Classy Clara the Twitter Bird Icon
Classy Clara the twitter social media icon beautifully framed to beautify your blog
Classy Clara is a pearl wearing, hair curling twitter birdie. She loves to tweet the day and night away. Besides the occasional scotch on the rocks, she has no bad habits, and loves her kids and great dane.
Oh and she’s free. Not easy…just free. She’s yours to enjoy on your blog or twitter page, but not for commercial use…
Just right click (if you have an apple i have no idea what YOU do) and save as .png to your comp. Give her a good home!
Want something for the holidays? Here you go! Holly, snow and stuff like that…all for you. Because I get bored and need to Photoshop and Picnik!
enjoy! check back for more fun with Classy Clara!
Personalized Twitter Background: Create a Picnik Collage
Looking for something different for your twitter background? Want something that expresses you without the usual “box on the side, listing about you information”
Create a Picnik collage and upload as your background!! What could say more about you than a collage of personal photos and graphics!!?
It’s easy…start by going to picnik.com, and click “Collage”.
You will have to determine the number of squares you want in the collage. It can be a lot (so your images look smaller) or just a few (so your images look larger). In the end you are going to be tiling the image on your background so you may see images more than once. You also need to determine the spacing and proportions. You will see how many options you have! I kept mine as the default proportions and set my spacing at “0″.
I made mine as a 5×4 grid. You choose what design you like, or play around! Time to upload photos. You can use a variety…
- your family
- your home
- your animals
- food photos if you love to cook
- products you love or have reviewed
- brands with which you have a relationship
- your blog buttons
- oh, and photos of you!
Save your file to your computer, and depending on how many photos were included, and the size of your project, you may need to resize it (make it smaller) in Picnik. I would upload it first to twitter, see what you think….and if you want to go back and edit. Your project is always available in History in Picnik.
Need help uploading the object to twitter?
Login to your profile at twitter.com, click settings, design, and at the bottom, click “change background image”. Browse until you find your collage, check the “tile background” box and hit save.
Not happy? Change it around as much as you want, but sometimes new images don’t take. I find it best to make sure your image is named something different each time you change it.
I’d love if you would send me a link if you make one for your background! And be sure to tweet it to @picnik, I’m sure they will want to see too!
gossip twitter – xoxo
The setting is all too familiar these days…
A crowded tweetdeck…
Party Time
All the @twitterers are dressed in the finest designer avatars
@She says “get your #hashtag out of my twitterstream”
@OtherShe says “it’s my #hastag, I’ll do what I want”
All the other @twitterers in the room pause their twitter streams to *gasp*
Spammers flock to words like…(WHOA this is a G rated blog)
Chuck Bass laughs…
The @twitterer in the corner is DM’ing @someone calling them both names #thattheywouldnevertweetoutloud
did she say that? no she didn’t.. yes she did ! LINK ME
Avatars just smile, and @twitterers move to Skype and iPhones to continue the bashing…
XOXO
gossip twitter
Why Companies Should Embrace Social Media Now
We see more and more companies, big box and small entrepreneur, taking a leap of faith and utilizing social media to promote their brand or product. This becomes more and more important as the consumer ventures online to shop, looks for advice, and wants to engage. It’s no longer a question of ARE you getting online, WHEN you are getting on board with social media, but HOW FAST can you get there. So many creative, enlightening campaigns are taking off, and brands don’t want to be left behind in the dust.
PR sees the benefit. More and more PR people that I talk to see that without a Twitter or Facebook presence for their brand, they miss a huge market of consumers. When people engage online, they expect to see their favorite brand tweeting deals or a fan page they can join. If you aren’t there yet with your business, it’s time to make your move.
People are looking for you and you aren’t there.
I owned a small e-commerce site, and I got into blogging because I was told that if you had a small business, you needed a blog. I didn’t know why at the time…so I did it, and got on twitter, and here I am. I had no idea what I was doing…and had a lot of trial and error. Then, surprise! Blogging and tweeting were more fun to me, and I stuck around…and sold the e-commerce biz. But while I was promoting my brand, a monogrammed gifts site, I learned that it takes more than google rankings and SEO to get sales. It takes customer appreciation.
Finding the time and resources is something hard for a small start-up who is limited in both. Often you are a one man show, and handling the site, orders, customer service, and promotion is a full time job x 2. Where a big brand has a public relations group behind them, the small business owner has the 30 minutes before the school bus comes home to promote their site. Something has to give.
And big brands, if you aren’t on Facebook and Twitter, why? What is holding you back? You have to be seen to be heard, and these days the consumer recognizes forward thinking in advertising and customer relations. After all consumers, shoppers, and brand enthusiasts are looking for you on twitter, facebook, and social networking sites.
Get ON the bus, don’t be chasing its exhaust fumes.
You need someone in your company devoted to promoting the brand in online markets. Whether that person is you, an employee, or someone who loves your brand and works with you as your brand enthusiast. Can you afford to hire someone? It’s possible you can’t afford not to. The kind of relationship you have with your consultant may be a function of the product. Company or brand enthusiasts can be found to work for a retainer, on commission, or for product or some combination. Gauge what you have to offer, and who might be interested in promoting you and your brand. It’s a form of bartering, and you never know what you may find until you put it out there.
Give me a a year’s supply of Suave and Twizzlers I’ll tweet all day! I’m pretty easy… but you get the idea. NEGOTIATE
The Power of Social Media:
*You can connect with people who have an interest in your brand. Social media campaigns can range from a Facebook event to announce a new promotion to discounts and coupon codes tweeted to new Twitter followers. Crocs gives away free shoes on occasion, and HPCheer computers. Nothing like a freebie to grow your group and attract interest!
