Blogivists HQ

…or at least to your blog anyway.

One of the things we pride ourselves in doing at Blogivists.com is providing our bloggers with an audience. By now, you’ve noticed that every time you write a post, it appears on the right-hand side of the main page under “livefeed”. And – along with the title of your post, user name and number of comments – lies an avatar.

Ava-what!? Avatar!

An avatar, for those of you unaware, is simply a visual representation of your blog that accompanies your posts and – if you allow them – your comments. It’s a great way to shape your online identity and attract blog traffic in the process.

Now every blogger at blogivists has a default avatar (see left), but – as you can see – it’s quite boring, and thereby, quite lame. So the ball is in your court. Get yourself a personalized avatar right now!

1. Once in admin, click on “Users” (located on the right-hand side of the page next to “Plug-ins”.
2. Go to the “Your Avatar” option.
3. Click on the “Browse” button and find an image saved on your computer.
4. Click on “Upload Photo”.
   • If no image appears, there is a problem with the file type or size. Choose another image.
5. Using the preview box, select the area you want to use as your avatar. (Notice that you can expand (or decrease) the size of the preview box.
6. Click “Continue & Crop” and do another step 5 for your “Alternate Avatar”.

Ava-awesome!

A video tutorial of the process follows:

UPDATE: I know, I know: “I’ve already tried to put up an avatar…multiple times! It didn’t work.”

Fair enough.

Here’s the problem. Your image must be larger than 500px x 500px. Anything smaller than that will simply not work. I know – the admin says “75px x 75px”. That’s wrong (and as soon as we figure out how to change it we will). For the time being though, make sure the image you use for your avatar is greater than 500px x 500px.

Say you want to give a little emphasis or attitude to your post’s title. Make a word italicized or, better yet, crossed struck out.

Great idea but argh! The editing tool bar doesn’t apply to the title box.

Thankfully, there’s a simple way to get around the obstacle: HTML.

In order to italicize something, surround the words with “<i>” on the left and “</i>” on the right. An example:

• HTML (what you’ll write): This is <i>italicized</i>.
• Visual (what will appear): This is italicized.

In order to strike (or cross) out something, surround the words with “<strike>” on the left and “</strike>” on the right. An example:

• HTML (what you’ll write): This is <strike>strikeout</strike>.
• Visual (what will appear): This is strikeout.

For those of you who operate best with visuals, here the same process on video:

Sweet! Try it out yourself. Come on! You do want to express yourself, don’t you?

This week’s tip goes beyond mere blogging and into the world of online social networking. You know…Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Ning, Twitter (a personal favorite), Plurk, etc.

Coming from one of our own, Jenn’s Other Blog tells you – in four easy steps – how to get popular in the Web 2.0 world:

1. Choose a name.

This is the name you’re going to use everywhere online, so choose wisely. You can use your own name, of course, but if you have safety and privacy concerns, you may want to choose a pseudonym. I recommend choosing a name that sounds like a real name (i.e., has a first and last name, like “Jenn Sierra”), so that you’ll also be able to use it on sites like Facebook and Linked-In. Alternatively, some social networkers choose a name that reflects their online interests or political stance (e.g., Foeammer, or bamapachyderm)…

2. Get a free e-mail account using your new name.

This can be done through a plethora of e-mail services like g-mail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.. Don’t use your internet service provider (like AOL, or Cox), because if you change providers, you’ll lose your e-mail address. Begin developing a list of contacts and networking with those contacts by e-mail whenever possible.

3. Choose an avatar.

This is the little picture that will be beside your username nearly everywhere. Choose one you like…it should be a square, and save it to your harddrive or photosharing site in a few different sizes, from 50×50 pixels to about 400×400 pixels.

4. Join social networking sites, using your new e-mail address, avatar, and name.

On the more established networks like Facebook and StumblUpon, use the friend-finder feature which checks your e-mail address books for friends that are already using the social networking sites. This helps you develop a friends-list quickly…

Join networks as you discover them. You will be more active on some networks than others. On some, you’ll simply be reserving your username, but on a few, you’ll be actively developing online networking relationships by participating in voting on articles and especially in the discussions.

As Jenn states, “there you go – you have a Web 2.0 presence. Take care of it.” Firstly though, USE IT! Hopefully, for liberty. To see the post in its entirety, click here.

Problogger has a great post with 10 steps to improving traffic.

From Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae: “Let’s be really clear: The Web is the single worst medium ever devised for interrupting people who don’t want to be interrupted. It costs too much, takes to long, and it doesn’t work” … “What New Marketing enables is a process where marketers can activate the interested and turn them into campaigners for your remarkable products.”

I like this guy. Raise your hand if you sometimes stop watching online videos that require you to watch a commercial first. Exactly!