What better way to get across the importance of stock footage library than a stock image of a guy on a computer sitting in a public park?
Videographers, video editors, Youtubers, business owners — you need to start utilizing a stock footage library. And if you’re reading this and you’re not the primary decision maker for your company, forward them this article right away.
No matter what position you’re in in your organization, a diverse stock footage library is vital to your company’s success in a variety of ways. Obviously, the most important lift this will provide you is for your content team. No matter if you employ a full-time internal production team or outsource the work to a different company, this resource can improve your content tenfold.
Just a sampling of what you can get with an Envato subscription.
Stock footage, stock images, licensed music, and licensed sound effects can all progress the level of the content your team is currently producing. With a quick search, you can find all the pops, bleeps and car crash noises you can imagine that will raise viewer engagement on your videos and add depth to the audial aspect of your videos.
Stock videos and pictures can hide edit points in your video or fill in gaps where you weren’t able to get a shot for. Entire concepts for winning paid advertising can be made from stock footage. Social posts or even website homepages can use these assets to create or improve their quality or professionalism.
Now comes the aspects you might not know about these libraries. Some of them come with graphic elements, presentation templates and font packages. You could use these to help develop a brand identity. You could create pitch decks or sales presentations. There are templates that will help you design graphs and infographics to get across data or your company’s objectives.
78,176 new items added this week?
Does your company use a content management system, own a Shopify or Wordpress site, or do any email marketing? Of course they do. That’s another huge advantage of subscribing to these libraries. Get inspiration for your next email campaign or website redesign. Personally, rather than download and use the template (which comes with all the appropriate licensing documentation to avoid any copyright infringement), I love using them as insight into how I can design my version of these assets. As a video editor, I use this practice all the time when it comes to lower thirds and other motion graphics.
Like any new service, when you start researching stock footage libraries to subscribe to, you’ll find a lot of pros and cons for each of them. My personal favorite and the basis for this blog post was Envato Elements. They have everything I described above and more. I also subscribe to Epidemic Sound for a more music and sound effects focused library. Shutterstock is a great one that has been around for years. And I can also recommend Storyblocks and Pond5 as high quality libraries I’ve used over the course of my career.
So next time you’re lacking inspiration or you simply need additional assets to get your project off the ground, consider looking into a stock footage library because I guarantee you there’s a lot more to it than you may have originally thought.