*Are you associated with a philanthropic event or group? Use social media for good, to connect people not only with your brand, but your cause. Increase your goodwill in the social media community. Hanes, who truly embraces social media, works with the Susan G. Komen Foundation and you’ll see their presence as the Race for the Cure events take place this fall and they are teaming with online sites. BlissfullyDomestic.com encourages you to join as Team BD and walk or run in your city. And here’s to Hanes for providing the Team BD shirts!
*Connect with your consumers in a customer service capacity. It’s all out there wide open…who is mad, happy, or interested in your brand…and your competitors’ brands. It takes someone like Dooce to complain about her Maytag on twitter, and the twitter world goes crazy. A competitor, Bosch Appliances (@BoschAppliances), reaches out to Dooce and now a new washer and dryer are being donated to the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake. A long story with a good ending.
Today it’s not a question of SHOULD YOU embrace social media; it’s a necessity with today’s digital world. Don’t be perceived as the company who doesn’t get it. There are still so many brands not involved at all. This is the time to move forward. This is the time to JUST MOVE!
YOU – Make Awesome Personalized Twitter Backgrounds For FREE
You know those personalized twitter backgrounds that have the box in the corner with all the contact information in it? We are going to make one with…
Easy peasy. And you can change it easily if your info changes, for seasons, or just for fun.
Size. I have chosen to make mine 2048 x 1707 pixels because that’s what Mr.Twitterbacks said, and I have yet to figure out the perfect size. I’ve seen tutorials that are all sizes. This works for our larger monitor…worst case, someone with really wide screen will see the background cut off on the right. And that would be one wide screen!
Open up Picnik.com. I have the premium version, but you can make this with the free, just not as many options. {sorry}
Just like we did with the free advertising buttons, (good reference point) we are starting with digital scrapbook paper. I crop the page to the pixels shown above (or any size your choose)
However I am going to play around with the texture on this page with a series of effects. Under Create/Effect I applied Soften twice to smoothe out the texture,
but thought that was too blurry looking so I added Film Grain – Light.
With Tint, I played around with the color. Love how easily the background changes color!
Now for the personalization. Under Create/Stickers, I picked the Rectangle with Rounded Corners and played with the color. You have to judge the width and height in Picnik, but if you place the cursor over the background and “grab” the bg, pull it so the upper left corner is in your view, you can place the rectangle there.
Adjust the Zoom (lower right corner) to 100% and you get the view as you would see on the twitter page. Finding the right size in Picnik for the personalized area is up to you, and you can judge by looking at the twitter page. Now it’s a matter of picking the color, adding the text, and any embellishments you want. I added a series of rectangles the length of the sheet to make a colored ribbon.
Twitter backgrounds have to be 800 mb or smaller to upload. You may have to save as a .jpeg and adjust the compression quality to get it below that. If you have trouble getting a clear image, try paint.net and adjust the .jpeg settings there. If you find it hard to save your file within the 800mb allowed by twitter, I’d just make the size of the background smaller. Will be fine!!
(yes i changed the font to black…the white didn’t show up right…just a case of trial and error)
So in twitter under your settings, you can upload your design. Make sure you don’t set it to tile. When uploading to twitter, you need to adjust the other design colors too. Make the background your own! Change it for the seasons, when you take on a new website or site design or just for fun!
Want to add a photo to your background? Start the project in a program like paint.net or photoshop and add that as a layer. Work from there. Picnik is a quick way to make something cute, fun, and functional.
Hope this helps!! Have fun and leave me your twitter name so I can check it out!
The New Queen of Nice…
There are nice ways to say things and then there are not so nice. I try to start a little friendly conversation on a social network, asking some questions that I really wanted answers to and got some good old snark in the process.
I’ve learned my lesson:
Don’t ask if anyone has a problem with something that you (maybe) think you have a problem with. We aren’t even talking politics. Or the economy. It was a twitter or twat issue as we like to call it in our neck of the woods. I ask one little “Does this seem weird to you” and I got a whole bunch of “why would you feel that way’s or “I am at a loss as to why you would feel that way”.
Some people were very “I wouldn’t worry…” or “oh, I can see, but I’m sure it’s fine”… that’s nice… You must have been weened properly as a baby.
So from now on, topics I’m bringing up
What’s your favorite pet?
Oh, crap, am I going to piss off PETA if someone says Pit Bull? Not that there’s anything wrong with Pit Bulls. I have a Schnauzer. And 2 cats, one from a rescue group. The other was feral. Oh, crap, that’s another sore subject.
What’s your favorite color in the rainbow?
Oh, crap, if I say purple, am I gay? or anti-gay? or can’t I talk about rainbows at all? I like gay people. I know and respect many. I think I may have Clay’s next baby…crap, my tubes are tied.
What’s your favorite vacation spot?
No, not necessarily foreign, I love America. I love foreigners too. And the band Foreigner. I have all their albums…no I love Journey and Styx too…CRAP!
What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
No, I’m not saying “breast”…it’s not happening. You can snark on me all you want. At least I didn’t say “boob”…”breast” is so much nicer. Not that I’m into those…but if I were it’d be ok…you know… crap…
I am now the blogger and twitterer of puppies and rainbows…
Hello Kitty, where are you? So glad you are back!!
