AJ Vaynerchuk

What is a brandable avatar on Twitter?

A brandable avatar is an image that is associated with an individual’s or company’s twitter account based on appearance.

Why is it important to have a brandable avatar?

Your avatar shows up on the profiles of your followers! That means every time someone visits a follower’s profile, there is a chance that the individual will see your avatar. I know for a fact that I have checked out twitter users based on seeing the same avatar over and over again while browsing through twitter.

Examples of brandable avatars

* Please reference the image above for the numbers.

#1 - @LaughingSquid - This avatar is a unique image using the color scheme of black and green. Every time I visit someones Twitter profile and check out the followers montage, I notice this one. I think originality wins out here for Laughing Squid.

#2 - @JasonCalacanis - Jason’s avatar sticks out due to its simplicity. A nice soft green background and a giant flower (Mahalo’s logo) allows you to instantly make the association to either Jason or Mahalo.

#3 - @ijustine - Justine utilizes the fact that her pink background instantly catches your eye. Since most avatars feature soft or dull colors, FF1CAE works well here.

#4 - @cc_chapman - C.C. utilizes the same strategy I use. Since his name is merely 2 letters, he can blow those 2 letters up and make them prominent. If I see C.C. I automatically think C.C. Chapman - branding at its finest!

#5 - @photomatt - Matt kept it SUPER simple. His use of FF8FFF sticks out since it is one of the few avatars on twitter that merely is a color. Maybe this doesn’t lend to Matt’s personal brand, but I know who I am thinking of every time I see that avatar.

#6 - @centernetworks - Allen Stern of Center Networks did a nice job of incorporating his company’s brand as his avatar. The logo is very clean and nicely designed, making it easy to associate the logo with both Allen, and his company.

#7 - @pop17 - Sarah Meyers of Pop17 uses the same strategy as Allen here by using the pop17 logo for her avatar. Another aspect playing into Sarah’s favor is the fact that the logo is on the smaller side and round. These two features distinguish pop17 from most other avatars.

#8 - @somewhatfrank - Frank Gruber is another one who uses his blog’s logo to build his personal brand on Twitter. The bullseye behind the big “SF” also catches the eye.

#9 - @bloggersblog - Bloggers Blog uses the same trick as CC and I use, with the two big letters dominating the avatar. The company also uses the unique use of color to stand out (limeish green).

Last thoughts

It seems the best tactic to maximizing your avatar’s effectiveness is the use of an original color. Pink and Green seem to be the two colors of choice for this tactic.

What do you think about branding your avatar? Is it useful or is it a waste of time? Are you doing it right now? If so, how?

Introduction

A lot of times the only way you can communicate with an individual is via twitter. Sometimes when you want to communicate with this individual you don’t want to use an @reply so you choose to go with a direct message. Keeping up with this hypothetical situation, you only want to send this individual one direct message, rather than multiple DM’s that all revolved around the same topic. Here are some great tips for optimizing your 140 characters.

Kick the Habit of Adding a Space After Periods

Sure it’s bad grammar, but this is Twitter not college. If you rid yourself of the habit of spacing after sentences you will be able to pick up an additional character or two.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question. What is your plan for tonight? I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey quick question.What is your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Savings: 2 characters.

Use Contractions

Again, this isn’t what your college professor would want to see when you are handing in a research paper, but contractions can save you some valuable characters.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question.What is your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey quick question.What’s your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

What we did there was turn “What is” to “What’s”

Savings in this example: 1 character.

Get rid of unnecessary adjectives

This is an important one! If you can rid yourself of unnecessary adjectives you can save a ton of characters.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey quick question.What’s your plan for tonight?I really want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan for tonight?I want to do something!”

What we did there was rid ourselves of the words “quick” and “really.” Interestingly enough, this is something a professor would probably like to see.

Savings in this example: 13 characters

Turn Your Words Into Numbers

I know this isn’t very nice on the eyes, but it sure is an effective way to save a character or two when you most need them.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan for tonight?I want to do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something!”

What we did there was change the word for to “4″ and the word to, to “2.”

Savings in this example: 3 characters

Get Rid of the Punctuation at the End

The message is capped at 140 characters, so it is safe to assume that the reader of your message will know when you are finished.

Example A (The Wrong Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something!”

