According to Tee Morris, author of “Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in 10 Minutes,” completing a profile that attracts users is key in making a good first impression on Twitter.
Creating and Updating Your Profile
To edit your profile, you can click on the gear wheel dropdown box at the top of the page and then click on edit profile. You can also simply click on the edit button that appears over your header image when you hover over the image with your mouse.
When editing your profile, you have the option to select an image or photo to be your avatar or visual identity on Twitter. Consider what type of impression you are hoping to convey. It is often helpful if the same image you use for your avatar is used on your blog, Facebook page, Google+, and other forms of social media to allow for easy identification by your followers and readers. Adobe Photoshop, iPhoto, and Windows photo gallery are all suggested by Mr. Morris as potential programs for creating an avatar. Any program resulting in a JPEG or PNG formatted image should work. Images should be no larger than 600 X 600 pixels in size. GIFs are often of poorer quality and animated GIFs can be distracting and often won’t work when utilized by third party applications.
You may also select an image to be used as your header image. Recommended dimensions for a header image are 1252×626 with a maximum file size of 5MB. Below is a copy of my Twitter profile page. My photo or avatar is layered on top of my header image.
Your Display Name does not need to be the same as your Username.
- For instance, my username is preyspecies; however, the name displayed on my Twitter profile page is Erika ~ Prey Species.
- The name field allows for 20 characters including spaces.
In addition to updating your name, you can also provide a bio of 160 characters or less. If you choose, you can also provide your web site URL and your location. If you provide this information, Twitter will display the text over your header image as seen in the above image of my Twitter profile page.
Settings
Also under the gear wheel dropdown box is a category entitled Settings. Here you can select a preferred language, time zone, and determine whether or not you wish for individuals to be able to locate your Twitter account by using your email address. Additional privacy settings and methods for handling sensitive or controversial tweets can also be addressed here.
Updating the Homepage Background
Under settings you will see a tab for Design.
You can choose a premade theme for your background as shown here:
Or you can select an image of your own choosing as a background image as shown here:
You can also choose to tile an image if you wish for it to repeat in the background. This is what I chose to do with my image, so that my Twitter background would appear similar to the background currently seen on my blog.
