There are 50,000+ WordPress plugins in the official directory and new ones are added daily. With the increase of plugin availability for optimizing functionality and improving productivity it can be hard to pick out the “right” ones.

Which plugins will be right for your WordPress site?

The first step, don’t rush into any plugin! You’ll want quality plugins.

To find out which plugin is a good quality plugin, you’ll have to do a bit of research by checking reviews, ratings, and check for support queries. This will give you an overall idea if the plugin is a good fit for your blog.

Questions to ask:

Does it have a 4-5 star rating?
If so, were there many downloads of the plugin and reviews that truly qualify it as a good quality plugin or was it just one lonely review?

How many reviews does it have?
One review won’t help much to gather much insight. If it’s a new plugin, then you can take the plunge and go for it, especially if it’s free. Check it out. If it didn’t work out as expected then leave a review and deactivate it. No biggie!

Are there any complaints in the reviews?
Be very careful to read the complaints. See if there’s an ongoing theme of negative feedback.

Is the WordPress plugin developer responding to support issues?
This is where you can get a quick synopsis if they are responding to feedback in the reviews and support questions. If you see a steady stream of support queries listed that are recent then this tells you that they care about the plugin and are actively updating. If you haven’t seen any support queries for a year or more then it’s probably not wise to download it.

Ok, now that you have an idea of what to look for to find a quality plugin we’ll get to our list of must-have WordPress plugins for your blog.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Bloggers

Editorial Calendar

Wouldn’t it be neat to have all your blog content listed in a nice clean editorial calendar? Even better is if you can access the calendar directly in your blog! The Editorial Calendar plugin can do this for you. It gives you an overview of which posts will be published on specific days. It also helps manage multiple author posts. If you need to move a draft post to a different day, no problem, just drag it to a new day!

Stencil

Ahem… well we have to include Stencil to this list! We’re excited about this plugin because it epitomizes our mission to help bloggers and social media marketers create visual content faster and easier than imagined. Stencil is already pretty fast and easy as a web app but it’s at a whole other level with the plugin!

Creating images for blog posts can get a little time consuming depending on how often you blog. You have to think about your featured blog image, blog images throughout the post, and the pin images for Pinterest.

As you create images, you have to download and upload to WordPress. Now with the Stencil for WordPress plugin, there’s no need to download and upload because while you’re drafting a blog post you can create images to add directly to your media library. Yes, that’s right! Create the visual, add to the media library, insert into the post – BOOM! You’re done.

Sumo

It’s kind of like the Swiss Army knife of digital marketing. You can grow your email list with timed pop-up forms and send your subscribers a welcome email when they sign up to your blog. Add share buttons to your WordPress site so pages and posts can be shared on social. It integrates with WooCommerce so you can generate more sales for your online business. The dashboard is terrific by providing an easy capture of what’s working on your site.

TastyPins

If you’re a hardcore Pinterest user then this plugin is a must-have. It will make blogging with images so much easier. There’s a difference between SEO for Google and SEO for Pinterest and this allows you to differentiate the alt tag properly and the pin description without having to a bunch of code in the backend. Although it’s not a free plugin, it’s definitely worth looking into if Pinterest is a major referrer for your blog.

Yoast SEO

We love Yoast! Super easy to use to optimize blog posts automatically. XML sitemaps automatically created so search engines can find your content easily. After you write your blog posts you can add your keywords and meta description to enhance your blog post SEO. It also lets you know when your paragraphs are too long. If you have specific images that you only want to be shared to certain social media platforms you can designate that as well with Yoast. It’s an incredibly powerful plugin!

Which WordPress Plugin is Your Favorite?

There you have it! Five awesome must-have WordPress plugins that every blogger would enjoy recapped below:

1. Editorial Calendar
2. Stencil
3. Sumo
4. Tasty Pins
5. Yoast SEO

Which of these plugins is your favorite? There are so many plugins available for WordPress, did we miss your favorite?

Let us know in the comments!

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The post Five Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Blog Marketing appeared first on Stencil.

If you’re not sure what influencers and micro-influencers are, you’ll quickly find that they are all around social media promoting products with #ad and #sponsored hashtags. They’re not too hard to find, especially on Instagram. The real question to ask is what can they do for your business? We research why influencers are such a big deal, where to find them, how establishing a relationship with an influencer is a good idea for a business, and what to do when you want to collaborate.

Why Influencers are a Big Deal?

Influencers are taking the lead over ad campaigns. People hate ads, so much so that ad blocker extensions are reaching incredible growth. According to HubSpot research, 64% of people say ads are intrusive and annoying. If people hate to see ads so much how can businesses get ahead? Influencer marketing.

Influencers come in a variety of niches, for the most part, influencers are celebrities, journalists, and athletes. Since influencers are pretty high on the totem pole, the cost for them to show off a product or brand can be expensive. Then came the rise of micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers are also in various niches, however, their social media follower counts are lower than influencers. Typically you’ll see influencer follower counts in the millions whereas micro-influencers have thousands. You may wonder why you’d want to have a micro-influencer by your side with such little followers, however, micro-influencers are packing a huge punch to spread brand awareness.

