Download My Free Twitter Book
When someone views your Twitter page, they make a snap decision whether or not to follow you. They want to know in a matter of seconds if you’ve got something interesting to say.
Unfortunately, sometimes your most recent page of Twitter updates has goofy stuff that may not be related to what you usually Tweet about. Maybe you’ve been on a SQLputdowns streak lately, or you’re talking about the plane crash on the Hudson. People would have to scroll through a page or more of your history to figure out what you do and what you Tweet.
Our Twitter profiles don’t help much, either – they give us only a handful of characters to describe ourselves, and sometimes that’s not enough.
My Twitter Sidebar
The fix is to make your own Twitter background image that tells visitors more about who you are and what you do. I just added one on my Twitter profile, and as you can see in the screenshot, I included a few lines about what I Twitter about, my email address, and my Editor-in-Chief badge for SQLServerPedia.
The image size depends on the visitor’s monitor. I wanted mine to look good on a 1024×768 monitor or larger, so my image is 125 pixels wide by about 500 pixels tall. I left about 80 pixels of whitespace at the top so that it kinda sorta lines up with my profile on the other side of the screen.
You can choose whether or not to tile your picture, and what color your page background is. I designed mine with a white background to keep things simple because my Photoshop skills are – well, you’re looking at the full extent of my Photoshop skills, let’s just leave it at that.
The drawback is that this is an image, not text, so if people click on it nothing happens. It’s still better than nothing, though!
More of My Twitter Articles
- Top 10 Reasons I’m Not Following You On Twitter – wondering why nobody’s following you back?
- Top 10 Reasons I *AM* Following You – how I pick who gets past my virtual bouncer.
- Twitter T-Shirts and Coffee Cups – you can get Twitter shirts with the fail whale, or get your own Twitter profile on a shirt.
- Twitter RT, OH, HT: The Slang Explained – I talk about what these cryptic terms mean and how to use them correctly.
- Twitter Client Demo Video – I show you TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and Orsiso, three different Twitter clients.
- How to Make a Bigger Twitter Profile – when people glance at your Twitter profile, they make a snap decision about whether to follow you. Give them the information they need to make a good decision.
- Browse All Posts Tagged “Twitter”
- How To Start a Blog – decide why you’re blogging, because that’ll affect the type of blog you start and how you build it.
- Browse All Posts Tagged “Blogging”
Want More Blogging & Twitter Tips? Follow me on Twitter. I tweet whenever I post a new blog entry, so you’ll always know when I’ve got new stuff. See you online!
Thanks for this article. Especially putting the dimensions to use. I wasn’t looking forward to trial and error till I got it. I’m on Twitter as @dawndrury.
This is the first time i visiting ur site. And I think it`s awesome. NIce article
Just wondering what format you save the photoshop file as (jpg?) in your adding more info to your twitter profile tutorial? And will it work with tiff, targa or eps?
Thanks Again for the tutorial VERY helpful!
Salua – you’re welcome! Use the JPG format to get the best compatibility with browsers.
Great stuff, Brent.
Thank you.
Thanks for this article. New to twitter… heck, new to all of these social websites and keeping up with all of them not to mention having substance has been a challenge.
Found you by googling RT, lol go figure (substance)
Twitter is really a great invention, but I think blogging is even more important to create some traffic. But I can use some of the tips.