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So now it’s crunch time. You have done all your website tweaks, you’ve planned your holiday promotions. Now it’s time to get visual, and by get visual I mean it’s time to start thinking of the images you might use to entice more shares on social or to draw in readers for your special holiday deals!

Just about every statistic on Internet interaction shows that adding an image to your posts greatly increases likes, shares, and comments. When we see an image—especially if it’s compelling—we want to know more. This is true not only for Facebook but for all social networking sites. You can get great images at low cost on stock-photo sites like Shutterstock.com, Fotolia.com, and iStockphoto.com. It’s worth the money. Though, if you’re short on funds, check out some of these quality free stock-photo sites:

1. Free Range Stock—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://freerangestock.com/
2. Morgue File—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://www.morguefile.com/
3. StockSnap—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: https://stocksnap.io/
4. FreePhotosBank—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://www.freephotosbank.com/
5. FreeFoto—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp
6. Life of Pix—high-res images and videos for personal or commercial use: http://www.lifeofpix.com/
7. New Old Stock—some cool vintage images, no known copyright restrictions: http://nos.twnsnd.co/
8. Picography—high-res photos to use for business or personal: http://picography.co/
9. Pickup Image Free for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://pickupimage.com/
10. Snapographic Free for personal or commercial use, no required: http://snapographic.com/
11. Free Images—for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://www.freeimages.com/
12. Super Famous Studios—great pictures, attribution required: http://superfamous.com/
13. PicJumbo—high-res images for personal or commercial use: http://picjumbo.com/
14. Pexels—images for personal or commercial use, no attribution required: http://www.pexels.com/
15. Little Visuals—seven new pictures every week: http://littlevisuals.co/
16. Unsplash—ten free high-res images every week: https://unsplash.com/
17. IM Creator—great site, attribution required: http://www.imcreator.com/
18. FreePik—only vector images, attribution required: http://www.freepik.com/
19. Pattern Library—super cools patterns: http://thepatternlibrary.com/
20. Death to Stock Photo—monthly photos sent to your inbox: http://deathtothestockphoto.com/

Now that you have the images, there are some great sites to help turn these images into fun quotes or ads:

Canva.com

Picmonkey.com

Photofunia.com

All three of these are free to use and very easy to turn any picture into a sharable post!

Now let’s turn to Facebook specifically, because if you have a great offer you may want to consider doing Facebook Offers.

Of all of the things Facebook has recently launched for Fan Pages, I think I love Facebook Offers most because it allows you to share a special “something” with your followers. For example, we offered our Amazon Optimization Checklist for free (though we did get sign-ups for it, which helped to build our mailing list). We were able to direct these sign-ups to our leads page, a service we use to promote offers, specials, sales, and the like: https://authormarketingexperts.leadpages.net/amazon-checklist/

Facebook Offers is currently free and available to *most* fan pages, and you can boost the post or pin your offer to the top of your news feed if you want to keep getting exposure for it. Don’t expect everyone to see it if it’s just a one-time post.

Good luck with your holiday promotions! I hope these posts have been helpful to you. I wish you great success – a very Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas!

BONUS: Want custom images designed AND insider tips on building your readership and fan base? Ask us about our Super Fan Package (it’s under $400!) – we can help you take your visual promotions to the next level AND get you more readers!

Read part 5: Is Your Website Working?

Read part 4: Plan a Blog Tour

Read part 3: Book Events & Holiday Gift Guides

Read part 2: Get More Reviews

Read part 1: eBook Promo Scheduling