How?

Follower counts really don’t matter.

It’s all about the engagement rate. If a celebrity has millions of followers with a bunch of spammy comments, it’s not going to do much for your brand for them to market it. You want to go with an influencer who has lots of genuine engagement with lots of comments. According to Markerly, micro-influencers with 10K – 100K follower range have the best combination of engagement and broad reach. People who are supportive and commenting routinely are true fans. True fans believe in that person and if the influencer is raving about a product they can’t live without then chances are the fan will want it also. That’s the impact of an influencer and micro-influencer.

If you’re now convinced that influencer marketing can be a good marketing strategy for your brand then you’re probably wondering how to find them.

How to Find Influencers

Not only do you want to find influencers but you’ll want to find quality influencers. Remember, just because they have a huge following doesn’t mean their engagement is high. You can use the following tools to research people in your niche or industry.

Tools to Find Influencers for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses

Buzzsumo

It’s a favorite tool of ours, which we previously mentioned in our blog post idea post, you can search for any topic. Research and gather share, author, and backlink data.

NinjaOutreach

It’s an incredible tool to find influencers and to reach out to them. Yes! They’ll have your influencer’s email address. You can automate email campaigns to make sure you establish a relationship with the influencer.

Another tool for finding influencers is SocialBook. It can also help you research influencers and figure out if it’s worth working with them.

Social Media Followers

This is definitely a little tedious since it’s a manual process. You can search your followers on your social media platforms and do your research. If they’re already following you then they must like something about your product or service. If you go this route, you’ll need to check out their social media posts and see how their engagement rate is.

Here’s a formula to find out their engagement rate:

Engagement Volume (# of likes, shares, and comments) / Base Volume (# of Followers) = Engagement Rate

Connect with them on social and start relationship building to see if they’re a good fit for your brand.

Establish a Relationship

Once you find an influencer that you think will work nicely for your brand then it’s time to engage with them on social. You’ll need to get a feel for their personality and if it would be a good collaboration. You don’t want to rush the process.

When you are ready to reach out then email them with NinjaOutreach, email on your own, or DM them for their email if you can’t find it. Some brands will just comment on a post to let the influencer know they want to connect.

Shane Barker, an influencer marketing expert, has some great tips on influencer outreach to get you started!

Ready to Collaborate with an Influencer

You’ve gotten your relationship established and they’d like to collaborate with you. What do you have to offer? Influencers will take free products, discounts for their followers, and, of course, cash.

Think about contract details to provide a transparent overview of how you’d like influencers to participate. Some brands are very specific to let influencers know that if they post on Instagram the brand can share on all platforms as they’d like. It’s all about content retention rights, intellectual property rights, confidentiality, and other legalities to think about. Here are some clauses to have in your agreement to have a successful outcome. Having an agreement in place will help with future collaborations.

Is Your Brand Ready for an Influencer or Micro-Influencer?

Although the legal aspects may have your head spinning and doubtful, influencer marketing is an incredible way to spread awareness of your brand. The key is to establish the relationship with the influencer to make a smooth process in collaborating. It becomes a win-win situation for both the influencer and brand.

You can also become an influencer!

It’s never too late to become an influencer. Check out this infographic from Neal Schaffer below to see the steps you can take right now:

Are you thinking about influencer marketing? Let us know in the comments.

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The post Why Influencers and Micro-Influencers are a Big Deal appeared first on Stencil.

Are Motivational Quotes a Waste of Time?

Why does it seem that people tend to flock to motivational quotes? Plain and simple…life happens.

Everyone is dealing with something from petty annoyances to life-altering catastrophes. Is there really any wonder why people are seeking motivation and inspiration on a daily basis? If you’re not able to have a personal cheerleader by your side such as a friend or family member, life can be rough. As a society, we look to each other for knowledge, comfort, and solidarity.

Sharing quotes and phrases isn’t a recent phenomenon, people have been sharing their favorite quotes for generations. Well-structured messages can be powerful in changing our thinking.

According to a study in Frontiers in Psychology, they found by using motivational quotes with their digital health technologies it improved self-esteem in a variety of patients.

They categorized a multitude of quotes into eight different categories:

1. Choice (presents the option of acting to change one’s present state)
2. Self-Directed Question (poses a question to the individual that stimulates introspection)
3. Cause and Effect (outlines the positive effects that may result from particular thoughts or actions)
4. Imperative (provides direction and explicit commands for the individual to follow in order to improve wellbeing)
5. Empowerment/“You” (addresses the individual directly with positive affirming statements)
6. Experience of Others/“I” (offers the opinion or first-person account of someone else)
7. Reality Check (disrupts the perception of a perfect world)
8. General (discusses general concepts or situations in life)

What they found was that some motivational quotes are more effective than others, with different types of quotes being better suited to address particular patients. This means you have to know your audience.

