Astera Li Creative Studio

  Photo by  Linda Xu  on  Unsplash To start a YouTube channel, all you need is a Google account . Then go to YouTube and create a new channel . You will have to name your channel (you can use your name or the name of your business) and agree to the terms. There are a few things you should do before you start uploading videos: Add a channel icon The channel icon can be an image of your logo or a picture of yourself. This image will appear on your channel, on the video pages next to your name, and in the comments. Add channel art The channel art is the large banner that appears on your channel. You can use this space to add an image that’s consistent with your branding and customize it with info about your videos and your posting schedule. Add links to your blog and social media The button that helps you upload a new banner, also lets you customize links. You can add links to your website, shops, social media channels, or even to your newsletter...

Photo by   Priscilla Du Preez   on   Unsplash You’ve worked your butt off to build a large, engaged following of fans. You’ve been replying to comments, getting to know your fans on a personal level, and have built up a great sense of tribe with them. Now that you have an amazing community, let’s start promoting the “-unity” and help your fans get to know each other! Why is it important, you ask? Interaction between your fans promotes an even more solid community around your art Your fans each have a common interest – your work! And because of that, they’re bound to have more in common, too. When you start the conversation, your fans will run with it, and create new friendships amongst themselves. This is a great way to not only promote friendship and camaraderie in general, but this also helps to reinforce the structure of your loyal, interwoven fanbase. Here are some ways to get your fans introduced to each other: Encourage conversation between ...

Independent contractors (or freelancers) are a perfect fit for product managers and marketing directors in charge of developing promotional content and technical communications for their brand. Let’s straighten one thing out first – what do I mean when I say “freelancer” or “independent contractor”? The term has bad connotations for some marketing managers. I’m not talking about the guy in India who designs logos for $1 an hour, or the college student who takes part-time jobs for some extra income. The “freelancers” I am referring to in this article are the tried and true professionals, the full-time independent contractors and small business owners who consistently provide top-quality work – and who also choose to enjoy the many advantages of working on their own terms. Your Most Valuable Business Asset The value of these professional contractors to a marketing manager cannot be overstated. In fact, I would argue that a quality freelancer is a marketing m...

Step by step process to find the right influencer for your brand. After studying some of the most successful e-commerce Instagram marketing campaigns I learned that most of them revolve around influencer marketing. Finding the right influencer for your niche is a great way to boost your reach and increase your content engagement. In this post, I’ll show you the benefits of using Instagram influencers to market your content. I will teach you how to identify the best influencers for your specific brand and develop a successful outreach strategy, so that you can use their credibility and reach to drive more traffic to your Instagram page and convert more customers.  Photo b Kyaw Tun What is an influencer? Instagram influencers are thought leaders, niche experts, or brand promoters who are trusted and well-known by your target audience. The power of Instagram influencers to bring attention to a brand is undeniable; ...

I don’t recall the number of times a small business owner or work colleague came to me with a logo designed in PowerPoint looking to expand their marketing materials for their business. As most small business owners do they try to cut corners when they first open their business and unfortunately skimping on your businesses look and feel can be a costly fix later on. Graphic design requires a creative expert. There is a major difference from a $25 logo you purchased from an online site and one that has been customized for you and your businesses. Good graphic designers will know the best approaches to communicate your products and services to your customers. They will know what your competition does (because they will research it), the will take your preferences into mind and then come up with a number of creative solutions to get your message across. Most importantly they will develop the logo/art in the proper software so that it can be printed by any printer. D...

In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll learn an easy way to create a popular selective coloring effect, converting a photo to black and white while leaving the main subject in full color. If that sounds complicated or time consuming, it's not. In fact, as we'll see, the entire effect can be created in just a few short steps using nothing more than a selection tool, an adjustment layer and a layer mask! To create the effect, we'll be using a Black & White image adjustment. Here's the image I'll be using for this tutorial: Step 1: Select the main subject in the photo (Lasso Tool, Quick Selection Tool, Pen Tool, etc), in this tutorial, i selected the phone booth and bus, draw a selection outline around the main subject of your photo.  When you're done, you should see a selection outline (the marching ants) around your subject. Step 2: We now have selected the main subjects, and we want the background to be black and white. What we have to do now is ...

Want to change the background of your photo? Do it yourself with Photoshop. One of the most useful skills you can learn in Photoshop is removing the background from an image. This will allow you to stick the subject in any picture that you want, without having to worry about blending backgrounds, or dealing with large expanses of plain white. Step 1 Open the image in Photoshop. Step 2 Navigate to the Layers window and duplicate the image, so that you will have a back up.  Select your image layer click ctrl+J for windows or option+J for Mac, and hide the original layer (click the eye icon) Step 3 Create a solid color below the duplicated image, click    icon and select solid color, choose any dark color you want, this will help you to see the residues. Step 4 Select background eraser tool, and set the settings (you can play on the values, this will depend on your image) Step 5 Start erasing your background,  play aroun...