One of the challenges that face families with young children, in particular, is that all of a sudden, they’re home. All. The. Time. (If you have rowdy kids under the age of 8, you are acutely aware of how difficult this can be). On the one hand, it’s great that we get to spend some time very closely with our families right now. But on the other hand, we have responsibilities to our job. The same jobs that pay our bills.

I have 2 kids at home under the age of 5 and it’s been very challenging to carve out time to get any real work done. It’s also tough to focus on job-related tasks when things are changing so quickly around us in the world.

We hope you’re all staying safe at this time and our hearts go out to all the other individuals and business owners who are going through this. But we’re all in this together. In the meantime, a new enemy is emerging, especially if you have kids stuck at home: BOREDOM

So, we thought of a fun and creative way you can use Stencil with your children to help pass the time:

Create Your Own Coloring Books with Stencil

1. To begin, let’s start by opening up Stencil. Head over to the Templates section and look for a category called “Outlines”. OR scroll below where you can click on any of the Outline Templates thumbnails to edit it in Stencil.
   
2. In the “Outlines” category, you’ll see there’s a bunch of new pre-made templates you can use right away. They’re also already set for the optimal size for 8.5 x 11 paper. Have some fun editing them with the kids and you can add their name or any text you’d like. To add your own outlines, head over to the “Icons” section and do some searches. Sometimes adding the word “outline” to your search can help. For example, “fruit outlines”.
   Note: If you want to create your own completely from scratch, use the “Letter” canvas size (for 8.5 x 11 paper) in the canvas resizer as seen here:
   
   
3. Once you’re ready to print, click the Download button to download your image. Use the same settings as seen here:
   
   
4. Open the image on your desktop or mobile device and send it to print! That’s it

Outline Templates

We’d love to see some of the amazing creations you and your kids come up with! Post them in the comments or tweet us @getstencil.

Stay safe and warm wishes from everyone here at Stencil

The post Create A Coloring Book in Stencil – Keeping The Kids Busy During Difficult Times appeared first on Stencil.

Many of them use the same fonts and can get sorta boring. If you want to create a truly memorable graphic, it starts with using a beautiful font. Doing just this will take your image from good to great. It might seem subtle, but using just the right font will create a unique feel that will make your image stand out from the rest.

Even better, if you can use rare, more obscure fonts, it will give your image a totally custom feel. Here’s a list of some of the best and lesser-known premium fonts you can use in your designs today:

Buckle up Buttercup Marker Font

This amazing font from Maryam Kamal Co is one of the best hand-drawn fonts around. It’s also available in SVG, which is a nice bonus. It’s designed to look as close as possible to natural handwriting by keeping the subtle imperfections on the edges. It’s perfect for many uses such as magazine headlines, high fashion, bold signature branding, classy packaging, eye-catching callouts and stand-out advertising.

Get the font →

The Succulent (Font Trio)

This great font from Andrea De Oliveira is earthy and stylish, but can be used in a variety of situations: wedding invites, social media, scrapbooks, overlays for photos and more. One nice thing is this is actually a set of 3 separate fonts for the price of one. All three work really well together and can be paired for nearly endless possibilities.

Get the font →

Hackney

Hackney is a beautiful font (also available in SVG) from Ellen Luff that really packs a punch. It is an all caps font, with two alternatives for every letter, to maintain the custom made look, without obvious doubles. It includes ALL European language support as well. It’s designed to be an incredibly accessible hand-painted font. It includes three versions of the font to suit nearly any situation.

Get the font →

Sunkissed

Another absolute stunner from Maryam Kamal Co, Sunkissed is an instant classic. It’s also pretty rare to see such a beautiful and unique all-caps font, with a watercolor feel.

This trendy font collection includes an SVG and a regular font file. This font is actually 2 fonts in 1, and they can be matched for all sorts of uses. The realistic watercolor and texture of the fonts add extra originality and character other regular fonts can’t offer. The stylish textured script was designed to complement the watercolor sans font, but it also looks amazing on its own. Don’t sleep on this one!

Get the font →

Avallon

This font from Sam Parrett is great because it includes a newer “OpenType-SVG or Colour fonts” format in addition to the regular TTF format. If you’re going to be using it in Stencil, be sure to upload the TTF only. If you’re using the font outside of Stencil, using the new OpenType-SVG format allows for more detail to the letters than previously possible. This font has an amazing paintbrush effect built-in, as a transparent texture, which just gives it a completely unique look.