This works the same as a business owner or entrepreneur, you’ll find the types of motivational quotes that will best suit your clients. This is why many people get upset when they see others posting motivational quotes haphazardly. The only way your message is going to come across genuine, is if you genuinely feel the motivational quote will be helpful to the audience.

You must choose specific quotes that align with your target audience. For example, Content Marketing Institute provides inspirational quotes specifically for content marketing. This makes sense, right?

The point is, don’t get mislead into thinking motivational quotes won’t do anything for you or your audience. Everyone needs a boost in motivation! It is up to you to take action and that’ll truly make the difference.

Since we now know that motivational quotes aren’t a complete waste of time, we’d like to share some with you.

Motivational Quotes for a Successful Year

For days when you’re freaking out and feel like you’re losing control:

If you own this story you get to write the ending. – Brené Brown

Hope is the foundation for which all successful goals are built upon. – Ellen J. Barrier

It always seems impossible until it’s done. – Nelson Mandela

It’s not whether you got knocked down; it’s whether you get back up. – Vince Lombardi

When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on. – Theodore Roosevelt

It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. – Socrates

Structure your thought pattern to what you want to achieve and who you want to become. – Agu Jaachynma NE

You become what you think about all day long. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you need to keep going but you feel stuck and need an extra shove to take action:

Successful people do consistently what normal people do occasionally. – Craig Groeschel

Success won’t come from some big step you take in the future. Success starts with small steps today. – Craig Groeschel

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? – Vincent van Gogh

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. – Les Brown

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lead by example, not by instruction. – Jared Matthew Kessler
Find and Use What Motivates You

Hopefully, you’ve found some motivational quotes that will boost your entrepreneurial spirit and inspire you to take action on your goals. Stencil has more than 100,000 quotes in the quote library you can use when you want to create your own quote graphics. Go ahead and explore the Stencil quote library now!

If you liked the motivational images here, we have a free download for you.
[FREE DOWNLOAD]

No attribution needed! If you don’t mind using #getstencil on social, we’ll happily give you a like.

Let us know what quote motivates you in the comments!

The post Motivational Quotes for a Successful Year appeared first on Stencil.

It’s not easy for business owners. Some months may do better than expected for revenue and customer feedback is at an all-time high. Then there are months where it’s so slow that traffic to your site is at a crawl. Month-to-month revenue can vary drastically. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart!

What should you do when you’re in a slump and how do you keep motivated to keep going?

How to Stay Motivated as an Entrepreneur

In a research study from the University of Queensland in Australia, they completed a review of the correlation of participation and adherence to physical exercise and the findings can be applied to entrepreneurship just as well. Basically, to stay motivated in any scenario you must have two principles – to start or participate in a goal and stick to it.

Here are three key areas to help you keep motivated with your business:

Social Support

Entrepreneurship can feel like a lonely place and social support is absolutely necessary. Some business owners find it essential to join groups or masterminds with people in the same industry. In a mastermind, you’ll find like-minded individuals that can compare notes with you, keep you accountable, and have some structure for success.

Life, in general, is not supposed to be spent alone and the same applies to entrepreneur life. You need relationships and networking with other business owners. Do not lean on friends and family for support, unless they are completely “in” on your aspirations for your business.

Know that you can’t do everything on your own. Thinking you can do it all with no help is one of the major reasons why entrepreneurs fail. You’ll need encouragement from others to keep motivated at some points of your business.

Physical environment

Set yourself up for success! Dedicate an office space for yourself, create office hours at home (if working from home), get dressed, and sleep and eat well.

An office space dedicated to your work-life is necessary to keep focused and motivated. Don’t have anything cluttered on your desktop on your computer or desk. Keeping your space tidy will help keep you organized and productive. When you’re organized and have a clean space it will keep you motivated to get work done.

Create office hours at home, if you work from home, by declaring it with your household and putting up a sign on the door. Distractions can lead to unfocused attention, which can sometimes lead you to feel unmotivated.

Get dressed with a business casual look. It makes a difference with the way you perform your work and becomes a visual reminder to those around you that you’re focused on work.

As an entrepreneur, there are probably days that you work on a laptop in bed or fall asleep on your desk. Don’t let that happen. Give yourself plenty of sleep. Sixty-five percent of Americans report sleep problems that may affect their ability to do their jobs.

Take up some good sleep habits by staying away from caffeine in the evening, not bringing your phone to bed, and have a wind-down routine to help your body relax to get that needed sleep. You may want to try this sleep calculator to find out when you should get to bed.

Don’t forget to eat well! How many times have you worked on a project and totally blew off lunch? Missing lunch breaks and not eating well will not help you in the long-run. You’ll get burnt out fast when you don’t have the nutrition needed. This will definitely move you away from feeling motivated to work on your business.

Self-worth

Remember your why and keep positive! When you feel discouraged then use positive affirmations or quotes to get your mindset switched.

You have to believe in your ideas and not give up. Don’t compare yourself with others in your industry. Build your confidence up. Know when to speak to your support system and change your physical environment when you’re feeling down.

