Back when social media ran on rants and quote-based images, Share As Image was a tool that I depended on. You could grab a quote, turn it into an image and share with only a few minutes of your time.

Over the years, there was a steady evolution from one-trick pony into full-fledged image manipulation tool. Originally branded as Pin an Image, then Share As Image, the team has rebranded the product as Stencil over the summer. There is little left of their earlier site, but with a quick glance at what remains, you can glimpse the level of effort they’ve undertaken to position Stencil as an almost Canva-killer.

The Image as a Strategic Asset

Social media is an incredibly visual medium – photos accounted for 75% of content posted by Facebook pages worldwide. Blog posts with images get 94% more views than those that are posted sans visuals. Content creators are reminded to assume their readers will scan the page, so we uniquely understand the importance of the image as an asset to the overall performance of content.

I’d love to say that it’s the quality of writing that is indicative of readership, but that’s often not the case. I think we can all cite many examples of websites that outperform insight-driven blogs because of their providing scannable, easy-to-digest content (+ memes) for today’s fast-paced, limited attention reader.

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Sharing a picture with an inspirational, funny, or informative quote grabs reader attention. The eye-catching image with an overlay of witty text (composed in a super-trendy font, of course) is ubiquitous.

Inside the Tool

Like most image tools aimed at those of us who make and distribute content online, Stencil gives you the ability to create a beautiful, relevant image in minutes. It provides you with much of the same benefits that the full-featured Canva offers, and it’s so much stronger than Buffer’s Pablo, Evernote’s Skitch and other tightly focused contenders.

Basic features:

  • Optimal sizes for social media, blogs and more

  • Templates you can use to speed up design

  • Fast, easy, beautiful image creation

But if all it did was match Canva’s incredible manipulation capabilities, what would be the point? Where it wins the cloud-based image manipulation wars is via the team’s first-hand knowledge of the space. It’s like they waited for Canva, kept the good parts and eliminated the glaring pain points.

Where it shines:

  • Live previews on social sites

  • Deep integration with tools like Buffer (despite their Pablo offering)

  • 750k royalty free images at your fingertips

  • 200k icons you can use right now

  • 100k quotes ready for sharing

  • One price (not a charge per asset like Canva)

Is it perfect? No.

Every time you fire up the site you have to login again – apparently it is set to log out on close, which is incredibly inconvenient. Free photos are the big seller, but on the free plan you get only 9 per month, and no more than 1 per day - it resets each day.

Update: Both of these are unintentional – there is no limit on images per day and the behavior I’m seeing with the repeated login is being addressed now.

As with any newish tool, there are sure to be quirks that will annoy you with heavy use, but overall it’s a solid tool with some great benefits for the content creator. The image/icon/quotes/templates library alone is worth the $9/month Pro plan.

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Dive Into Stencil

The team at Stencil is powered by an incredible content marketing effort. They grabbed my attention with with great blog content, hooked me with an aggressive lead nurturing campaign and when I finally gave in and tried the tool, the proof was in the pudding. If you’re on the fence, head over to their blog and get a feel for the tool and gain some valuable image manipulation (and content strategy) advice. GetStencil here.

Of course, no tool is right for everyone, so I could certainly be unnecessarily gung go – leave me a comment below to set me straight.

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