Get the font →

Freeday Script & Sans

Freeday Font from Aktab Studio is a modern font suitable for greeting cards, social media posts, blog images or even logo design. It comes with a complete set of standard characters, Alternates, Ligature Variation, Punctuation & has an extra textured version if you’re looking for that more distressed look. Its curves are extremely pleasing to the eye and will keep your audience wanting to see more!

Get the font →

There’s such a wide selection of fonts available now, that we wanted to keep this list short, curated and concise. Be sure to check these out and think about how you’ll be using them to wow your audience!

The post 6 Rare Hand-Drawn Fonts To Use In Your Next Design appeared first on Stencil.

Designing an amazing cover/header for your social media brand (or personal) page can be a bit more involved than it appears. Typically, you’d need to start by researching the correct size and confirming that it’s correct. That usually involves reading a bunch of long articles before even starting to design. It turns out there’s also a lot misinformation when it comes to the correct social media image sizes.

Once you do figure out the proper size, you might realize that your audience can be viewing the cover/header on any wide range of devices such as a desktop computer, a mobile device, a tablet or even a TV. … Yikes … This usually leads to hunting for a template that has all the guides built-in. These are typically only available for software like Photoshop and can be very clunky to use. They include complicated layer groups and don’t even always ensure your image is visible on all devices.

That all changes today with new “Safe Areas” in Stencil! Now you can turn on/off overlays on the canvas that show you exactly where it’s safe to put graphics in your header/cover images, ensuring they won’t be cut off by profile photos or other changes between desktop/mobile/tablet/etc. This is now available for all Stencil plans (even free accounts, yay!) and is automatically enabled for the following cover/header images:

• Facebook Cover
• Twitter Header
• LinkedIn Company Cover
• LinkedIn Personal Cover
• YouTube Channel Art

Just select one of those from the canvas resizer and the “Safe Area” guides will appear. If the overlays ever get in your way, you can always turn the “Safe Area” on or off, using the social media icon to the right of the canvas:

We hope you find this new feature extremely useful and this will make creating header/cover photos a total breeze. Here’s a quick video showing the creation of a Facebook Cover image from start to finish, in less than a couple of minutes:

Let us know in the comments if this was helpful and saved you a ton of time!

The post Create Perfect Social Covers/Headers With New Safe Areas appeared first on Stencil.

New Section Names.

We changed things up on Stencil’s side navigation to make things a bit more clear. The old “Backgrounds” section is now called “Photos” and the old “Icons & Graphics” section is now just “Icons“.

If you’re on a paid account, all of your Logos/Watermarks and Saved Images have been moved down under the Account section. That goes for all of your Uploads as well (more on that below).

New Unified Uploads Area.

Before, we used to handle the images you uploaded differently based on which section you uploaded them to. In the new “Unified” Uploads area all of your uploads now live together happily where you can quickly get to them.

Any image can now be a “Background” or a “Resizable” image.

One of the most beloved parts of Stencil has always been the way we handle background images. We do all the thinking for you and resize all photos to fit your canvas either by resizing at the width or the height of an image — depending on which is larger. This allows you to quickly click through images and see how they’ll look without having to think about resizing…While this does work great most of the time it’s not a perfect approach. Sometimes you may want more control of your image size or sometimes you may want to have multiple images on the canvas at once (i.e. a collage).

This was all possible before, but you needed to upload your images to a specific section, which could get pretty annoying. Now any image in Stencil can be a “Background” image or a “Resizable” image. When selecting an image on the canvas use this new option in the toolbar to swap between image types for more flexibility and control:

Drag to Canvas.

You could always drag & drop images to the canvas, but now with the new ways to use photos, we’ve introduced a quick way for you to select a “Background” or “Resizable” image by dragging it onto a particular “zone” on the canvas. This is just one way of an adding an image, you can of course always click a thumbnail and then “Convert to resizable image” if you want to have more refined control of it.

Drag to Reorder

Now you can drag & drop to reorder your Saved Images, Templates or Uploads! Just click and drag the little 4-way-arrow icon located on the right of your image thumbnails when hovering.

Drag to Anywhere

Here’s a fun one! Now you can drag an image to anywhere on the entire screen in Stencil and it’ll upload:

There’s been a few other less notable updates, those are:

• We now have a knowledge base widget located right within Stencil. It’s full of great tips on using Stencil and you also contact us right from within the widget. Just click on the small buoy icon in the bottom left corner of Stencil if you need help!
• If you have any uploaded fonts (or custom selected Google Fonts), they should now load much faster in the canvas.
• We’ve added about 40,000 new stock photos to Stencil since the last update, putting us at around 1,040,000 photos total!
• We’ll now remember the last font you used in a text field and keep it selected.
• Various bug fixes and improvements across Stencil.

