Great photography is increasingly important, as social media becomes a major point of contact for customers. While a quick Google search is simple, unfortunately it’s not legal. You risk receiving “take down” notices from companies who make more money by threatening lawsuits than they do selling the images in question.
So how do you find quality, risk and royalty free photos?
Pixabay has photos, illustrations, even video clips for free. A lot of European photos are available, if you have an international market. They even have an app for your mobile device.
How do they make money? You’ll notice a strip of photos from paid stock companies at the top and right of the results page.
In a short time, Unsplash has gone from an artsy photo boutique to a great source of quality photos that are much easier to search these days. They do ask you to credit the artists, but it’s not required. How do they make money – I really don’t know.
Again, a trusty site for free, quality photographs on a limited number of topics.
There are some ways to search Google, Bing and Flickr for creative commons photos, but they don’t guarantee your right to use the image they way the two sites above do. Getty has a way to embed photos in blogs that give them credit. If you are a massive blogger, that may be worth signing up for. But for social media use, it’s not very helpful.
Be safe. Bookmark these sites and always check them first for appropriate images.
And just so you know, I am not an affiliate and get nothing out of recommending these sources.
Use 4-7 words, with the first two words being the most important. Why? Cell phone users (50% of readers) only see the first few words. Gmail shortens words longer than 6 characters.
Use the pre-header text. Make it different than the subject line. Why? Mobile readers see the pre-header even if they don’t see the end of your subject line.
Don’t put your name in the subject line. Why? It’s in the from field already.
Don’t use generic terms like “newsletter”. Why? It conveys no information.
Do not: write in all caps, use the word FREE, or use excess punctuation!!! Why? Spam filters will block your email.
Use personalization, Kim. Why? People love to see their own names.
Be specific about the benefit of reading the email. Why? Readers need to know why they should bother.
Ask a question or accurately imply urgency. Why? A deadline or intriguing question will encourage opens.
Use numbers and appropriate emojis. Why? Specific and unique subject lines are more effective.
Use brackets to categorize [Reminder] . Why? Provides context efficiently.
These tips brought to you from a webinar with MailChimp, a freemium mailing list manager.
Family Consultation Services helps individuals and organizations navigate the issues of life and relationships, and reach their goals. Papyrus Document & Design, LLC designed this custom site to reflect their custom services.
Higginbotham Custom Homes in Jacksonville, Florida meets the unique needs and wants of their clients with an attention to service that brings customers back. They needed a custom site to represent their devotion to quality and personal attention.
A recent wave of lawsuits against website owners claiming violation of ADA compliance has spread from government agencies and national chains to smaller retailers. If you have a physical location, or sell online, you are likely to become a target sooner rather than later.
These lawsuits are seeking attorney’s fees and injunctions to make the sites ADA complaint. These are not typically from individual customers. Single defendants are filing hundreds of lawsuits at a time – and most are coming from the east coast of Florida.
What does it take to have an ADA compliant website?
Add an accessibility policy to the website. State that you endeavor to be ADA compliant and welcome feedback from users. This shows awareness and good faith.
Make adjustments and additions to the website that users who cannot see, or cannot use a mouse, can navigate the site, understand the content, and receive the same services. Low to Medium Cost based on site size and platform.
Analyze the amount and complexity of pdfs on the site, and remediate any that are necessary to keep. Medium to High cost depending on number and content. Requires Adobe Acrobat Pro or similar software.
Videos should be captioned and audio should be transcribed. These are targets particularly if you are sharing public meetings. YouTube can sometimes do this for you automatically but accuracy is an issue. Medium – High Cost depending on quantity and length of videos.
If you use third party vendors/software on your site, like a online store, find out whether they are compliant or not, if you link to a third party site that is branded to appear as yours, make users aware that they are leaving your site.
Train editors on tagging images and attachments. Your site can be compliant one day and not compliant the next if new content is not handled correctly.
My Recommendation I highly recommend that all sites add an accessibility policy to their website, even if it does not claim to be ADA compliant but does offer users a way to contact you on the matter. However, you cannot become ADA compliant simply by telling users to call you, unless you have a 24/7 manned phone line that CAN provide all the same services that are on the website.
Keep In Mind Being non-compliant does not mean your site is unusable to the disabled, it simply means it doesn’t comply to every single technical detail listed in the ADA specifications. Unfortunately, actual usability has little to do with the sites being targeted for lawsuits.
Online Resources.
Want to check out your site yourself? You can go to this website (https://wave.webaim.org/), enter your web address, and see how each page fares. Only the red flags are errors.
What are the standards? https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ These standards were written as “best-case” scenarios for disabled users and are quite strict. The Courts adopted them wholesale, and this is catching a lot of third party vendors off guard. Do not assume your online partners are compliant.
