Creating A Facebook Cover Photo, Mitchell Style
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 18, 2012
I have to face this fact; I’m not the most creative guy in the world. I know what I like, but I’m bad at figuring out how to create images and the like. Heck, it took me more than 2 years to figure out a title for my first book. I can write almost anything at almost any time, but I do have my limitations.
Thus, I came into this thing about Facebook, timelines and cover photos with a lot of trepidation. Lucky for me, my personal page hasn’t gone the timeline route yet, but my business page had. And when one came to it and looked at it, there was this major gap in the upper middle that just looked horrible.
I knew I had to take care of that at some point so last night I decided it was time to try to do something. I had saved a great number of pages that all said they were going to teach me how to create a cover photo, which you’ve probably seen on a lot of pages already, but every page was lacking. Most didn’t have anything at all for me. A couple mentioned to use Photoshop or Adobe something, which I can’t remember since I don’t have those programs. And one other site said I could download a template to help me, but only if I subscribed to a newsletter; that wasn’t happening.
So I used Microsoft Publisher to help me out with it, and I’m going to tell you what I did. First, let me show you the image I created:
It might look a little strange, but the explanation is coming.
I opened up my Publisher program, and instead of going through all the gesticulations of trying to remember how to landscape the thing I just made it bigger on my screen. I initially set it to a 150% view, which helped me to start putting things together.
I started with a text box and elongated it into a triangular shape. You’re trying to get to an image size of around 851 x 315, which is odd, but that’s Facebook for you. Then I went to the picture box and selected my business logo to start with because I thought that would work well. The problem is that in reality it’s only 639 pixels wide, and if I was looking at a 100% normal view it would look great. However, at 150% it was smeared and looked lousy, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to use it.
I deleted the picture box and decided to just type in my business name in my business title font, which is Imprint MT Shadow. I added my favorite color, then increased the size. I centered the image as well because I needed to make sure that once I copied and pasted the image into my photo program that I wasn’t going to have to worry about those editing lines that always exist in Publisher.
Once I did that I did a screen print and copied it into Microsoft Photo Editor, the program I like to use for pictures. I cropped around it so I only had my business name showing, then I saved the image. I did that because I figured the first thing to do was see if I could get close to the width required by Facebook. It was way too large, and I had two choices; reduce the size of the font or reduce the size of my view, since I was doing print screen images.
I decided to reduce the size of my view, and I dropped it to 125%. When I tested it again, the images was around 830; I figured that was pretty close as a starting point.
Next, it was time to add images. I knew I was going to frame the bottom with two professional images I have of myself, but wasn’t sure what I’d put in the middle. I tested the two images first though, putting each one on the outside, and then did a series of tests trying to get close to the 315 width. I had to alter the size of the images about 5 times, but I got it to 302 and figured that was close enough for the moment.
Now, which other two images? As you can see, in the end I decided on one with my dad and one which was an actual image that I “cartooned up” to create something different that I liked from years ago. I saved and tested everything, then decided to increase my view size from 125% to 126%, a very minor increase but it brought my image to 852 x 314; almost perfect! Just to let you know in case you don’t already know this, when you save the image you can look at it in Explorer, hover your mouse over it, and it’ll tell you the dimensions. That works for all images on your computer, just so you know.
Now it was time to upload my image to my Facebook business page, which I did, but it didn’t work out. Why not? Here’s the original image:
The problem is that Facebook business pages have this logo box that pops up to the left side. If you don’t have an image in there the box remains with a big question mark, so you have to put an image there. With that box, it completely covered the bottom half of my image; that wouldn’t do. So I had to come back to the drawing board and resize an image, and I decided I didn’t want to shrink my professional image, done by my friend Kelvin by the way, so I reversed the order of the first two images and shortened the cartoon version instead. Here’s what it looks like on the page now:
There you have it. Now, you can obviously go your own route in the type of image you wish to use, but I found for this task that Publisher worked well for me, and doing screen prints also works well for me. Of course, if you have those other fancier programs you can go a much different route. It’s even possible that if you don’t have those programs OR Publisher that you could do the same thing with Word. The problem with Word is that it doesn’t have the image or text boxes to help you out.
There you have it; a true tutorial, even if you can’t use it. Good luck!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
5 Things I Do Well Online
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 11, 2012
I was over at Peggy Baron’s blog called Adventures In Internet Marketing where she wrote this interesting little post titled 5 Things I Do Well With Internet Marketing. I thought it was an interesting idea to pursue, only I’m not going totally on the internet marketing piece.