We hope you like some of the new introductions and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions!

The post New Unified Uploads Section, Resizable Photos & More! appeared first on Stencil.

The new year is looming on the horizon but 2016 isn’t over yet. Wondering how to nail your business down for the remaining months? Here are Stencil’s top current SEO trends for a productive end of 2016.

See Also:

5 Social Media Metrics and How To Use Them to Your Advantage

How To Strategize With Templates in Stencil

5 Social influencers Your Business Should Be Following

6 SEO Trends in 2016 for Business

1. Deep Links

Deep links are mobile links that work like hyperlinks. But, instead of directing to a web page, users are sent to a specific screen within an app. Deep linking has gained considerable traction over the past few years and is currently trending. This tactic is one of the best ways to boost engagement with mobile users.

2.  Digital Assistants

Digital Assistants are currently being heralded by Forbes and many other marketing sources. As retail traffic is directly correlated to online engagement, tech companies have begun to invest heavily in this tactic.

3. Higher Word Count

Looking for better SEO results? Bump your blog posts up to 500 words per article. This will help your writers include between 5 and 10 keywords while keeping a natural feel to the content.

4. Tag Structure

Tag structuring for titles are a crucial aspect in SEO results. Make sure your tags are in accordance with WordPress or the Flesch Reading Ease test  for optimal SEO results. For more info, check this Moz article on Tags.

5. Video Content – live broadcasting, this will carry over into 2017

The top SEO trend of late is live video broadcasting. This will likely carry into and expand in 2017. If you make one budget adjustment for marketing strategy, it should be in this direction. The end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 is expected to see a dramatic increase in video content marketing — don’t get lost in the dust.

The post Stencil Tips: SEO Trends to Ring in 2016 appeared first on Stencil.

Don’t let the hard work you put into creating Facebook content on Stencil go to waste. Get the most out of your content by optimizing your Facebook page with apps. Follow our guide to Facebook’s top 5 apps for business in order to help direct viewers toward the right information on your page.

See also:

5 Steps to Optimize Social Pages for Business

How to Make Great Instagram Content

How to Use Stencil’s Grid Feature

5 Apps for Optimizing Your Content on Facebook

It’s easy to format any background image in Stencil for a great Facebook post. But what you do next can be just as important.

1. Mail Chimp – quick newsletter sign up

For under 2000 contacts, Mailchimp is your best free option for newsletter marketing. Unlike other apps, Mailchimp integrates easily with a number of other platforms including twitter. You can also create easy to understand reports for you and your co-workers. Adding this kind of power to your page can be a real game changer.

2. Woobox – fun effective campaigns via your page

Woobox is not only easy and quick to use, but helps funnel several social platforms all through the same tool. Slap this on your page to create fun and unique campaigns that will stand out to your viewers.

3. Heyo – contests and strategy 

Looking for a second campaign option? Heyo has been championed by companies such asAdweek and Forbes. For 25/mo you can stock your page with a bunch of helpful campaigns such as sweepstakes and giveaways.

4. Pagomodo – custom tabs for your page

Looking to streamline your page? Pagemodo will give you the freedom make sure your viewers are directed to your content, videos and other apps. Customization through this app will help you get a page that fits your company vision like a glove.

5. Livestream – easily broadcast live from your page

Livestream may be the best thing you do for your Facebook page in the near future. As social media begins to adapt to content marketing needs, we will begin to see an increase in live video broadcasting on the internet. If you’re looking to make video content, get ahead of the curve by adding this app to your page. We promise you wont regret it.

The post Top 5 Facebook Apps for Business appeared first on Stencil.

Optimizing your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Business Pages

1. Social Media Strategy

Pick a strategy for each platform. This may seem obvious, but don’t forget that each platform has its own nuances. A simple understanding of the difference between Facebook and Twitter can help you save time and energy. Twitter works best when using brief summaries in your post. Share a relevant source article by posting a summary of the article followed by a hashtag and a shortened URL link. Remember to visit the Home section in Twitter to engage with other people on their posts. Try being more conversational when posting on Facebook. For Instagram, use the heck out of those hashtags. Explore and engage with other posts with the same hashtags you use.

