Once your Twitter account has been created, you need to finish completing your profile. Your profile is where you list your Name, Location, Website, and Bio. I recommend adding a custom background where you can display more information about yourself or your business. I’ll show you some examples of what I mean.
Edit Your Twitter Profile
1) Go to www.twitter.com. If you’re not signed in already, click on “Sign In” in the upper right and enter your login information.
2) Once you are logged in, click on “Settings” in the upper right. Your account settings will appear.
3) Click on “Profile” in the Settings area.
4) You’ll first want to upload a photo that represents your business on Twitter. If you’re the primary Twitter user and “face” of your business, I recommend adding your own photo. Another option is to add your company’s logo. A good image size to use is 64×64 pixels, and it can be a GIF, JPG, or PNG. To be consistent, you can use the same image that you use for your website’s favicon that appears in the browser tab whenever someone visits your website.
5) Your name or company should already appear in the “Name” field.
6) Enter the city and state where your are located in the “Location” field.
7) Enter your business website in the “Web” field.
In the “Bio” field, write a short description for your business. You’re only allowed 160 characters here so you’ll have to be brief. This is a great place to nail that one line pitch. Some examples are:
- Accelerated Online helps small businesses establish and enhance their online presence to drive new business.
- The Haskins Agency offers competitive insurance programs for Personal Automobiles, Homeowners, Commercial, Watercraft, and Life & Health Insurance.
- Providing the New York Tri-State region with unparalleled service and support for over 40 years. Recognized as BMW’s Center of Excellence since 2006.
9) Finally, click the “Save’ button to save your updated profile.
You’re now all set with a completed Twitter profile. The next thing to do is create and add a custom background.
Add a Custom Twitter Background
Why is this important? Adding a custom Twitter background is an easy way to differentiate your profile on Twitter and to give your (potential) followers more information about your business. Here are a few examples to show you what I mean:
As you see, these companies added some of the following information to their custom background:
- Logo
- Office address
- Office phone number
- Photo of your office
- Mission statement
- Locally relevant imagery
- Email address
All of this information enhances your profile and provides more context for people who visit your Twitter page. Make it easy for them to contact you, if they like what you’re tweeting.
Creating a background image that fits nicely within your Twitter feed is a little tricky, but luckily, here are a few sites out there that can help:
Some of these services are paid and some are free so you’ll need to decide how much it’s worth to you. In my opinion, a fully customized Twitter background is well worth it.
Finally, if you’re gung-ho, you can create your own Twitter background using Photoshop. The only two guidelines you really need are the total image size and the left area width. Starting with a total image size of 2048×1707 pixels will be plenty large for most monitors. A good width for the left area is 210 pixels with a margin of 20 pixels on the left side.
Fortunately, uploading a background image to your Twitter account is very simple.
1) Click on “Settings”.
2) Click on “Design”.
3) Click on “Change Background Image” towards the bottom.
4) Select an image file from your computer (JPG, GIF, or PNG).
5) Click the “Save Changes” button.
That’s it! Five simple steps and you can upload your own background image.
You should now be squared away with a robust Twitter profile and a nice custom background. The next part of this series will tell you how to find your current friends and other people to follow on Twitter.
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