Example B (The Right Way) - “Hey question.What’s your plan 4 tonight?I want 2 do something”

What we did there was rid ourselves of the exclamation point at the end of our message. Again, it is unnecessary for the nature of this direct message.

Savings in this example: 1 character

Conclusion

By using the methods above we were able to save 19 characters on our direct message. Sure, the example I used was trivial, but I think it illustrates the point. Hopefully these little tips and tricks will give you the ability to say what you want in one simple, clean message.

Bonus Tip for Linking: Use is.gd for URL Shortening

http://is.gd

Introduction

This hasn’t happened to me before, but I know a few people who have had issues with receiving @reply spam. You can receive @replies from twitter users ever if you aren’t following them. Most people chalk this up as an unavoidable problem and simply deal with it. Well good news for those of you out there who want this, there is an option to block users.

Where to Find the Block Link

If you truly wish to block soemone from sending you @replies, you need to actually visit their profile. Once on their profile page point your attention to the right sidebar. Scroll down a bit to the bottom of the sidebar content (below the collage of people the individual is following) and there should be a link entitled, “block.”

Screen shot Example:

Here is a screen shot example: (I am simply using Dave Morin as an example, Dave is actually a great guy, and if you don’t follow him already, you NEED to!)

Conclusion

Most of us shouldn’t have this problem, but I have heard a few people complain about the issue, and I figured if I could help one or two people, then it would be worth it!

Introduction

Sharing links is a vital aspect of Twitter that bloggers use every day. It is a great way to spread your content, and when done properly can expand readership, build brand, and provide value for your followers. Since sharing links can be so important, it is important that you use the right URL Shortner at the right time.

URL Shortner? What’s That?

Twitter only allows you 140 characters for you to get your message across. Since you are promoting a link, you will want all the room you can get for “the pitch.” Some links can be rather large(even 140 characters themselves) and the solution to this is a URL shortner. A URL shortner will take your existing link and convert it into a nice, clean package that is far shorter in terms of characters.

Examples of URL Shortners

Tinyurl
is.gd
snurl
Not Long
Tweetburner

When to Use Tiny URL

Tiny URL is most likely the most branded URL Shortner around. Twitter uses tinyurl as their default URL shortner, and thus, most of your readers will probably recognize tinyurl over all the other options. If you have the room to fit a slightly longer link, then use Tiny URL.

When to Use is.gd

is.gd is less known than tinyurl, but in my opinion it does the job better. I mean when it comes down to it, tinyurl.com has 11 characters, and is.gd only has 5. Those 6 characters are important! The only downside to is.gd is that it doesn’t have a .com associated to it, and sometimes followers may not understand or even be afraid of is.gd. I wouldn’t use is.gd unless you desperately need the extra characters (which does happen from time to time).

When to Use Snurl

Snurl is a great URL shortner and is the default url shortner of the popular twitter desktop application Twhirl. If you are a user of Twhirl, using Snurl is EXTREMELY easy and highly recommended!

When to Use NotLong

Not Long is an interesting service because all the other shortners on this list randomly generate your links while Not Long allows you to name/brand your links.

For example, if your blog post is about tips for increasing RSS subscriptions, your link could be: “increasing-rss-readers.notlong.com” or something to that extent.

If you don’t need much room to pitch, I would highly recommend using notlong to brand your links with vital information about your blog post.

When to Use Tweetburner

Tweetburner is interesting because it tracks clicks. If you have a link that you feel will be clicked on a lot, then you may want to use tweetburner for it’s marketing purpose. On the front page of tweetburner there is a list of top 10 links of the hour, you may be able to pick up a few extra eyeballs if your link is popular enough to crack the top 10.

Conclusion

URL Shortner’s are a blogger’s best friend. Amazingly enough there are certain situations where certain services work best. I highly recommend testing out all the URL shortners and tracking results; remember that a certain readership may respond to a certain shortner!

I wrote a guest post today for Blogging Bits entitled: The Art and Science of Retweeting for Twitteraholics.

Thanks to Mohsin for allowing me to make the post.

Here is a quick teaser:

Many bloggers use Twitter as a platform to promote their own blog. That’s an easy concept, no need to waste our time there. Instead, lets focus on something that is under-utilized by most bloggers: promoting other blogger’s content by “retweeting.”

Head over there and Leave a Comment