Flavors.me is fairly new — it launched in February, 2010 — and is a way for anyone, regardless of how comfortable you are with code, to set up a beautiful website. Even if you don’t have the slightest idea what HTML or CSS are, you can make a page that reflects your personality and links to your social networks, blogs, and whatever else you’re working on.

To start, you upload a picture and plug in the links to your social media networks. Although the free option is enough to get you started, if you want more than four links, the full library of fonts and layouts, and real-time stats, you’ll need to pony up the $20 annual fee (so cheap!). Keep in mind that if you want a custom domain (I did), you’ll need the paid version of Flavors. One of the nice things about Flavors is that, even with a free account, you have several simple design options that don’t overwhelm the page with content. Each link is expandable so content is hidden until it’s needed.

Once you have your photo, just upload it; Flavors.me automatically re-sizes it to fit the page. Then you can link your page to your blog(s) (and pull in your RSS feed) or any of your other social networks. It’s so easy you’ll be up and running in less than 20 minutes (and I bet most of that time will spent just playing around with which photo to use). Not only can you link to the social networks I mentioned earlier, but you can connect to etsy, soundcloud, TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, Netflix, and GoodReads as well.

If you check out the Flavors.me directory, you can see the very cool things people are doing with their pages:

I bought my vanity domain (http://MelanieNelson.com) and worked with a local photography shop (KMR Photography in Tulsa; I’ll have more on this in a later post) to get the image for my Flavors page. I’m extremely happy with how it turned out. Now my business card just lists MelanieNelson.com on one side and BloggingBasics101.com on the other; anyone who meets me just has to remember my name to connect. From my Flavors.me page I link to Blogging Basics 101, both my personal and BB101 Facebook accounts, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and even my posts at BlogHer.com. My Flavors.me page is my hub.

I have two pieces of advice for you related to your Flavors presence:

1. Use a great photo. Flavors is first and foremost visual. Give your readers something beautiful or interesting to ogle — that image can be brand-related or you-related, whichever fits your goal. It’s worthwhile to work closely with a professional photographer to achieve the look you want. Check out the Flavors.me/directory for inspiration.
2. Keep it simple. You don’t need a long bio here. Your Flavors page isn’t meant to take the place of your other blogs, social networks, or online store. It’s meant to be a jumping-off place that houses links to all your other places online. Instead of listing your vitae, just provide an overview of you (one or two sentences will be enough) and link out to the places that are most important to you (or your brand).

Are you using Flavors yet? If so, leave your link in the comments so we can check it out!

Which page from the directory is your favorite? (Confession: I could spend way too long looking at the cool stuff showcased in the directory. It’s a total time-suck for me.)

Sidenote: Last week I read a TechCrunch article about a new site called About.me. It looks to be very similar to Flavors.me. About.me is still in beta, but once it’s rolled out, I’ll take a look and do a comparison of the two services.

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A few weeks ago, I researched Tumblr for an article on mini- (or micro-) blogging. I created an account for Blogging Basics 101 and I started using it. What am I using it for?

• I share links to the articles I’m reading and, lately, I add my own discussion of the article.
• I encourage you to ask me blogging questions so I can answer them.
• I provide a feed to the Blogging Basics 101 Tumblr account so you get links to the top stories relevant to blogging.

So, if you love the Helpful Blogging Links feature at Blogging Basics 101, might I suggest that you visit and subscribe to the Blogging Basics 101 Tumblr account? I’ll still post a few links here every Friday, but if you want to know what I’m reading every day, Tumblr’s the place you’ll find it. I’m adding about 10 or more links to the Tumblr blog every day.

If you’re using Tumblr, Posterous, or another mini-blogging platform, please feel free to tell us about it in the comments and leave a link to your account. Unless you’ve commented before, your link may be held for approval. I won’t be approving any NSFW links.

