Sometimes you find random flashes of brilliance on the world wide web. Or you write a blog post that has the perfect written sound bite. And you want to share it online, but by the time you highlight, copy, open a graphics tool, paste, add the source, download the graphic and share it, you find another shiny object and forget about your quote.
These cool tools will cut your share time down to a matter of seconds so you can both share your brilliant find and go after the next shiny object.
Easy Breezy Shares with Attribution: MentionIt
MentionIt is the cool tool that inspired this post. It’s so easy. You just highlight text, click the Chrome plug-in, then tweet or download.
Pros
- You can tweet directly from the generated image by hooking up your Twitter account.
- MentionIt adds the fact source automatically.
- You can download the graphic to share it elsewhere.
- You can highlight and share any text.
- The site’s favicon is added to the graphic.
Cons
- You can’t get rid of the MentionIt logo.
- The pretty purple border doesn’t stay with the graphic.
- You can’t edit the text.
Clickable Quotes with Text Correction: Quote.Plus
Quote.Plus is another browser add-on that lets you create graphics from text.
This one may be more versatile than MentionIt, but it has a weird quirk that I don’t like with the bookmark.
Pros
- The graphic has a bottom border with the attribution.
- The graphic is linked to the original source (awesome!).
- When you have the extension installed, you can either highlight the text then right click for Quote.Plus, or you can click the bookmark.
- BONUS! You can go to the Quote.Plus page to see stats on the clicks on your graphic.
Cons
- You’re still stuck with the logo.
- If you use the bookmark and click “tweet” instead of choosing the text and right clicking, you get an error message even though the graphic goes to Twitter.
Colorful Quote Maker: Buffer’s Pablo
You’ve probably heard of Buffer, the social media scheduling tool. Buffer makes a graphic tool called Pablo. Pablo can also turn your text into a quick graphic.
Pros
- Unlike the other tools, Pablo has beautiful and contextual backgrounds to choose from.
- You can edit the text, change the size, reformat and more.
- Pablo obviously integrates with Buffer, so it’s easy to share this on individual social platforms as well as the Buffer scheduler.
Cons
- Pablo doesn’t import the source page or add an internal link back to the source.
- The other two apps are easy to read and clearly written. Pablo makes you work to get the look you want.