Be kind to yourself. If you need help with your business, be sure to delegate tasks that you don’t like or don’t have time to do. Take care of yourself with exercise, nutrition, sleep, and time with the family or friends. You’re worth it and so is your business!

How do you stay motivated?

Entrepreneurs can build their businesses and become successful if they can stay motivated. Try these tips and see if any can help you get back into your “zone”.

How do you stay motivated with your business?

Share your tips with us in the comments.

BONUS! – We have 20 motivational quote images for you to use however you’d like! No attribution or anything like that required, of course. [FREE DOWNLOAD]

The post How to Stay Motivated as an Entrepreneur appeared first on Stencil.

What Businesses Can Do To Make Customers Happy

Be Available

As simple as it sounds, you must be available. Depending on your business, you’ll have to find what method of availability is best for your customers. Is it using live chat, social media, phone, email, contact form, or all of the above?

 90 percent of surveyed consumers have used social media in some way to communicate with a brand.

Be sure to set hours of availability for your customers. If you’re an online business owner, it’s not necessary to be online at all times but make sure you’re there when you say you are. Nothing is more disappointing when you can’t reach a business at their supposed open hours.

If you’re not a local business and help people all over the world, create an FAQ page and Knowledge Base to fill the gap between time zones. If it’s a general question, they’ll get their answer immediately.

If you don’t have availability for your customers, how can you listen to their needs? This is the first step in creating a relationship with the customer.

Keep the Relationship Going and Growing

Provide customers with your knowledge and authority by using resources to inform them with a blog and email marketing. Keep the relationship going with informative blog posts related to industry tips and advice that can help your customers. Don’t just blog about your services. Make a space that they can come to for related industry information that can help them with their needs.

According to this study by Marketing Charts, 47% of consumers say the most important element of an ideal customer experience is fast responses to inquiries.

In order to respond to your customers, you must use active listening. Paraphrase their questions to clarify what they’re asking. This also lets them know you’re paying attention to them. This is particularly important when you’re on the phone with them.

If they’re providing feedback or criticism in regards to a feature or service, this is extremely beneficial to you. Take advantage to learn more about their needs and adjust as necessary. If possible make the change happen! Let them know that you’ll put it on the roadmap of projects or consider it.

For example, one of the biggest requests for Stencil was a cropping tool for designs. It took quite a while for it to happen, but when you have so many requests for the same feature from customers you have to get it done. The feature was clearly needed. It was placed on the roadmap and now it’s complete.

When you make a change happen, let them know about it. They’ll be thrilled to hear that their voice made an impact on your business. This will instill a solid relationship and build a community.

Transparency

Long gone are the days where it’s a “need to know” attitude of business. Transparency is winning customers these days. People want to know what businesses are up to and they want to be involved.

Buffer, a social media company, started the practice of transparency from the get-go and revolutionized online business work and culture. They publicly reveal salaries, equity, revenue, pricing of services, their product roadmap, and even the books they read! With transparency, they’ve built a solid community and are able to create new products and services with camaraderie and support from their users.

Many companies have followed suit with different ways they can be transparent. Companies like Slack and Twitch are using Trello boards for roadmap and discovery, which are completely public. Of course, Trello themselves has their roadmap public. Some companies have Trello boards for feedback and customers can clearly see what issues or complaints are being responded to.

People want their requests heard and if a company shows they’re responding, customers are more inclined to share the news.

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM)

Word of Mouth Marketing is impactful! Did you know 83% of Americans say that a word of mouth recommendation from a friend or family member makes them more likely to purchase a product or service? That’s a significant amount!

WOM has 16-25% higher lifetime value than those acquired from other sources. The customer experience plays a huge role in making this happen.

Jay Baer, the founder of Convince and Convert, talks about how to get customers to evangelize your business with talk triggers. A talk trigger is a strategic, operational choice that compels word of mouth.

Here are 5 types of talk triggers:

1. Empathy – Treat your customers with more warmth and humanity than they expect.
2. Usefulness – Deliver more utility than your customers expect.
3. Generosity – Deliver more than your customers expect.
4. Speed – Be more responsive than they expect.
5. Attitude – Just be a little different than your customers expect.

When talk triggers are implemented, word of mouth marketing prevails. This is an interesting stat as well – Women are 49% more likely than men to discuss products or services they perceive as “different” from the norm. It’s ok to be different! People want different. Above all, people want to be respected, listened to, and responded to.

Also, don’t look to celebrities to make your customers happy – 25% of Americans trust no celebrity or famous person to make recommendations. It’s not about connections or who you know.

For example, an oral surgeon provided a small gesture of comfort to his patients before even seeing them. He called the patient personally to ask if they had any questions regarding their upcoming procedure and to introduce himself. That call was his talk trigger. It showed he went above and beyond to establish trust and a relationship with a patient. They’re not “patient number 10,005” but with this phone call, they felt treated as a person. With this action, it started a domino effect and patients were letting their loved ones know they need to book with this doctor for their procedure.

