We’re in a new age now. As social media networks, particularly Twitter, become adopted by the mainstream media and corporate marketing firms, we’re seeing an evolution in the way that products are launched. Some might say that this is nothing new, that marketing has always been about capturing the current buzz machines and playing them to your needs, but I disagree.
The difference between marketing methods of old and social media marketing is that customers have a say. The success of a social media campaign is dependent not upon how much money is spent, but upon the people being marketed to. If the message works and they like the product, the masses will Tweet it to the rest of the masses. If it doesn’t, the campaign might not even get past the initial push, and will likely spiral into oblivion. (more…)
Just like in real life, your online social life will expand to fit any amount of time you give it. Twitter is the most notorious for this “productivity drain” – that’s why talented programmers have taken it upon themselves to create new ways to make managing your online social life even easier. Here are seven of the most popular software applications you can use to effortlessly keep up with Twitter (and other popular networks) even when you can’t be constantly connected.
There have been a number of teaching resources to help people learn about Twitter lately – one of which is The Backstage Pass to Twitter Success by Laura Roeder. I’ve heard a few people say that they found Laura’s training helpful so I asked one of them – Dave Navarro from The Launch Coach – if he’d be willing to write a review of it. Here’s what he came back with.
I’ll be honest – I’ve been on Twitter longer than Laura Roeder has (well, only three weeks longer, but still, I have to claim what I can). But there’s one big difference between how the last 12 months have played out for the both of us. While I have a healthy enough Twitter following – almost 1.5 followers per person I follow – Laura has a staggering 8 followers per person she follows.
Clearly, Laura knows something I don’t. Maybe a whole lot of somethings. So when she launched her “Backstage Pass to Twitter” webinar a few weeks ago, I had to take a look … and here’s my review. (more…)
While Twitter offers a few themes for your background and color them, if you’re an active twitter user you’re more likely to notice and appreciate a unique theme that helps you see the personality of another twitterer. Making your twitter presence a bit more colorful isn’t very hard and here are few suggestions you might want to consider for choosing a great color theme for your twitter profile:
Things to Consider When Choosing a Color Theme
1.) Personality. Let the colors speak for your personality… professional, fun, wacky, natural, etc.
Obviously, the Internet and social networks are all about transparency and truthfulness, and everyone treats them in that way… well, okay, maybe it’s more about forming the person you truly see yourself as; who you truly are without outside pressures or expectations. So, choose colors that align with your own style and taste. However, while you may be really proud of the university you attended, the colors you so proudly spilled beer all over don’t really speak to who you actually are, only one aspect about you.
2.) No Seizures. Super bright and colorful makes a theme very hard to look at.
As the main purpose of Twitter is to communicate information, you’ll want stay away from choosing any ‘Pokémon Shock‘ color themes as it will only distract from the few carefully chosen characters you put in each tweet.
3.) Contrast. Make sure there is a noticeable difference between your background, main text and link colors.
Unless you are @hidenseek and you want people to have to decipher each of your updates, make sure the colors you choose are not too monochromatic or analogous with your text and links. For the most readability choose complimentary colors or stick with the classic black on white.
4.) Fresh. Updating your theme is easy… so why not let it reflect your evolving life.
If you’ve got enough spare moments to let us know about that meany 6-egg omlette your stomach is now doing battle with, then you have enough time to change up your color theme or background from time to time…. And we’ll make it super easy for you by sharing with you some color love:
Color Palettes and Patterns for Your Twitter Profiles
Find a Great Color Palette
First find a palette that speaks to you. You can search through the over 700,000 palettes on COLOURlovers by most popular or by specific colors you want in the palette. If you know you love blue, then simply enter the Hex of your favorite shade or choose blue from the drop down hue menu.
Once you find a palette you love, click on it to bring up the palette page where the individual colors can be identified. Located below each palette is the Hex of each color that makes up the palette. You will need to use these numbers to change the colors on your twitter profile. So, copy these to a text document or keep the palette page open while you open up your twitter page.
Once you have your Twitter page open select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Design’, then ‘Change Design Colors’.
There you’ll see the breakdown of page the section colors and the corresponding Hex boxes. From here simply copy over the colors from the palette page. You may need to play around to find the best options for the background, sidebar, text and links. Once you get the theme you want click on ’save changes’ to share it with the world.
Using or Creating a Pattern
If you are looking for a pattern to use, follow the same instructions on how to locate a palette only use the ‘Pattern search’, or you can create a custom pattern from any palette by simply clicking ‘Create a Pattern’ on any palette page. One note should be mentioned, while palette and patterns already in the library are free to be downloaded by everyone, in order to create a custom pattern you will first need to sign up for COLOURlovers. It is quick, simple and painless to join the community of over 180,000.
From there you can browse through the selection of patterns with the drop down menu and pattern thumbnails to find the one you want. To make adjustments to the concentration and position of each color, change the order of the colors in the right hand column next to the preview of the pattern by clicking and dragging them. The best way is just to play around with it until you get it just right.
Once your pattern is created, click on ‘1600×1200′ under ‘Get This Pattern Image’ and save the image to your computer.
Open up your twitter page select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Desi
gn’, then ‘ Change Background Image’. Select the image from your computer and click ‘Save Changes’ to share it with the world.
A Small Gallery of Colorful Profiles from the Twittersphere
What Colorful Profiles Did We Miss?
Twitter is growing like mad these days and we only took a small sample of pretty themes to share in this post… undoubtedly there are tons more colourful, fun and charismatic twitter themes that we didn’t link up, one of those is probably yours. Leave a link in the comments below.
Services to let you track which links people are clicking on in your Tweets (TweetBurner)
These are just some of the tools services I’ve used in the last few weeks and they only scratch the surface at the hundreds of Twitter tools that are released.
What Twitter Tools and Services do you use? Leave the ones you love in comments below.
I’m looking forward to finding out which ones get mentioned most and finding some new ones that I’d not previously discovered.
