Here's my top tip for cohesive brand images!

Keeping a strong brand image whilst always posting varied, unique content sounds difficult and time consuming – but I promise you it isn’t! Just by following a few simple guidelines when it comes to curating or creating visuals for your business, you can have a constant source of cohesive brand images to use whenever you need – without having to reuse the same five images over and over (and over) again.

Do you find you’re constantly running out of visuals you can use for your business?

The ones you can get your hands on either seem to fit the topic but not your brand, or fit your brand but not the topic! Meaning you scramble around using the same few images you have for everything – websites, lead magnets, social media etc. Even though know it’s uninspiring, you know it’s starting to look pretty dull, and you know your audience is bored with seeing them. So how to fix it? Is it possible to post cohesive visuals and still look varied and fresh?

Yes! And it’s actually super simple; it starts with recognising you need two ‘banks’ of visuals for your business:

brand staple images & brand similar images

Want to know how to choose photos that work well together? You need this post!

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brand staple images for your core branding

Brand Staple:

These are the core images that make up your ‘brand’. They fit your colours, style, niche and vibe and are essentially the ‘shop window’ of your business. They can range from being a selection of just stock photos, to a mixture of stock photos, headshots and product images.

These are the images you will find on your ‘static’ branding areas such as your website homepage, about page, email welcome sequences, social media profile banners. They’re also the images you may use in major ad campaigns and lead magnet promos. Essentially, they’re the images you don’t change up too frequently.

By having a set of brand staple images, you create familiarity and brand awareness on all your virtual real estate, so you audience will come to recognise you. By having a set rather than just one image, it still keeps it varied and stops your brand looking boring. As a guide, I would say between 9 and 15 images is a good number for your core set.

Brand Similar

These are images which suit your brand palette in terms of colours, tones and style, but vary in subject matter to give you constant imagery for your dynamic content – think regular email newsletters, blog posts and social media posts. This is the new content you’re putting out there on a weekly or monthly basis.

The image count for this bank of images can be as high as you like, as your dynamic content will constantly be needing fresh visuals. You are welcome to re-use images from this bank as long as it’s not too frequently. In fact re-using the same image will further help to instil that brand familiarity you want to build with your audience.

brand similar images for your dynamic content

By creating two ‘banks’ of images; one which stays the same, and the other you can continually add to, it keeps your brand looking on point, cohesive and styled, whilst still maintaining variety and avoiding you re-using the same image every other day – which gets dull!

Let’s look at some examples of cohesive brand images – for both core branding and dynamic content, all taken from the Tide & Tree library…

Want to know where to use stock photos for maximum impact? You need this post!

earthy brand

BRAND STAPLE

Collections used:

Woodland Walks

Recharge

Coffee

BRAND SIMILAR

Collections used:

stylish brand

BRAND STAPLE

Collections used:

BRAND SIMILAR

Collections used:

coastal brand

BRAND STAPLE

Collections used:

Cool Seas

Coffee & Pancakes

Home Office Part i

Coastal Living Part i & ii

Messy Office Part i

BRAND SIMILAR

Collections used:

Coastal Living Part i & ii

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Top tips for creating your brand staple & brand similar image bank:

ONE

Use something like Lightroom or another image app to store your images in two folders or collections – one ‘brand staple’ and one brand ‘similar’.

TWO

Within the brand similar collection, you can further organise into subfolders by niche, content or usage type. For instance, you can have a folder for ‘inspiring images’ for social media quote graphics or motivational content, or you might have a folder for ‘mock-up screens’ where you have monitors and smartphones to use when promoting a lead magnet etc.

THREE

Stick to 2-3 collections when curating images for your brand-staple so there’s not too much variety in subject matter.

four

Find an image library that suits your style! It will make image curation so. much. easier when your visual library is suited to your palette. Tide & Tree is the one for inspired, hygge, natural imagery – but it’s not for you if you like bright or feminine colours or corporate style imagery.

FIVE

Set a weekly task to log into your image library and see what’s new, trending or popular so you can download a few for your brand-similar bank. That way, when it comes to planning your dynamic content, your brand-similar bank will have plenty of cohesive brand images in there to choose from already!

SIX

Not sure on your brand image style? Take our quiz and get some free photos based on your result to get you started!

Do you use this method when curating your images? Comment your top tips below!