Every business needs social media presence, so SMM industries specialists often take an easier way by choosing materials from stocks (photobanks) instead of self-made content. It is also worth mentioning that the following rules also work with SEO optimization.
But what consequences can such an approach have?
- Content is not being promoted
Modern ranking algorithms of social media will recognize non-unique content and stop organically promoting posts. When creating unique content, you get an additional way of promotion — automatic binding to a geolocation. - No originality
Stock photos are available to millions of people around the world. Their price is low, so there is no guarantee that identical graphic content will not appear on other pages. Therefore, there is a high probability of a business getting lost in a stream of similar profiles. - Lack of emotions
Stock images are neutral and practically do not convey real emotions. Such photos do not reflect personal experience, which reduces the level of confidence in them. - Content mismatch
The disadvantage of stock photos is that they are of a general nature. They do not always correspond to a message, which leads to its incomplete or incorrect understanding. - Unreal ideality
Images from photobanks have no visual defects — the characters in the photos look too happy and this makes them remote from reality. The society is already oversaturated with images of ideality — they no longer catch people and do not inspire confidence. Therefore, your posts or advertisements may be unnoticed.
If social media pages contain only stock images and photos, users will gradually lose interest in the content and the business itself. At the same time, algorithms will be worse at promoting such accounts, so customers may lose a brand.
It is worth noting that even unique author’s content processed or transmitted by other services (for example, when sending via a messenger) loses its authorship since third-party services often put their own tags on photos/videos.
When can you use materials from photo stocks:
- If you want to create a business card account without further promotion.
- When you have no budget for creating your own content (but we still recommend you prioritize correctly.
- When there is no physical possibility to create the material.
- When creating accounts, you can use photo banks as references to create your own style.