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I figure that I’ve got a long online history and there’s some things I’ve gotten right in spite of lots of failure. Yeah, I know, I’m the guy who wrote a post saying that it’s never really failure, so I’ll modify it and say there’s a lot I haven’t done right for one reason or another. But I have had some successes and there are some things I do well, and thus I’m going to share these 5 things with you.
1. I have my business website listed on more than 10,000 sites and directories for the term “diversity”. Even though that term scares a lot of people in this country (it does!), it’s important enough for me to be listed all over the world for it because one never knows. The thing is, I can’t tell you how I did it, but if it got picked up it’s all good right?
2. I have a lot of articles on the internet. With my own 5 blogs, lots of other blogs I write for, some guest posting, interviews, and articles in many places, I’ve made sure to get my name out there. It’s still hard to overcome Jimi Hendrix drummer and this reporter for the Ft. Worth newspaper in some respects but it all builds up not only a following but a profile. And it gives me a lot of material to turn into something else, as I’m working on the editing of my next book, which is a compilation of some of my early newsletters and blog posts off my business blog.
3. I’ve got commenting on lots of blogs down to a science without realizing it. I have a large group of blogs that I visit regularly and yet just last night I commented on 4 or 5 new blogs I’d never seen before. I’m not sure I’d ever commented on Peggy’s blog before last night. I think it’s important because it means that every time I do that I have the possibility of reaching a new audience in some way.
4. I talk to a lot of people on Twitter, including some famous people. In my post yesterday about Twitter I mentioned a couple of ladies I think are spectacular from my past that I’m connected with. I’ve talked to other famous or well known people over the years as well, including having the opportunity to help Guy Kawasaki edit his book once. I’ve also helped other people edit their books and read some books that were sent to me to do reviews on here and there. I think that’s pretty neat; it shows that I’ve earned at least enough respect where people trust my opinion and, oddly enough, my perceived “clout”.
5. I respond to people who are “real”. I think that’s important, and it’s also an important distinction. Back in February I talked about bad blog comments being like spam and how if I didn’t think the comments were good comments but weren’t bad enough to send to spam that I wasn’t going to respond to them. In essence that means I respond to a lot of people, and they seem to appreciate it. I’ll often follow those people back based on what CommentLuv says they’ve written about and if I leave a comment, I’m sure they appreciate that as well. And I do that for all 5 of my blogs; that’s a lot of writing and following.
There you go; now, what can you say are your top 5 ‘whatever’ as it applies to being online?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Real Marketing – Twitter
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 10, 2012
In the continuing series on what I’m calling “real marketing” I’m going to tackle Twitter, but first I’d like to alert you to another brief interview I did on Monique Neeley’s blog where she talks about “social style”, and I guess I have one so I hope you check that out.
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I tell a lot of people that Twitter is my favorite social media platform. I like it because at any time of the day or night I can go there and talk and probably get someone to talk back to me. That doesn’t happen anywhere else, not even on Facebook with its nearly 900 million participants. It’s a lot of fun but can it really be used in a business marketing plan?
The kneejerk response is “yes”. When one puts a bit more thought into it the response modifies itself to “depends”. I tend to think that too many people have the wrong idea on how to use Twitter for business marketing purposes, and even though I don’t use it properly, I do know how to use it and which businesses would benefit most from it.
For instance, if you’re a business that sells products, you could probably do well on Twitter if people like your products. For instance, if you’re a local business that sells jewelry, and you have a following, you can easily market to those people by highlighting new jewelry, posting sales, and responding to comments anyone makes about your store or your products. If you worked in conjunction with Four Square you could probably increase your business by offering special deals to those people who have both that and Twitter.
What I tend to see more often than not, however, are folks that send out link after link after link, sometimes theirs, sometimes links from others, and never really talk to anyone. Sorry, but “thanx for the RT” isn’t communicating with others; it’s just a waste of time and adds to all the blather that many of us hate. Frankly, I don’t think that’s the best business model either, especially for small or independent businesses like mine.
To me, if one is going to market on Twitter, there has to be a mix of marketing and conversation. I think I fail in that I talk a lot, to almost anyone, but rarely is it about business. True, I’ve had some great connections, and I’m ecstatic to be connected to two of my favorite “old skool” babes, those being Mariel Hemingway and Kathy Ireland (both of whom started following me first and actually talk to me; gush!), I know that I’ll probably never do business with them.
Why is that? At a certain point, if you’re marketing on Twitter you have to aim towards a specific audience. My having only one Twitter account leaves a lot to be desired, and as I’ve said before, I’m not about to start splitting everything up now. If I were starting all over again I’d think seriously about it, and I probably would recommend it to people that offer more than one type of thing, which I do.
