The new Twitter header image on the profiles has been rolled out to everybody now. What does this mean for you?
When people look at your profile on Twitter, your profile picture and bio will be displayed in the centre of a box. For example, in this profile, the FT avatar is displayed in the middle of the black box with their 160 character bio in the middle in white writing.
The black box is the default, but you can change the black box to display a picture or a set of images that reflect your brand. I have created an image that displays a number of aspects of my offering. This is a great opportunity to make your profile more interesting and show the brand of your business.
You may want to use a photo that shows your interests or your business. Helen Irving from Best of Abingdon uses a picture of Abingdon which works well.
To upload your profile header, login to Twitter and edit your profile by clicking on the gear on the right hand side. In the profile tab, click Change Header and select the picture you want to use. You can either use a photograph as Helen did or you can use a graphics package to create an image. I used PowerPoint to arrange the images into a rectangle (twice as wide as high), group the images together and save as picture, by right clicking on the group. The image should be 1252 x 626 pixels. Twitter attempts to resize images for you, but you may need to resize the image using a free tool like Image Optimizer.
Note the bio text is always in white, so choose an image that will show the white writing.
So what do you think? – share links to your Twitter profile headings in the comments below so we can all learn from each other.