Twitter has been hard at work improving the Twitter experience.
Last week, they rolled out the new profile page design.
This works in the same way as the Facebook Timeline image, LinkedIn company profile banner and Google+ banner.
It allows you showcase a product or service, and let some of your personality come through.
This article will take you through the steps of adding a Twitter profile picture to your account.
Why bother adding a Twitter header picture
I know what you might be thinking – “I thought most people use third party apps, so they will never see it”
However since Twitter updated it’s advanced search engine options, lots of marketers are actually heading back to twitter.com to search for their target audience – especially as it’s a better service than the third party apps can provide.
You would also be forgetting that not everyone who uses Twitter is a corporation, just someone who wants to follow their favourite brands and personalities. These people tend to use Twitter.com, or one of the official Twitter applications for the mobile devises – Did I mention that the cover image is displayed on mobiles too?
In other words, a large proportion of non-marketing type people will be using the standard twitter interface, which means they will see it!
Getting down to business
#1 Create your image – This should be a minimum of 1525 x 626 and no more than 5mb
#2 Log in to your Twitter account, click the gear icon in the top right, then select ‘Settings’
#3 In the left hand menu, click ‘Design’
#4 Under ‘Customize your own’, click ‘Change header’
#5 Upload the image you would like to use then drag the image into the correct position, and use the slider to zoom in and out. Click ‘Save’
That’s it!
If you now go to your Twitter profile, you will see your new image.
A little Twitter profile picture inspiration
As this is a new feature, there are still a lot of brands who haven’t yet created a profile picture.
That means that now is the time to get creating and get your images infont of your audience before it becomes ‘just another banner image’.
Design Tip: Watch your readability, the image will have text layed accross the top of it, therefore a busy background will make your bio unreadable
Examples of Twitter profiles
Breaking News
Graham Smith
Ryan Seacrest
HubSpot
Brian Gardner
StuffedWeb
What do you think of the new profile headers? Let me know in the comments below.
Send to Kindle