It’s all about giving your customers a personal touch with your customer experience. It must be relatable and truly genuine.

Are you ready to make customers happy?

Making customers happy will get you more customers. PERIOD.

Let’s recap how to make customers happy with your business:

Be available – if you’re not available, how can you help your customers?

Relationships are part of life, even in business. In order to grow your business, you’ll need to create relationships to hear what customers want. Give customers features and services they want and need!

Be transparent – Be open to discuss business issues with customers. Maybe you’re not ready to be visible with everything but start with one area and it will be appreciated.

Word of Mouth Marketing – Use talk triggers to get customers. Talk triggers make people happy and they want to spread that happiness.

What do you plan to do to make customers happy?

The post What Businesses Can Do To Make Customers Happy appeared first on Stencil.

Elevate Stock Photos for Visual Content

According to a report on Engaging Your Audience with Visual Content by Libris and Contently, 65% of marketers and creative professionals use stock photography. The top three main use cases for visual content in an organization is advertising at 21%, social media at 18%, and website content at 17%. Knowing that most marketers are using stock photos, this should motivate you to create and customize stock photos for your brand.

Here are some ways to elevate stock photos for a variety of marketing needs (i.e. social media, blogs, ads, email, etc.):

Filters

Some photos may seem a bit dark or too light but choosing a filter can help increase or decrease the lightness to darkness factor. Some filters have effects where the middle of the photo is brighter than the edges or change the photo to black/white or give it a blue tone overlay look. Whichever filter you choose and like, put it into your branding specs.

You may have to play a bit with different filters to get a good feel if it’s something you’ll want to see on a consistent basis with blog posts or social media.

Here’s an example of how filters can change the look of a photo:

Just by changing the filter on this stock photo, you’re getting a whole different feel. You’ll want to be sure that the filter reflects what you’d like to emotionally stimulate with your marketing message.

Icons

Using icons with stock photos will definitely create a unique image. Icons, when used sparingly, can capture a great marketing message with little effort. These are especially useful when creating ad graphics.

Here’s an example of a graphic we used for an August special:

With a simple use of an icon resembling an arrow on the side, it brings attention to the words “August Special Offer”.

Dustin W. Stout from Dustn.tv does an amazing job on recreating a stock photo into a customized image for his brand. Taking a boring tech-type photo and adding colorful elements makes his blog “look” unique.

Arrows, banners, sunbursts, lines, etc. all have simple but powerful ways to direct a message towards a call-to-action.

Overlay Color

Using an overlay color is an easy way to keep brand colors within the visual content. Used consistently, people will recognize that it’s a particular brand’s image.

Rebekah Radice does an excellent job with her podcast graphics with her signature orange overlay for the Brand Authority Podcast.

When people see consistency in color, they’re enticed to learn more about the brand.

Photo Adjustment

You may find certain objects more appealing in a stock photo. You don’t have to use the full photo. Adjust to your needs and then you’ll create a whole new image.

If you find an image that will go really well for your blog but it has many objects that aren’t a good fit for your blog audience or it’s been used many times on other sites. You can adjust the image to remove the undesired items.

Here’s an example with an original photo and then a photo adjustment:

Not much of an adjustment, however, it can clearly be used as a new image. Something as simple as this can dramatically change the look of a stock photo.

Note: Convert any background photo in Stencil to a resizeable photo.

Shapes

Similar to icons, shapes can be a great addition to add attention to text or call-to-action. Shapes can be used for geometric fun to bring out a focal point or shapes can make the text more legible on a busy background.

No matter which way you use a shape in a photo, it will bring new life to a boring stock photo.

Here’s a before and after photo with shapes:

Text

Get your point across with text on stock photos. No need to beat around the bush! You’ve got something to tell your audience and when you leave them with a plain stock photo, it’s not saying much. Take advantage of white space of a photo or as mentioned previously use a shape behind the text.

Using text in front of an icon or shape can really make text stand out as seen in the example below:

Are you ready to elevate your stock photos?

Let’s wrap these easy to use tips to elevate boring old stock photos into amazing one-of-a-kind images!

• Use a filter to accentuate an emotional feel to an image.
• Use icons to make a call-to-action stand out or to change up a typically boring photo.
• Use an overlay color to gain recognition when sharing on social media to help customers recognize your brand.
• Adjust the stock photo as needed to highlight certain objects in the photo.
• Use shapes for a geometric-feel or use them to make text pop.
• Text will help your audience understand your message better.

How are you using stock photos? Let us know in the comments!

The post Elevate Stock Photos for Amazing Visual Content appeared first on Stencil.

Non-Designer Graphic Design Tools for Marketing

First, let’s just say there are several graphic design tools who love to copycat other tools. We’ve avoided those and went straight to the original graphic design tools that made a distinct mark on their craft. Graphic design tools are used for a variety of needs: infographics, social media graphics, GIFs, mobile graphic design apps, photo editing, and more.

