How-To’s | SocialMediaForStudents.com

Now more than ever visual content is dominating the web and social media. Facebook has announced that they are going to place more emphasis on photos and videos, Pinterest just plain exists, and even YouTube has revamped their profile design to include channel art. Beyond that, users are more likely to engage with visual content, so really, if you aren’t sharing visual content, you aren’t getting the best exposure. Here are 3 easy and unique ways to create visual content to share with your community:

1. Create an infographic of your Twitter account.

Visual.ly, a website that helps you create your own infographics has come out with a new template that will create a visual representation of any twitter account.

2. Transform quotes with Quozio.

Quozio is a fantastic and free tool that allows you to create images with quotes in mere seconds. You can use the website to create a visual quote, or you can add their handy bookmarklet to your favorite browser.

3. Edit any image with Pixlr Express.

This free online image editor allows you to edit any image, create collages, overlay text on an image and much more.

Do you have other awesome ways of creating visual content? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

You know how I’m always saying we all, regardless of our experience, have something to learn…well, I’m serious. This post is exhibit A. When I first re-launched SMFS, I knew I wanted to have social media icons that linked to the respective networks I have set up. I was shocked when the widgets menu didn’t have one, and was frustrated that I might not be able to have icons at the top of my site – something that I am always strongly recommending for clients. Thankfully, I figured out how to set it up using the “Text” widget. Here’s how to set up social media icons on WordPress.com:

Step 1: Find the social media icons you want to use.

Do a Google search for “free social media icons” and browse different icon images. Once you find some that you like, download the image files and save them to your computer.

Step 2: Upload the icon images to a post draft on your blog.

I found it easier to upload each icon individually, in the order that I want them to appear, and selecting “None” for alignment. In this stage you can also assign each image a unique URL, i.e. for the Facebook icon, set it to link to your Facebook profile or page.