2. Know when to post

Try setting a schedule for your posts. Posting daily will help build your presence on your follower’s feeds. Every business is different so you can’t go with what others are doing on their social media posts. Some businesses may have most of their customers in New York and they’ll post during the evening hours at EST. However, another business may be posting to engage with followers in London in the morning hours. Here are our favorite posting tips for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

3. Customization

For Facebook specifically, this means tabs. Arrange your tabs in a way that helps your viewers quickly find the information that they need. Failure to do so will result in people moving on to the next page, thus less likes for your page. Make a call to action tab immediately accessible.

4. Company information

A full company profile is essential to any business branding. Take the time to dot your T’s and cross your I’s when it comes to Facebook. Users will quickly scan and move onto another page if they can’t find out more about your company. Ultimately, the way you treat this information will represent your business attitude.

5. Reinforce branding with profile and cover photos

Strong photos will reel viewers in and bring your company profile information full circle. This applies more specifically to Twitter and Facebook. Make sure your photos contain strong visual imagery that represents your brand identity and personality.

Recap for Optimizing for Social Media

Social marketing has the power to connect more directly than any other type of advertising. Take a few moments to make sure you’re optimizing your social platforms. Be subjective when considering a strategy for each of your social platforms. Then, pick a certain posting frequency for each one. Customize your pages, specifically with Facebook, by using your tabs efficiently. When applicable, be sure to fill in all the blanks for your company info. And lastly, use strong profile and cover photos to maintain a strong branding identity. 

The post 5 Ways to Optimize Social Platforms for Business appeared first on Stencil.

Looking to make social posts that wow your readers? Using Stencil’s grid feature to improve your visual content is the way to go. This blog post builds upon the previous posts we’ve shared including how to improve your visual content for Instagram and how to make great color schemes in Stencil. This time, we’ll dig a bit deeper by showing you easy steps to keep your visual content aligned for success.

On the grid: easy ways to keep your content aligned for success

1. Pick a Platform

Before you start, make sure you’re formatting your image for the specific platform you’re posting on. Go to the drop menu below the image bottom left-hand side of the image and choose the right platform. Now toggle the grid feature on by selecting the small box with grid lines to the right of the image. 

2. Proximity

Group similar elements together to boost the readability of your image. Doing so will help guide readers to different pieces of information in your image. 

3. Hierarchy

Use the grid to help resize text. Doing this will help your audience read the important elements first. For example, an event name should be the predominant “image” or element in a content. 

4. Alignment

While your first instinct may be to put text in the center of an image, try using our grid to get a bit more creative. Whether you choose to bank text to the left or right, align symmetrically to keep your content nice and buttoned up.

5. White Space

Last but not least, use the grid to help gauge how much white space you have. The image above shows how the grid can help give perspective to how much of your content is being taken up by text or other elements. 

6. Facebook Ad Usage

The general rule of thumb for Facebook ad images is the ‘less is more’ concept. Make sure there’s less than 20% of text on the image. You can check the ad image with the Stencil grid. If the text is within 5 grid boxes then you’re set and will most likely get Facebook approved. There are some exceptions like book covers, product images, games, and event posters.

Recap

Stencil’s grid feature is the easiest way to see how your content is being effected by images and text. Start by picking a social platform. When you have this goal set, proximity will help define your message for viewers. Next, tweak the important elements of your content with a visual hierarchy. Play with alignment to add style to your image. Make sure you have some white space in your content to help readability. Finally, take advantage of the grid feature to use in Facebook ads.

Are you using the Stencil grid feature? Let us know in the comments.

The post Align for Success: Using Stencil’s Grid Feature appeared first on Stencil.

Stencil’s Top 5 Influencers, Their Tone, and What They’re Doing Right

In a rapidly growing pool of influencers, business to business marketing is relying more on social media. But how do businesses choose who to work with? Here is Stencil’s list of top five social media influencers and a guide to understanding their tone and successful actions so you can decide if who you’re partnering up with meets the cut.

1. Yoga Girl @RachelBrathen

Better known as Yoga_Girl, Swedish native Rachel Brathen has slowly been taking the wellness world of Instagram by storm. Her lifelong yoga practice and teaching style skyrocketed into a known brand as a result of her Instagram success. Loyal followers know exactly what to expect: clean beautiful images of yogas poses on a beach. Yes, its that simple. By consistently displaying the same thing over and over again, something as complex as a an enduring balance between mind and body can be turned into an enticing and reliable social media brand. Follow Brathen for an example of good brand recognition through Instagram.