Infographics

Infographics are an incredible social media design type to provide images with information to increase traffic to your website and it allows an audience to recall information better. It only takes us 150ms for a symbol to be processed and 100ms to attach a meaning to it. Although we can understand the visuals we see extremely fast, it’s easy to recall 80% of what we see too. Humans are visually wired!

There are two simple tools to create infographics for non-designers (no design experience necessary):

Piktochart

Piktochart helps create data visualizations with interactive charts and maps. The templates are beautiful and they have thousands of icons and images that you can use on your infographic. They do have a free trial and reasonably priced paid plans.

Visme

Visme is super easy to use to create engaging infographics. It has fantastic charts and maps for visualizing data. You can insert video, audio or embed polls into the infographic for an interactive experience. The fascinating feature of Visme is the analytics and tracking. You can create 5 projects a month for free. If you need more you can upgrade.

Mobile Graphic Design Apps

Over

Over is a mobile app for iOS device users (they’re working on Android) to create beautiful graphics. They have 10,000+ amazing templates, graphics, and fonts. It’s free with in-app purchases.

PicCollage

PicCollage is a fun and easy mobile app for graphic design. It can be used for Android, iPhone and more. There are more than 1,500 stickers and 80+ backgrounds to choose from to design an image. They also have templates you can work with to create collages and other designs. It’s free to use.

Photo Editors

Clipping Magic

If you have a product business, this tool may come in handy! Clipping Magic removes an unwanted background. If you plan to display a product but you need a clean white background you can use this tool quite easily. Just mark the object you want with green marking and what you don’t want with red markings. It’s simple and inexpensive.

LunaPic

LunaPic is a photo editing tool with a variety of features, however, the most notable is the transparent option. If you need to create an image with a transparent background this tool makes it super easy. It’s free to use.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an awesome photo editing tool! You can create photo effects, remove blemishes, teeth whitening, photo textures, collages, and much more. It’s a robust tool and no need to sign in. Just pop your photo in and start editing as needed. They say their easy tools make you the Michelangelo of photo editing. That’s pretty much true! PicMonkey has lots of great features to explore. It’s free but an upgrade may be needed for certain features.

Presentations

Canva

Many people don’t realize that you can create a presentation slide deck with Canva. They have an amazing selection of layouts to choose from with many of them with multiple pages. You can select a presentation theme by color and change out the photos or fonts. You can use their presentation mode as well and there’s no need to convert it into a PowerPoint. It’s free, however, there are some elements that are $1 each.

Google Slides

You can’t go wrong with using Google Slides! Super simple to use and you can work collaboratively with a team in real-time. You can open and edit or save PowerPoint files. There are templates for easy slide creation. It’s free to use.

Social Media / Blog / Marketing Graphics  

Stencil

Ok… just a bit biased here but Stencil needs a place on this list because it’s the fastest way to create social media graphics. It provides 1.8 Million photos to choose from and you can upload your own. Stencil has instant resizing for social media platforms and if you don’t see a size that you need customization can be done with a click. You can share directly to social media (send SMS with Instagram) or queue into Buffer to schedule for later. There are 1 Million+ icons that you can use for your images. The quote library is a unique feature so you’re not searching throughout the web for quotes BUT if you need to all you need is their Stencil extension to select the quote! Then the color eyedropper feature is amazing too. Can you tell I love Stencil?!

By the way, it’s free to use up to 10 images a month or if you need more you can upgrade.

Giphy

GIFs can be fun and can show off some personality. People love seeing the human side of a brand. You can create a GIF in Giphy with your own images or use their GIF collection. You can share directly to social media or embed the GIF to your blog. It’s free to use. Word of caution – use it sparingly or it can get annoying.

Some of these tools allow you to upload your own images or design elements so you can extend your creativity further with creating original images. We have some extra resources!

Extra Resources for Graphic Design

Fonts, design elements, photo mockups, illustrations, icons, and other design assets can help create desired effects to your graphic design. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the tools above, you can download some terrific looking creations from these design sites:

Creative Market

Round Icons

Those Icons

Graphic Design Can Be Easy for Non-Designers

With all the tools out there, make it easy for yourself to create graphics by choosing the less complex tools with robust features. How are you using graphic design tools for marketing?

Let us know if you’re using any of these tools in the comments!

The post Non-Designer Graphic Design Tools & Resources for Marketing appeared first on Stencil.

What’s Content Curation?

Content curation is the information gathered to share with others. Depending on your niche, brand, or industry, you seek out information that relates to your audience. The main question in content curation would be – What would my audience like to learn about that’s pertinent to their life or business that complements my business?

The content must correlate with your service or product within your industry or niche. This will establish authority because it will allow people to see you’re “in the know” about what’s going on in your business world.

Why should I curate content?

You’re probably asking why you should curate content when you have your own content you’d like to share.

Here are three main reasons why you should curate content:

1. Time
2. Money
3. Camaraderie

1. Creating content takes time.

It can take hours to create a blog post, several hours for a video, maybe an hour for a month’s worth of visuals and this is just for creation not including the marketing aspect. If you’re an entrepreneur or startup, time is crucial and you need to use it wisely. In a recent content marketing study, 51% of content marketers lack the time to create original content.

