey methods mentioned above. There are also numerous tools to help you figure out where your fans hang out. Tools like Social Mention and Sprout Social allow you to see where and how your brand is already being talked about. Once you know where your clients are talking about you, you can go there to nurture your brand presence.

Pew Research Center is another great resource. They report on social media use with some regularity. Their stats can give you insight into where your audience might be more likely to see your posts. If you aren’t already being talked about, you can start with research like that provided by Pew. Then you can use tools like Social Mention to gauge response when you start sharing.

Determine Where Your Products And Services Sell Best

See where your competitors are marketing their products through tools like SimilarWeb, What Runs Where, and Simply Measured. Different tools give you different data, but any of these can show you where your competitors are active and which of their ads have been most effective. Once you know, for example, that their Twitter posts bring more visitors to their website than their Pinterest posts, then you know that your audience will likely behave a similar way. This sort of insight can show you exactly where to invest your time and effort.

You can use these and similar tools to also discover where your target audience is shopping for products or services like yours. This is a strong vote for the best social media for business. Engaging on social media can put you on the right track. For example, you can ask open questions about where people would go to find a specific product or service. Quora and industry-specific forums are a great place to ask questions like this. If you keep track of the answers you get, you’ll start to get a clear image of the clients that need your services and where they shop.

Each social media site also tends to attract buyers and sellers of particular products and services. Facebook is an excellent place to start since your business’s Facebook profile can be used as an indicator for SEO ranking. No matter what you’re selling, investing your time in a business page on Facebook is a safe bet. If you do create a Facebook business page, be sure to link it to your website and other social media accounts to make sure that clients who find you there can find you elsewhere as well.

As far as other networks are concerned, B2B products and services do best on Linkedin. Travel, fashion, and health and beauty products, on the other hand, are popular on Pinterest and Instagram. Twitter is a powerful customer service platform and is a growing consumer hub. These are just some of the largest names, but there are more targeted platforms like Goodreads for books, and Care2 for social and environmental movements. Pew and other research centers can provide more in depth demographics, and the social media sites themselves often provide demographic reports to business interested in using them. Do your research, or get help from one of our experts.

Decide What Network Works Best For You

Finally, it’s important to consider what social media platform will work best for you. For some formats, it might be worthwhile to create a test or personal account before you commit. You might discover that you don’t like the character limit of tweets, or that the organization of Pinterest boards is overwhelming. On the other hand, you may learn from client interactions that you would benefit from a YouTube channel, or that your target audience is more active on Dogster than Instagram. You have time to test a few different platforms before throwing everything into a few select networks. Your favorite places lend some weight to the best social media for business because you’re much more likely to spend time there.

You should also keep in mind how many platforms you can manage. Using a tool like SmarterQueue to schedule and manage your social media presence can help stretch your time and effort. It would also be smart to consult with an expert who can help. A virtual assistant can help you pick 2-3 social media platforms and strategize your posts and marketing techniques.

If any part of this seems overwhelming, don’t worry. Virtual A Team has your back. From developing an initial plan to creating and posting the actual marketing content, we can help you make the impact you want on the best social media networks for you and your business.

Using Stock Photos for Marketing?

In my early days of business, I was uneducated about using stock photos and grabbed an image off Google for my website. I'll never forget the way my heart sank when I opened the letter from Getty Images saying that I had stolen their property and now owed them an amount of money that was unimaginable in my mind. I made the mistake many new marketers make.

But image is everything. When your clients get their first taste of your brand, it will probably be through the images you share on social media and your website. Despite having an otherwise gorgeous website, if you are lacking enough stock photos, the right stock photos, or (worst of all) proper licensing for your photos like I did, you will have a problem. We can help you avoid those issues.

First, we’ll walk through the difference between legal stock photos and Google images. Second, I’ll give you some tips on using stock photos for social media and blogs. Finally, I’m going to show you ten different websites where you can get great stock photos that you can legally use all over your websites and accounts, often for free.

Keep it Legal

Copyright law can get fairly complicated, so it’s always best to err on the side of caution. A good rule to keep in mind is to never use a picture that doesn’t explicitly say (usually in a caption under the heading “Licensing”) that you are allowed to use it for commercial purposes. Just downloading an image from Google search results doesn’t give you the chance to see if the image is “personal use only” or “free for commercial use.” That one mistake can get you in major legal trouble.

The reason for this is that a photographer, digital artist, and model might require royalties or acknowledgment. You can be sued or face other legal consequences if you haven’t looked into the licensing and model release for each image and verified that you are allowed to use it for commercial purposes.

Google has recently updated their image search as well. You can no longer download high resolution images without going directly to the site where the image is located.

