About.me & Collections Tutorial: Create You Online Identity
There is a certain ”ugh!” sound that people usually let out when they find out that there is yet another online fill-out-the-profile thingy. Make specific profile for this, fill out the form for that and yadda yadda. You wish there was something that will allow you to interconnect different profiles in a non-invasive way and stop all spam applications or tagging on unwanted photos. Luckily there is About.me, online identity website and in this tutorial we will show you how to easily make your profile and their new Collections feature.
Step One
It allows you to connect with your Facebook or Twitter account, but you can also create your account with providing your first and last name with email address. I chose the latter. After providing the info, you’ll get an email where they tell you that your personalized page is created (in “about.me/namesurname” format). But the real job of customizing your page begins after you log in or sign up.
First, you’ll see the short three step tutorial that will inform you that you can create, customize, connect, share and benefit from organizing your page. After you close it, you’ll see your page with your name and a default background image. There are two/three options that you can choose. You can either import your profile from Facebook/Twitter, or you can edit thepage on your own. I took a risk and chose to import my profile from Facebook.
Importing and Editing Your Page
After giving all neccessary permissions, importing information from Facebook was quite elegant. I expected to get one hot mess of a page, but the only thing that I wasn’t satisfied was my background page. However, it automatically imports your profile picture as a background image and I had something completely different in mind. So my dissatisfaction was matter of the concept in my head, nothing that I could blame About.me for.
After you click on the ”Edit Page” in your upper right corner, a small window will pop out that will allow you to customize your page further. ”Photo” tab will allow you to change your background image. You can upload it from your computer, Facebook, Instagram, or your saved library and then choose the position for it. ”Biography” tab will allow you to fill it out with information about name, location, jobs, education, etc. You can also write your own biography and compose your headline. ”Colors” tab is for choosing colors for your font and background. You can choose the opacity of the biography box, but not for fonts.
”Fonts” tab separates fonts and sizes for name, headline, biography and links fonts. It shows you how each font looks like, which is very helpful for font dummies like me. ”Apps” tab allows you to add you profiles from other pages and apps. It will create a button with its logo in the biography box. ”Links” will enable you to have an rss feed to your latest blog posts (works not only with wordpress), Soundcould, Youtube or Vimeo account uploads. ”Contact” tab is for filling up the info about how to contact you. Lastly, ”Promote” tab is for different kind of ways you can promote your page.
Promoting Your Page
”Promote” tab contains four ways in which you can advertise your page. First, there is the option to add it to your email signature. There is tutorial for each of the biggest email providers.You can also link to your about.me page from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest to create a unified image. Third, you can share your page by clicking on one of the buttons and posting about it on several major social networks. Fourth, you can get free about.me business cards. Just remember, that although cards are free, the shipping is not.
There is also one interesting feature in the ”Edit Page” falling menu. ”Create Spotlight” will allow you to add a bar on top of your page. It can be customized from ”Hire me” to ”Follow me to Instagram” and many more. You can customize it even further by adding more additional info and changing button and additional text into whatever you want them to say. Color included.
Home Is Where The Home Button Is, Collection is Where Your Friends Are
If you click on the ”Home” button, it will take you to a place where you can see who looked up, complimented your profile, or find friends on other social networks that already have About.me profile. On the Home drop menu, you can again ”Share” your profile, see ”Statistics” about your page by year, month or week, look up ”Free offers” (remember business cars?) and newest feature that allows you to save and organize pages on About.me called ”Collections”.
It is a mash up of your friends, interesting people, people who love you etc. Point is that you can organize and collect profiles of the people that you interact with, admire, both or something else. You can create as many collections you want, make them public or private, share them on social media or even embed and display on any webpage. Click on ”New Collection”, give it a name, choose the privacy settings and add people. It is that simple. If you want, you can rename or delete it. You can also search and discover other profiles, frienda and celebrity alike- if they have About.me profile, you’ll find them.
About me is an interesting online identity website that I will definitively use. It can be your homepage, social profile, business card or whatever you want or need it to be. Its beauty and simplicity, and the big array of interconnections and customization is the biggest advantage over the competition. I created mine, so what are you waiting for?