It’s a smart time-saver to use content from other sources that are niche or industry related that your audience would like.

2. You’re on a tight budget.

You may be an entrepreneur and you just don’t have the funds to hire a team to create content for you to post once or twice a week. Maybe a team is not happening at the moment but you need content to share.

Content curation can work for you.

3. Establish relationships and network.

It’s important to establish relationships within your industry network. For example, if you’re in health coaching then build relationships with other health coaches, organizations, and associations. Share their content and most likely they’ll share yours when it’s relevant. Perhaps start a business collaboration!

Only share the best of the best from the sources you’d personally rely on. Then your audience will see you’ve got high standards and you like to build relationships with people in the industry. You’ll also establish credibility through thought leadership.

Now that you know what content curation is and why you need it, there are tools that you need.

Content Curation Tools for Better Marketing

The key to content curation is to keep it about 25% of your content marketing strategy. You still need your original content so people can learn more about your business products or services.

Here are some free and paid tools to help entrepreneurs to curate content:

Curata

Curata is a sophisticated automated content curation tool that is a better fit for established entrepreneurs to large businesses. They are a leader of content curation with many resources and tools to fully dive into.

dlvr.it

dlvr.it is a completely automated social media posting content curation tool. It has free and paid plans. You can find niche-related topics and RSS feeds to curate. It has some great features along with a Chrome extension. Connect your social media accounts and it’s all set.

Feedly

Feedly is a free content curation tool that provides a wealth of publications and blogs that’s categorized into industries. You can follow RSS feeds quite easily here and share directly on social media or schedule through Hootsuite or Buffer.

Quuu

Quuu is an automated content curation tool that provides quality content that’s hand-picked into several categories. It is a paid content curation tool that posts for you on social media. You can also promote your own content to be shared.

RSS in Social Media Scheduling Tools

Depending on the social media scheduling tool you use, you may already have access to an amazing automated curation tool called RSS (Rich Site Summary). I’ve already mentioned it a few times earlier in this post (it’s pretty important and time-saving).

Most websites have RSS available, which brings all their content into a list. All you have to do is put in their URL into an RSS search and your social media scheduling tool will access the content you’re looking for from the URL.

MeetEdgar, our favorite social media scheduling tool, has an awesome RSS feed tool. Once you have your feeds ready then you can edit and approve the content you’d like to share directly on social media. This makes social media posting super easy!

Hot Content Curation Tip: Do not push through RSS feed content until you’ve actually read it. Use some context or thought to add to the social media post so it doesn’t look spammy or automated.

Triberr

Triberr is extremely popular with the blogger community. You create a profile, ask to get into some tribes (industry-related blogging groups), then once you’re in you can share their content which is automatically done. You can definitely establish networking relationships through Triberr. They have free access and also a paid plan for curation.

Using Content Curation Tools

Now that we’ve outlined what content curation is, why content curation is important, and some tools that can be used for your business, you’ll be off to a great start. Of course, this list is not a complete list of curation tools, however, these are the best semi-automated or automated tools to make the best use of your time.

Let us know if you like to curate content for your business and what tools you like best!

The post Content Curation Tools for Better Marketing appeared first on Stencil.

You can download a package for each category individually or grab the entire set of 200. Each package comes with images pre-sized for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest as well.

Let us know in the comments if you liked these and if you want us to create more!

The post [FREE] 200 Quote Images To Get You Inspired appeared first on Stencil.

Social Media Content That Will Get Your Business Noticed

Blog Posts

It may seem like an obvious choice but you can share your blog for social media posts with images and videos. Share your blog with a blog post image and other images within the blog post. Visual content is 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.

Use a video platform like Lumen5 to generate a quick video with tips from the blog post. Check out this video we created for our marketing tips blog post (it took 10 minutes at the most to create).

Need some new marketing ideas for your biz?
Here are a few ideas to get you started!
Be sure to visit the blog for the details:https://t.co/ih32KVSEKf@getstencil#marketingideas pic.twitter.com/SHTKQAN0F0

— Stencil (@getstencil) July 20, 2018

Call-To-Action (CTA) Post

When you create an image post with a CTA within the image, it’s urging your followers to take action now. List the date and time of your next product launch or webinar.

Agorapulse does a great job in promoting a webinar with Jay Baer in this Instagram post.

GIF

GIFs are fun! If you’re using them in your main posts or responding back to a follower on a post they can be used. Use them with caution as some can be a bit out of control with flashing colors and fast movements. You’ll want to think about what your audience would like.

Create your own GIFs with Giphy. Use images from Stencil with text or add text within Giphy. It has all sorts of text and sticker options but you should keep it simple.

Here’s an example:

via GIPHY

Giveaway

Giveaways are always a fun opportunity to gain more followers or keep existing followers happy. It’s also a way to add names to your mailing list. The important part is having a relevant prize to your business.