This is only a minor issue, as legal images are easy to find if you know where to look. Once you obtain these images, though, how can you make sure you’re getting the most out of them?

Use Smart Strategy

Images increase social media post shares and popularity, and can even increase your clickthrough rate. However, just slapping a free stock photo on any post won’t achieve the increase you deserve. Here are some quick strategy tips:

Pick authentic photos

We’ve all seen the generic smiling office worker stock photos – studies are beginning to show that these are irritating to clients. Instead of generic photos, choose images that show messy, realistic snapshots of the activities or objects you’re targeting. Don’t be afraid to be playful.

Match your image to the content

The image you use should relate to the text in both tone (through colors and emotions pictured) and content (pictures of headphones for music, animals for pet advice).

Keep your audience in mind

Once you have the right image for your content, make sure that any models in your images, the tone of the pictures, and the social appropriateness of your photos fit what your audience will resonate with.

Don't show an office environment if your clients work from home!

Customize where appropriate

For social media posts and marketing images, you will often want to overlay text, do some image editing, and adjust size and colors to fit your brand and the medium. For example, Pinterest and Facebook have very different ideal image shapes and post content, and you’ll want to make changes to images to fit each.

Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

Check with an expert

If you aren’t sure how to target a post for your followers, or how and when to format your images, Virtual A Team can help. From finding just the right images to customizing them to fit your purpose, you won’t have to worry.

Get the Best Pictures

If you want to find the pictures on your own before getting help using them, take a look at the following list. These are some of the most popular sites to use to add stock images to your media toolbox today:

1. Stocksnap.io

Stylish, high quality public domain images can be accessed on a few of these sites. This one is easily searchable. Keep an eye out for the advertised Shutterstock results when you search, as these will be paid. They’re easy to notice by the watermark. While Shutterstock costs money (see number five below), Stocksnap.io images are free.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

2. Depositphotos.com

Depositphotos offers high-resolution royalty-free stock photos, vector images and videos. They have a handful of free images and videos available, and the rest of their collection is available for a membership fee, or for on-demand single purchases.

Licensing: Royalty Free
Price: From $29.99 USD / month

3. Unsplash

A popular, gorgeous website, Unsplash offers free, authentic photos donated by quality photographers. Most images also include details about the type of camera used, focal length, and shutter speed to achieve the image.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

4. Death to Stock Photo

A unique stock photo site dedicated to providing a curated library of quality images. For access to the full library, you have to pay the premium membership fee. However, they will send you a set of free images each month if you give them your email.

Licensing: Royalty Free with some limitations
Price: FREE or $12 USD / month

5. Shutterstock

A well-known stock photo site, Shutterstock was one of the first sites I ever heard of or ended up on. They have a huge library of stock and vector images for a variety of uses, but a slightly more complicated license and membership structure than the others on this list.

Licensing: custom
Price: From $29 USD / month or $49 for 5 images

6. Pexels

Especially popular for social media marketing images, Pexels has become increasingly popular for their high quality stock photos. Instead of the focus on unique, authentic images that other free stock providers have adopted, Pexels has more of a general commercial appeal. Nevertheless, they have great high-resolution images and many hidden treasures in their library.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

7. Pixabay

This free library of images and videos is a fantastic resource for gorgeous images under creative commons licensing. This site has grown in popularity among bloggers and graphic design circles in the last year and has proven to be reliable for great images.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE 

8. Thinkstock

An older site with a lot of advertisements, Thinkstock is a partner site to Getty Images and iStock. This site is less than ideal for browsing, as it is organized more like a store. If you know exactly what you need for a marketing image, it’s an ideal and wide-ranging resource.

Licensing: Royalty Free
Price: From $184 USD / month or $99 USD for 5 images

9. Morguefile

With a library of mixed high- and low-resolution images, Morguefile is intended to be a resource for creatives to use for commercial or personal purposes. Many of these images will need some editing and be more useful as part of larger graphic design projects, rather than as standalone blog post or marketing images.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

10. Freepik

A beautiful and modern website, Freepik offers a library of over 200,000 stock photos, and a number of vectors, PSD files and icons. The licensing you have for each image depends on whether you have a free or paid membership, and what kind of image you’re using.

Licensing: depends on package
Price: FREE or from $7.50 USD / month

Take your marketing to the Next Level

If selecting and preparing stock photos for marketing isn’t your strong point, leave it to us. A virtual assistant from Virtual A Team can sift through the legal jargon to verify what stock photo can be used for your site, find the perfect image, and develop excellent marketing products from it just for you. You won’t have to worry.

If you’re going through this process alone, know we’re here if you need help at any point in the process.