2. Yelp Eat 24 @Eat24

Eat 24 is Yelp’s answer to Grubhub, Seemless, and all the other online delivery services. While they not be as popular overall as their competitors, Eat 24 still pulls a lot of weight in one specific way: social media presence. Eat 24’s target market is clearly understood by their consistently witty and identifiable brand voice. Most will notice this voice through Eat 24’s twitter which posts snarky GIFs, memes and one-liners in support of ordering take out as opposed to cooking at home. Eat 24 is delivery kitsch for the ordering class. Eat 24 is the jaded voice of the millennial generation. Follow for a good example of brand voice.

3. Richard Branson @richardbranson

Richard Branson is the highly successful chairman of the Virgin Group. Branson is an example of strong business leadership. One can see this quality in Branson’s twitter which displays frequent quotes and articles about endeavors. In this way, Branson is highly recognizable, and always seems to be having fun. Looking for inspiring source tweets for your social media? Branson is the perfect answer.

4. Ann Tran @AnnTran_

For those unfamiliar, Ann Tran is an influential writer for Huffington Post. She’s also a respected branding and marketing strategist with a strong social media presence. Tran has hit Forbes’ Top 10 and was first on their top 20 female social media users list of 2013. She’s great to follow for tips, suggestions and branding. B2B marketers love her, and her image is clear and direct.

5. Gary Vaynerchuck @garyvee

In his own words, Gary Vaynerchuck, CEO of @vaynermedia “builds businesses.” Vaynerchuck is our top pick for someone to follow because of his incredible grasp of social media. If you’re a social marketer and you want to know your industry, Vaynerchuck is the perfect influencer to study up with. Vaynerchuck is an exciting and insightful entrepreneur leading the forefront of social marketing, logo strategy, and rising video strategy.  To see what we’re talking about, follow #AskGaryVee on social media.

The post 5 Influencers Your Business Should be Following appeared first on Stencil.

Proper grammar usage is a crucial tool for any marketer, designer, or entrepreneurial— it helps convey your message and make your content easy to read.

In addition to readability, your audience will appreciate text that looks smart and  professional. If you’re for looking tips on strong writing without constant check-ins from editors, read our guide below.

Recently, Stencil has written blog posts on how to create great images, use popular fonts, and tap into trending color palettes. To go along with this advice, we’d like to tell you about another useful tool for creating great content: Grammar.

Here are Stencil’s top 5 rules for essential grammar. Follow this guide when writing your text for social posts and visual content.              

1. Capitalization

Nothing helps a reader understand your message more than proper capitalization. Always start a sentence with a capital letter. Doing so will not only grab your reader’s attention but also set the tone for your message. An organized statement conveys purpose and professionalism. Use capital letters at the beginning of each word to emphasize short messages or all caps to distinguish between two lines. 

2. Commas

Once your sentence is off to a good start, use commas to maintain structure. Your audience will be distracted by sentences that don’t read well. This can be avoided by a simple comma. Also important is knowing when to avoid commas. Using too many can make a statement look too complicated. A general rule of thumb: read your sentence out loud. If you pause in the middle to separate ideas, put a comma there— if not, then keep the comma out.

3. Periods and exclamation

Exclamation points are the simplest way to convey the level of emotion that your post contains. Emphasize the importance of a call to action with an exclamation point. Put a period at the end of a sentence to convey a less intense, but direct but direct message.

4. Brevity

Get to the point as quickly and simply as possible. The image above refers to the lengthy process of bookmaking in just a few words. Looking for more examples? Try starting with a template in stencil. See if you can change the words in the template to fit your message without making the example sentence longer.

5. Word Choice

Avoid overly complex words when posting for news or business. Ernest Hemingway, author of For Whom The Bell Tolls, is famous for his brief and direct writing style. Scholar’s describe this approach as the “Tip of The Iceberg.” Writing with conciseness and brevity is not always easy. However, the ability to do so will draw readers in and help them easily connect with your product.

A Short Grammar Recap

Everyone from innovative image-makers to savvy businessmen can benefit from a strong command of grammar in the content. Use capitalization to distinguish the beginning of ideas and convey emotion. Craft strong sentences with commas. convey emotion with Periods and Exclamation. Maintain attention with brevity (the idea behind Twitter’s success). Lastly, use simple and efficient word choices. 

The post 5 Essential Grammar Rules for Great Content appeared first on Stencil.