Sure, Amazon gift cards may attract more people but will these be targeted individuals that’ll keep coming to learn more about your business? Not likely. Try business planners or books for a coaching business, tech tools for tech-savvy entrepreneurs, etc.

Here’s a great giveaway from a confectionery company, of course, giving away gummi bears for National Gummi Bear Day. Notice that they list the winners at the top of their post to show the contest is completed. Remember to use a specific giveaway hashtag too.

How-To Video

Have a product or service that needs a bit of explaining? A how-to video is a perfect way to showcase a product on how the product works or a service that shows value. Use a 3-step method if possible. Keep the video short and to the point.

Here’s a valuable 1-minute how-to video from Neil Patel, who explains how to gain traffic from voice search.

Photos

A photo post without any text should inspire and get your audience’s attention immediately. It’s got to create a reaction! You’ll find amazing photos on Instagram and the post captions don’t have anything to do with the photo.

Sue B Zimmerman does an amazing job of creating a beautiful profile without leaving out important Instagram tips, which is her specialty.

Below is a gorgeous photo near her home and the post is all about the difference between IG Stories and IGTV.

Don’t be afraid to show off the area where you live (not exact address or details, of course) or your pets then segue into a valuable post.

Meme

Memes don’t all have to be reduced to silly cartoon comics. You can create a simple meme related to business, as long as you know your followers type of humor then run with it. People love to be entertained and have a laugh, especially running a stressful business.

Kayla from Ivory Mix has a sophisticated meme about coffee below, which goes with her brand fabulously.

Don’t be afraid to switch things up and try something different in your posts but also think of your brand.

Quote

Quotes never get old or lose their moments of inspiration when you use them sporadically and not daily. When a newsfeed is full of quotes or an Instagram profile has nothing but quotes then it looks spammy. Use quotes that will inspire your audience and get them energized for the day. Check out this post for some different ways to use quotes.

Here’s a great quote from Peg Fitzpatrick on Twitter, she regularly uses quotes with and without the text on the image.

It doesn’t matter how much we know, what matters is how clearly others can understand what we know. – Simon Sinek via @alphabetsuccess pic.twitter.com/LG5Sa3R8aK

— Peg Fitzpatrick (@PegFitzpatrick) July 16, 2018

Retweet or Share

If you see an awesome post describing your business or giving wonderful feedback, don’t be shy to retweet or share it. Your customer or follower will love the acknowledgment and will continue to promote your business.

Thanks for creating great content to share!

— Tracey Lee Davis (@traceylee47) July 12, 2018

Stats or Chart

People love data to back up their sources and sharing statistics or charts to prove a claim is an ultimate share. It’s not some random opinion piece that makes people wonder. Find well-known industry reports to find statistics that are relevant to your business and share the source.

Rebekah Radice shares awesome graphics with stats all the time. Check out the one below:

What are your company’s top #marketing challenges? 63% of marketers, globally, say that generating traffic and leads is their #1 marketing challenge.

via @Hubspot pic.twitter.com/2Km4q58fRK

— Rebekah Radice (@RebekahRadice) July 21, 2018

Survey

Get your audience to interact with you! A survey or poll can get answers to your questions quickly. Ask about a new product look, the next blog post topic, or book cover. Instagram makes it easy with polls on Instagram Stories. Facebook and Twitter also have awesome poll features and insights.

Make polls fun! You can also ask about non-business related topics to get to know your audience better.

Tips

Give people valuable tips in your social media posts. A simple image post with a business tip will go a long way. Take a tip from a blog post or case study.

Trending

Stay on top of what’s trending! Weird holidays and national holidays can all play a role in social media marketing as long as it relates to your brand or industry. If you work from home, the Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day would work well as a social media post to show off your leopard PJs in a selfie with your laptop.

Whatever works for you! Use these unique days to stand out and get your business noticed.

By the way, you’ll want to get the social media planner from Louise Myers where she has all the weird holidays researched and packed with ideas to keep the social media content going.

Stay on top of the trends on Twitter and don’t forget to use the appropriate hashtags.

Happy #NationalHighFiveDay to everyone! pic.twitter.com/bM9Ouhixul

— Stencil (@getstencil) April 19, 2018

User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is a wonderful way to promote your business and honor a customer or fan. Using UGC can be easy to use for social media but be sure to tag them to show your appreciation.

Buffer relies heavily on user-generated content from their community and they get the most diverse photos to share. Here’s a great one:

Which Social Media Content Ideas Will You Try?

Let’s recap the variety of social media content ideas that will get your business noticed!

1. Blog Posts
2. Call-To-Action
3. GIF
4. Giveaway
5. How-To Video
6. Photos
7. Meme
8. Quote
9. Retweet
10. Stats
11. Survey
12. Tips
13. Trending
14. UGC

Which of these social media content ideas will you try next?

Let us know in the comments. Oh… make sure you pin the image below!

The post Social Media Content That Will Get Your Business Noticed appeared first on Stencil.