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So far in our overview of microblogging tools I’ve introduced you to Tumblr and Denise admitted her addiction to Posterous. Those two tools are the most popular options going, but there is a third option: TypePad Micro. If you’re a TypePad user, you’ve noticed that Six Apart (TypePad’s parent company) has made some significant changes over the last year or so. The goal of those changes has been to allow users to create an online hub where they can manage all of their social media accounts and TypePad Micro is just another tool to help you to that end.

In November, TypePad introduced a new, free blogging option called Micro. Here is an overview of the features you get with your new Micro account:

• Cross-post your Micro entries with your Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed accounts.
• Allow readers to sign in and comment with their TypePad, Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID account.
• Use the Re-Blog feature to share a snippet from a Micro blog to your own blog (and allow your readers to do the same).
• Post to your Micro account via e-mail, an iPhone app, or via a bookmarklet.
• Allow other TypePad users can follow you and have your status fed to their dashboard.

As for design, TypePad Micro falls somewhere in between the many options for Tumblr and the no design option of Posterous. A basic Micro account offers two design themes: Chroma and Avatar. The Chroma design allows you to upload your own banner image and then pulls the color scheme for your Micro blog from that photo. The bolder the colors, the better. The Avatar theme is based on the movie coming out this month (but you can still upload your own banner image and change the color scheme based on that image).

Setting up a TypePad Micro blog is a fairly easy affair, just follow the wizard at their site. If you already have a TypePad account and would like to add a Micro blog, the TypePad Knowledge Base can walk you through that. Once you’re up and running with your Micro account, you can start posting text, pictures, or video.

When Ginevra Kirkland from TypePad contacted me to alert me about the launch she explained why Micro would be of interest to new and established bloggers alike:

“[T]he opening of the TypePad network to new bloggers expands your audience. It also allows your readers and commenters to participate in your community in whole new ways: through favoriting, following, commenting, reblogging and, ultimately, blogging with a free TypePad Micro blog.”

Want to see how others are using TypePad Micro? Here are a few sites for you:

• Dollarshort by Six Apart co-founder, Mena Trott
• Awesome Blog by Leah Culver
• Mookie’s Musings by Mookie

You might also be interested to read Laurie’s take on why she’s not using TypePad’s Micro option. In a nutshell, she says, “I want a better blog, here–not a microblog. That’s why I come here. I can micro everything everywhere else. I do micro everything. I tweet all the livelong day. I also have an abandoned Vox, and a Posterous, and a Tumblr. I don’t know what I’m doing with any of those things, but I have them. . .My blog is not Twitter. I don’t want it to be Twitter.”

I disagree with Laurie to an extent. I think mini-blogs do have a place, but it depends on how you’re blogging and who your audience is. These mini-blog options–Tumblr, Posterous, and TypePad Micro–are absolutely poised to be the next thing in social media. Granted, many people are already using these tools, but I think you’re going to see an explosion in the next few months. Over the last year I’ve seen plug-ins that allow you and your readers to share your articles and updates with every social media account imaginable. You can automatically Tweet your blog updates, save interesting articles to your Delicious account, and update Facebook and Twitter at the same time. With microblogging tools like Tumblr, Posterous, and TypePad Micro, you can do all of that with the click of a button.

As Denise points out when describing why Posterous works for her, “It feels like it could be the tool that I use to manage most of my other online presences. It feels like it could be the tool that allows me to record and share my lifestream. It has every single option and tool that I would need to achieve that goal.” Whether you choose Posterous, Tumblr, or TypePad Micro, don’t think of it as choosing one more thing to keep track of; think of it as choosing the tool that lets you keep track of everything else.

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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Today I’m writing about Tumblr and I’ll be honest, I haven’t really done anything with microbloging beyond Facebook and Twitter. As I researched Tumblr, I found that most people are using it as a place to keep track of media they find or to keep track of links that may be useful later.

Tumblr is incredibly easy to set up (just follow the wizard) and get started with. You can create either a public or private (readers by invite only) Tumblr account. Once you’re set up, you can customize your site with themes, include your avatar, and link to your other social media accounts.