Also, I’m coming to believe that one might need to be willing to use more automation, something else I barely used, only using it to send out my first blog post for each of my blogs and that’s that. I’ve always felt like it would be disingenuous to post a link if I wasn’t actually online at the time to respond to someone and I’m starting to rethink that a little bit. I’m fairly available throughout the day, even late into the night, and I’m recognizing that maybe the way to maximize my messages is to get some automated help. One might need to get their own message out multiple times a day; how many is up to them.
One other way of trying to market on Twitter is to follow certain hashtags here and there. You might not find anything to comment on but every once in awhile you do, and sometimes you might even create one in your particular niche. I see so many people abusing hashtags with stupid stuff or things that aren’t within their realm; who wants to see that all day long? It’s rare that I retweet something and keep the hashtag in it; I learned a long time ago after reposting a political tweet that you never know who you’re inviting to contact you and potentially give you grief. Anyway, I temporarily follow hashtags like #healthcare, #seo, #socialmedia, see if there’s any action, and then get out.
There are many other things one can do, and things one shouldn’t do, but I think I got my main point across, which is that for some businesses Twitter would be a great way for them to market themselves, and for others some consideration needs to be taken as to just what they’re trying to do there.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
My Twitter Strategy, Courtesy Of Adrienne
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 2, 2012
By the title, if you’re in the know you know that the inspiration for this post comes courtesy of our friend Adrienne Smith, who wrote a post that I commented on last week titled My Secret Twitter Strategy. I’m not going to reveal her specific strategy, since she took the time to create this neat little video about it, but I will say that there’s a bit of automation, if you will, taking place that helps her out.
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In my case, I can’t quite say I have a lot of automation, but I have a brief bit. I do use technology, but it’s certainly not automated. Also, it takes a lot more time for what are results less than what she gets, but I think the important thing is having a strategy to begin with.
My first strategy is that every single blog post I write or have, if you will, goes to Twitter automatically. I thought about the question of whether to create separate accounts for each blog and decided my mind just can’t handle being 5 or 6 different people so it all goes out under the one name. In a way that matters because everything gets mixed together and my audience might get confused. In another way that’s what this particular blog is all about anyway, so having a lot more original content going through one name works for me right now.
The next thing I do is go through the list of local people that I’ve created using an older and better version of TweetDeck to see what’s specifically going on with them. I feel it’s important enough for me to make sure I take care of my local networking to keep my presence known by them. It’s a small group of around 45 people that I stick to because they’ll talk back to me. Others who never responded to anything I had to say I removed, figuring they could care less so why waste my time on them.
The final thing I do takes some time, and I’m not sure everyone could do it or want to do it but it’s my strategy, and it works because I have a smartphone. By using the application on my phone called TweetCaster, I can literally go through hundreds, possibly thousands, of tweets if I need to. Whereas on TweetDeck I tell it to only keep the last 250 messages, I don’t tell the phone to do any such thing.
It’s a good thing I speed read, that’s for sure. If I don’t stay on top of it I can find myself two days behind the curve on checking on tweets. The program will break it into time chunks so that you don’t have to look at everything unless you want to, but that still leaves a heck of a lot of messages.
What do I do? I do through the link of everyone that I’m following, which is just under 900 people, looking at topics that I think interest me, check the links out quickly, then retweet them. Sometimes I retweet with a comment, showing that I looked at the link, while other times I’ll save the link via Evernote so I can go back and leave a comment on it later when I’m back on the big machine and still retweet it.
This strategy does two things for me. One, people love seeing their items retweeted, and they’ll often thank me for it and might pop over to this blog, or any other blog if they notice a link to a blog post I’ve recently written. Two, by going back to their blogs later on and leaving a comment, it helps introduce me to them, or remind them that I’m around, and they’ll potentially pop over to one of my blogs to say something. Either way, it helps drive traffic to my sites.
How well does it work? Well, compared to Adriene, the direct traffic I get from Twitter is around 4% referral traffic for this blog, but it’s a whopping 20% of referral traffic for my business blog. I’m thinking that’s pretty neat. Twitter seems to be her top referrer doing it her way.
Anyway, that’s my strategy; what’s yours?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Verify Information That’s Not Yours
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 29, 2012
Well, yesterday was an interesting day in this country, at least in Florida. I decided that I needed to address this issue, especially on this blog, and further decided that it needed to be a video. The title speaks for itself; anyway, here’s the video:
I hope I got my point across, and I’m doubting there’s anyone who can dispute what I said there. Yeah, I know, it might take some time here and there to do it, but in many cases I think it’s important enough to do. You never know who you might hurt by not doing it.
See, short post, short video; I can do it. 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy something! ;)
