Social Network

Tutorial to Quickly Make Images for Twitter and Other Social Network Posts

Posted on by magicrat_larry

It is proven statistically that images improve viewing and interactions of social posts.  So to help you get those images made there is a, completely amazing, and simple to use tool on the internet that will help you improve your social media footprint.  Meet Pablo…

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By default Pablo will load with a quote.  So The first thing you will want to do is edit that.  To do that you simply double click the text.  You should then see that you have a few options to edit both your text itself and the formatting of it.

Pablo_2

Here is an explanation of each of the functions that can be done when editing the text.

  1. This is a drop-down that will allow you to select a font type
  2. Choose to bold your text or not
  3. choose to use italics or not
  4. Select font size
  5. Choose alignment of the text
  6. Choose Font color

If you want to move the text around the image you can do that by simply placing the cursor over the text and not double clicking.  You can then hold the left mouse button down and drag the text block around until you get it into the best position for your image.

Pablo_3On the left hand side of the page is a list of available stock photos along with an option to upload your own image.  The stock images are nice but there is not a ton of them so using google images search to find great photos and such is a great option here to keep this tools life-span going far beyond the use of the stock photos.
Above the image you have chosen is an effects bar with a few options to make it even more unique.  Contrast will help with some images to make the text standout even more.  Blur is good if you simply want to get a good color behind the text with a blurred form.  Black and white is just that, it will turn the image into a black and white image and give a dramatic feel to it.  Pablo_4

On the right hand side there are even more options to customize your image.  There is a shuffle Quote button to get another default quote populating the text.  There is a secondary text toggle to turn on another text block on the image.  Here is an example of the Secondary text in action.

Pablo_6

The secondary text has similar options as the main text and can be drug around as well to get a great layout.  The custom logo option allows you to turn on another image to overlay the current one with.  You can see here that I put my profile photo in the corner of the image.

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As you can see you can use the two sliders to change how the logo looks.  One changes the size, the other rounds the corners.  This allows you to make images that are very complicated and interesting looking without having to install any editing software at all.  But wait, there is more!

At the bottom right there are option to choose different shapes forPablo_8 the different social networks that work best with different sized images.  They are labeled well and are very much self explanatory.  Really use these to your advantage, it will make the image look better for the social network you are posting it on.

There are also options to share your image right now, and download the image to your computer.  Both are great.  I tend to use both depending on if I want to do any more processing on an image or not.  Usually Pablo produces images that are good to go right off this page so really feel free to post them from this page.

As you can see, Pablo makes creating images for your posts so easy that there is no reason to not have more images in your posts.  It will help you look better and be seen more often.  Good luck and happy posting.

pablo (10)

I Think I Need a Bigger Net

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I know everyone knows about the normal marketing stuff, Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, YouTube.  There is one thing that I am not sure is said enough.  You should make sure to plug each one marketing medium in every other marketing medium  It should be possible to find everywhere you post stuff by simply visiting a single source you have marketed on.

This seems simple but I am not sure everyone understands it.  I call it a large net.  If you have a large net you will more than likely get seen more, have a longer time in front of people who do see you, and eventually be remembered.  Remember that it is good to have a website, but a simple site does not really attract people as much as a great tweet or other social post.  So if your social networks all pointed to your site then you can guide people to where you want them to land therefore catching more people.

You do this a lot with profiles.  You should spend a lot of time thinking about how your profiles can guide people to where you want them to go.  The fact is if you write or post something interesting not everyone will follow you, but a ton of people look at you.  Make sure what they see is potentially worth them clicking, remembering, and noting in the minds.

This will gain you a lot of potential beyond every one of your content pieces.  Make sure you always go back and look at your profile and see what else you might do to make it better.  Now when a person looks you up they will be in the net and have yet another possibility to click another link to read more of your content and ideas.

Cast a big net, and keep improving that net with great content and links and you will see success.

@magicrat_larry – Join me on Twitter

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5 Things I Learned About Twitter in a Year

Posted on by magicrat_larry

If you have not used Twitter, where have you been?  It is a high paced social media site that allows for you to essentially voice out your ideas, observations, and general propaganda in 140 characters or less.  It can be used for socialization, marketing, or general enjoyment.  It is a powerful tool to get short bits of information out to people on a larger scale in short quick bursts.  I have been on Twitter for close to a year now an have been using it to market and tell people about my general game development cycles.  Here are 5 of the main things that I have learned about Twitter and how to get things done on it.

1. Tweet Every Day

The average life-span of a tweet is near 0 minutes, especially early on.  You cannot expect to gain any real following of people about your product or movement if you simply tweet once every few days.  Take the time to make sure that you have a consistent and scheduled tweet pattern and get into a groove of it.  I use Buffer myself to make up 6 scheduled tweets a day.

Using a scheduling tool you can take 15-30 minutes in the morning and get them all out of the way and throughout  your normal work day it will seem like you are tweeting to the world at a consistent pace.  You will also be able to them reach more of the worlds population more regularly because you can schedule tweets at times that you are sleeping or generally not able to stop your life and use Twitter.

2. Be Yourself

People like other people.  Keep that in mind.  Twitter at it’s core is a game and a marketing engine.  If you have a purpose do not hide it, and do not try and be something you are not.  I am a game developer and I want to market myself as that, so I do.  I tweet out mostly about that stuff and I attract mostly people who enjoy that content.

Don’t just create a Twitter account for marketing your product, truth is, on Twitter, people could care less about your product at first.  You have to grab people with personality, which believe it or not all humans have.  It is often the tweets that come from the heart, that are odd and unpredictable, that gain the most momentum on Twitter.  So do not be afraid to stop and say something that you would normally just drop on your friends.  It will gain peoples trust and those kinds of tweets are very entertaining.

3. Don’t Be A Serial Follower

What is a serial follower?  If you follow everyone you see that says anything remotely interesting you could be  a serial follower.  If you follow everyone back that follows you, you are a serial follower.  Make sure you hand out your follows to people that you really are interested in.  If you notice somebody more than once or see that their feed is full of great content follow them.  Make sure you are using Twitter for good reason, not just to gain followers by following others.  If you see that your number of followers is almost the same as the amount of people you follow you are probably following too many people and fall into the serial follower category.  You are OK when you are new to Twitter to follow more people than follow you, but as you get a presence start to deviate from following more than follow you.

4. Images, Images Are Your Friend

It is all over the internet that images help your tweets get noticed.  It is true they do help, but not everything needs an image.  You can feel free to throw together images for everything using things like Pablo and they do work well.  I noticed that images in large quantities do not necessarily get you what you are looking for.  they seem to attract people outside your followers, but your own followers don’t really care too much if you always use them.  I try and use them 2 or 3 times out of 6.

5. Give Back

Be more than a person that talks about themselves.  Help others get their stuff noticed.  Retweet good content, ask interesting questions that are not about your project.  Learn to be outgoing and converse with the community.  Be a part of the larger Twitter universe not just a sole voice yapping about your project 100% of the time.  You can have a strong number of your own content tweets, just make sure that you include the rest of the world in your conversation or it just ends up like a bad date.

I have  lot more when it comes to Twitter, just thought that 5 would be enough.  Keep at it and Twitter is very rewarding for you and you project.  Enjoy it and try new things and in the end tell us all your tips and tricks so we can all keep making Twitter a better place to market and socialize.

If you have not checked out my current project…

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