unaboutique

One of my dear friends asked me some great questions today about Facebook and Twitter. I’m posting her question and my response below. Happy Friday! Question: How common is it for seniors to be twittering and facebooking? Is it rampant? Should businesses be investing serious ad dollars towards social media just yet? Response/Recommendations: Twitter stats as of April, 2010 (as released by Twitter, thank you http://www.BusinessInsider.com for this info) 106 million users. It is adding 300,000 per day Draws 180 million unique visitors. 75% of twitter traffic is outside of Twitter.com (meaning people are accessing it via apps). There are 55 million tweets/day Twitter’s search engine gets 600 million queries/day For the reasons above and because Twitter is FREE, I do recommend a business get started on Twitter. Please see previous posts about this topic. Facebook Experts are actually predicting facebook will be 50+ very soon. The average age on FB (as of Feb '10) was 4...

Your website or blog background is often underestimated in terms of what a striking effect it can have on your overall design. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this inspirational post that features 25 beautiful websites with striking backgrounds: http://dzineblog.com/2008/06/25-websites-beautiful-bg.html As you begin your search, don’t get too discouraged when you come across site after site of dated backgrounds. When I did a search today for “website backgrounds” I found more than my fair share of dated designs. Now that I've found these great designs, it's time for me to upgrade my own blogger background. :) Website Backgrounds: http://www.dinpattern.com/ - I like how you can test the background out on their website to get an idea of the effect. http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/40-beautiful-patterns-and-textures-for-ornate-backgrounds - if you like patterened/antique/scrapbook type paper, there is potential here http://citrusmoon.typepad.com/citrusmoon/ - thi...

A great way to generate traffic to your blog is to create a blog button so that visitors to your blog can very easily copy and paste the button code you've provided onto their own blog or website. This is often a reciprocal swap, where you'll also place buttons to blogs you're a fan of on your own blog as well. I've taken the html guesswork out of the process, so no worries if you aren't comfortable with coding. Steps below... How to Create a Blog Button: 1. Create your blog button graphic itself (sized 125 pixels by 125 pixels) using a graphics program such as photoshop. 2. Save the image as a jpg or gif, then upload it to a photo-sharing website (such as http://www.imageshack.us/ ) that gives you the option to grab the direct html image code link. Leave this window open on your browser so you can come back and copy the html image code it assigns your uploaded button. 3. Open notepad/wordpad/word on your computer. 4. Paste the text below into notepad/wordpad/w...

If you're visiting this post to find the #NewTwitter background design specs, please visit my #NewTwitter background specs post .  It includes a pixel-by-pixel breakdown and video. If you haven't had the opportunity to see the AT&T global ad campaign featuring painted hands, I've included a gallery below for you. I'd seen it featured on various blogs/journals/sites but few included a large gallery like below. It's always amazing to see beautiful artwork and a striking concept put to work. What's your big idea about putting art to work for you/your company? Don't feel that a concept like this is out of reach just because you're not a global company! Great ideas like this often start with an ordinary brainstorming session. Enjoy!   Share   Tweet

Just a few days ago I was looking for a great online ticketing solution. I sent out a tweet asking for recommendations. Within minutes @acmongomery recommended Eventbrite. When my friend @mandiengram tweeted back that she'd also used and loved Eventbrite , it was settled. It had already come out on top on my list, and Mandi's recommendation was confirmation for me. Last night I gave myself the challenge of setting up both upcoming Main Street Latin Festival events using Eventbrite (the Kick Off and After Parties). I timed myself, and it took me less than 2 1/2 hours from start-to-finish. That includes cross-promoting the events on the Festival homepage with graphics and sending an email with a summary to the client. Now that I have experience with Eventbrite, creating additional events will take even less time. Top 10 Things I Love About Eventbrite... 1. The event ticketing page is customizable (background color, font colors, logo, etc). This means you can make your Eventbr...

I found myself in need of a turn-key solution to sell event tickets online, so I went to my favorite place to ask for help/recommendations: Twitter. It really is, hands-down, in my humble opinion, one of the best places to get just this sort of information on the fly. I knew of a few solutions (such as google checkout and paypal), but wanted something fast and slick. Within just a couple of minutes, a friend (thx @acmongomery !) recommended EventBrite . I love that they don’t charge a set-up fee, and that they are super user-friendly. I found myself jotting down a quick run-down of EventBrite compared to other online solutions (seen below). For the sake of time and ease of use, I’m going with EventBrite. Should I have needed a longer term/higher volume ticketing solution, the other options could have made more sense. 1. EventBrite - Have an online ticketing page and store up by this weekend! They will charge 5% plus $.99 for each ticket sold. For example, to sell a $10 ticket, the pro...

I talked about the importance of a professional-looking, creative background for your Twitter page in my last post . I provided a couple of quick go-to pages to find backgrounds, but came across this great list today that I wanted to share. 22 Websites for Free Twitter Backgrounds (provided by Geek Sucks...Get Inspired Website - funny name for a site but some pretty helpful stuff). I'm feeling inspired to give my twitter page a facelift. :)