With Neil Godin
(Note: Your Marketing Dangerously newsletter returns on Thursday)
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What? Today let’s look at how to prepare graphic materials for use anywhere on the web – including your email signatures, your website(s) – and (of course) your social media sites.
Why? There’s no doubt about it – blog posts and Facebook pages (etc.) look a lot better – and attract a lot more attention – when we include photos and graphics.
How? In case you didn’t know, photos and graphics have to be correctly ‘sized’ for placement on websites. The same isn’t true about posting photos on Facebook (I just experiemented by posting an un-sized, and uncropped photo of Shane Gibson presenting at our Meetup event in Langley last month.)
If I wanted to place this photo on my website, I would have had to ‘re-size’ the original photo to 72 pixels per inch (PPI) or it wouldn’t reproduce. The same is true for photos and graphics that you want to use in your email signatures (another key element of your social media program).
When you need to re-size photos and graphics (and if you don’t have a sophisticated program like PhotoShop) help is at hand – and it’s free of charge. Simply go to http://paint.net/ and download their free software. Once you’ve got it, follow these steps:
- Open paint.net
- Choose: File > Open. Then search for the photo you want to work with
- When your photo or graphic appears, go to ‘Image’ and choose ‘Resize’
- Go down to ‘Resolution;’ highlight the number that appears and replace it with ‘72’
- Then (in the same window) go down to ‘Width.’ Highlight the number that appears and replace it with the width you want. I chose three inches for the photos of Shane Gibson (below)
- Now highlight the whole photo in preparation for cropping (using the ‘Rectangle Select Shortcut’ tool at top left in the tool bar)
- Then choose the cropping tool (under the word Image)
- Crop the image in order to cut out distracting background material
- Choose ‘Save as,’ and save your resized image as a JPEG
- That’s it.
The photo of Shane Gibson (below) was originally 180 pixels per inch and (obviously) was not cropped.
The photo below that, cropped and resized, is now ready for prime time, anywhere on the web.
Tipzntrix: Almost every photograph you take can benefit by cropping. Experiment (you can always go back a step if you cut too much out). Great photos – particularly of people – typically cut out the background and make the person ‘pop out’ at us.
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Mark your Calendar – for our next Meetup Event – on Saturday, June 5
Date: Saturday, June 5
Location: Hampton Inn, Langley (Metro Vancouver) Canada
Time: 3:30 to 5:00
Speaker: Social Media Twizzard, Trilby Jeeves – Speaking on “Twitter”
(Trilby is a dynamite presenter. Don’t miss this one!)
Fee: No Charge.
Request: Please RSVP – and – would you please alert your business friends?
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A special request: We would love to hear your story. If you use social media in any way to build your business, please send an email to ndgodin@shaw.ca, or jonathan@neilgodin.com@ with the details – or provide your telephone number, and we will call you for details.
A special thank you: We will say ‘thank you’ with a copy of Neil’s ebook, ‘How to Start Your Economic Recovery – Right Now!’ for every idea submitted – whether we publish the idea or not. If you already have a copy of this ebook, let us know and we will send you a valuable alternate product.
Thanks very much! Neil Godin and Jonathan Christian
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