Twitter has just announced a major new facelift to Twitter profile pages which will enable businesses to showcase their brands, products or services far more effectively.
Twitter users can now upload a custom image as a header to their profile page. This brings the visual experience of Twitter much closer in line with Facebook and Google+ users. To my mind this is a significant step forward for businesses using Twitter – a picture tells a thousand words, right? This is your chance to display a unique and creative image that represents your brand.
So how do you do it?
Here’s an easy guide to updating your Twitter profile page, with some before and after shots from a Twitter account I run, called Wincanton Window – it’s a Twitter page for a community website, so I wanted to reflect the rural feel of this small market town in Somerset.
What it looked like before the update:
Step 1
Prepare the image that you’d like to feature at the top of your Twitter profile page. Twitter recommends image dimensions of 1252 x 626 pixels for optimum display across both pcs and mobile devices.
Step 2
Log in to your Twitter account and go to your profile page. Click on the “Edit Your Profile” button.
Step 3
Click the “Design” tab.
Step 4
In the area where it says “Customise your own“, click on the “Change Header” button.
Step 5
Browse your computer files to select the image you prepared earlier. A snapshot of the image will appear in a new window. There’s a slider you can move up or down to zoom in or out on your image. Select the best view and then click “Save“.
Sometimes it takes a while for Twitter to process your image. Optimise the upload time by making the FILE size of your image (not the DIMENSIONS) as small as possible without appreciable loss of quality. I’ve written an article here about how to prepare images for the web if you need a simple tutorial.
Unless Twitter crashes during this upload (which I’ve often experienced when uploading background images – just keep trying, you’ll get there eventually!), you should get a message saying “Your header was published successfully“.
Take a look at your new profile!
I cheated a little bit because I realised that with the new header image, my whole profile page looked a little busy, so I took the opportunity to replace my background image as well, to something a little easier on the eye.
Anyway, here’s what our Twitter profile looks like after the update:
I found this rustic background image at Themeleon, which you can also access from the Design tab in Twitter. There are hundreds of images, patterns and colour palettes to choose from and as far as I can tell, it’s all free!
Have a go at updating your Twitter profile page – heck, give it an entire makeover, like I did – and let me know how you get on!
About Mandy Cochrane
And here’s a cute little infographic I created to explain the whole process in a simple nutshell. Pin it; share it – do it!
Source: Uploaded by user via Mandy on Pinterest