I am impressed with the number of widgets and options Tumblr provides to help you integrate your Tumblr account with your other social media accounts:

• Tumblr offers a bookmarklet you can drag to your browser’s toolbar and use to add links and media to your Tumblr site.
• There’s also a Facebook application that allows you to cross-post your Tumblr items to your Facebook account.
• You can download the iPhone application so you can take photos or record video while you’re out and about and post those directly to your Tumblr page.
• If you have a Mac, you can download a dashboard widget so you can share things directly from your desktop without going to your browser.
• You can choose to automatically or selectively share your Tumblr posts on Twitter.
• You can even post to Tumblr via text or e-mail from your phone.

They have a whole page of third-party applications for the Tumblr platform.

The one thing Tumblr doesn’t come with is comments. Which, to me, seems a little counter-intuitive. Social media is almost always about the community and the give-and-take of ideas. You can get around this one-way communication and open your Tumblr site to the masses in two ways:

1. Allow people to submit their own stories and comments about your content on your blog. Just go to Account > Preferences > Customize your blog > Advanced. Then scroll down until you see the option to Enable audience submissions. Now your readers can submit their own thoughts about your content and submit their own stories. Note that the submissions will show up in your main content area as an article. Two sites that take advantage of this option nicely are Clients From Hell and My Parents Were Awesome.
2. Use a third-party comment application like Disqus. Disqus has easy instructions for you to follow and you’ll be up and running with comments in no time. You need to be aware, though, that not all Tumblr themes support the Disqus commenting option. In those cases, you’ll need to follow Disqus’ manual instructions (there’s a link in step 3 of their installation instructions) and install the code to your template yourself. Once installed, your Tumblr blog will have a link after each post titled Comments and, you guessed it, that’s where your readers can click to leave their comments.

At first glance, I thought Why do I want to start one more account? It’s one more thing to keep track of. So I started asking people how they use Tumblr. What I found was people using their Tumblr blog as

• an RSS for their Twitter account (sort of a backup with easy navigation in case you need to find exactly what you said and when). You can see how Alli Worthington of Blissfully Domestic uses Tumblr for this.
• a place for press releases, sales information, and media kits. Jo-Lynn of Musings of a Housewife uses her Tumblr site as her press page so she can add new items as necessary and point interested marketing reps to a single place.
• a supplement to a regular or “main” blog. Meredith at Food for Thought told me she started using Tumblr because she wanted to comment on and share interesting frugal links without diluting the content on her primary blog, Like Merchant Ships. Now she uses her Tumblr account every day and says, “The best part of having an established blog is the ability to introduce  new blogs and share particularly great work. Food For Thought has become a great way to direct traffic AND serve my own readers.”
• a repository for items you may need later. Colleen Morgan at Middle Savagery writes that she appreciates Tumblr “as a sort of visual short-hand while I’m doing research–I tend to tumble what I’m reading about or thinking about, select quotes and photographs. It makes a nice, general record of your research trajectory.  I like that it is an explicit acknowledgment of the marginalia created during the construction of knowledge.”

Lynn d Johnson, who has a Tumblr site in addition to her primary blog, suggests you consider what your goals are for your content before you decide where to post it:

Let’s be honest, no one (and I mean no one) has the bandwidth to be that many places at once. But where you end up producing most of your content, and sharing, really depends on quite a few factors.

1.    What is it you want to share?
2.    Who is it you want to share with?
3.    Are you more interested in building a brand or building a community?
4.    Is it more important to be where your peers are, or to bring people to you?

These are just some of the questions you have to ask yourself when considering whether you’d rather dabble in one space over the other, or use one space to feed all of the others. What’s your end goal?

Have you used a microblogging site like Tumblr in an interesting way? Leave me your thoughts and links in the comments. I’m interested to know you’re finding these sites useful and how you’re using them to build your brand and community.

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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