You’ve got a great tweet or post but you just need that awesome photo to accompany your text – because everyone knows a post or tweet with a photo (or gif) is likely to generate more interaction. But wait! Can you just use one from a Google search? The answer is ‘No’ – all images, including yours, are protected by copyright laws.

Using images from a basic Google image search is very dangerous and I don’t ever recommend using this technique for any professional content you’re creating.

Now I don’t profess to be a legal expert but basically if you create an original photo you have ownership of that photo and that gives you exclusive rights to display and reproduce what you created or license it for others to use.

If you use someone else’s photo without their permission, you could be in breach of their image copyright to that photo — even if they posted it publicly via their social networks. So what are your options?

Your own photography

Build up a library of photos you’ve taken yourself – particularly if you’re product or service based company. This is the best type of image – one’s that are specifically of your own product or service and not a ‘generic’ version.

Royalty-free Stock images

You can of course purchase royalty-free images from the main photo sites like https://www.shutterstock.com/ and h which offer basic and extended usage licences. Just ensure that you exclude ‘editorial’ images from your search criteria and obviously check out the usage licence before purchasing an image.

Creative Commons (CC)

You’ll probably have seen these on sites like Flickr. Creative Commons (CC) allows content creators to make their work available for certain purposes without requiring additional permission – but be warned there are varying levels of licence ranging from restricted use (i.e. not commercial) or the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License which has much wider usage – so make sure you know if and how the image can be used. Don’t forget that when using one of these you should attribute the original ‘author’. Details on this can be found here https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution

Free Creative Commons (CC) stock photo sites

If you don’t have a budget to purchase images there’s a wealth of free stock imagery sites offering Creative Commons Zero (CC0) images.

Here’s some of the more popular ones:

http://imcreator.com/free

http://gratisography.com/

http://www.stockvault.net/

https://pixabay.com/

Remember to check out their individual usage instructions as they can vary as can the content, style and quality of images offered on the sites.

If you’re sharing/retweeting/quoting another users post/tweet ensure that you contain the original tweet/post containing the image this ensures that the original authors post is intact. Do not take their photo out of context and use in your own tweet/post. On Instagram ensure that you follow regram best practices and give author credit.

I hope that’s highlighted some of the issues surrounding photo usage and ways in which you can stay legal and more importantly give credit to the original authors where it’s due.

---

If you need more information or help on how social media could work for your business please get in touch with me at http://paulkirkdesign.co.uk or at @PKirk_designer

---