Jeff Bullas
We all want to look good.
Wearing Levi jeans and having long hair was the way to look cool in the 70′s. Today you need a beard, ride a fixie and have an over the shoulder stylish leather bag.
And I am not talking about the girls.
In the past we lived in just a physical world. A three dimensional environment. We have entered the 4th dimension.
It’s digital.
Now we work, play and create in a digital ecosystem that defines you by your image online. Your credibility and brand is determined by your web content. The photos on Facebook, your blog posts and tweets.
How are you looking?
What image do you want to project?
Your digital brand persona is now an important component of your marketing. Fun, serious, skeptical? Maybe a rebel, crazy or even comedic. Maybe thought leader or expert.
Don’t be afraid to stand out.
Brand blandness is boring, forgettable and leads to drowning in a sea of hundreds of millions of websites.
What are the image design rules for Twitter?
So you want to be seen in the Twitter torrent.
What are the visual image rules?
Twitter allows us to use post images as long as they’re hosted on pic.twitter.com and are shown inline on users’ feeds. They also support GIFs, which is a great way to engage with your audience.
There are many ways to do this, and we’ll take a look at some of them in the tips and tricks section below..
But before we get to that what are the image design rules for Twitter.
What can you use your header image for?
Apart from looking good there are some other reasons to take advantage of the header image.
- Announce new products
- Highlight a hashtag
- Promote a webinar
- Market your new book
The list goes on. If you have the time and resources you can keep changing it for achieving campaign goals. But we need to keep projecting and be true to the brand persona.
Some tips and tricks
Now that we’ve seen which sizes to use, let’s take a look at some tools and tricks we can use to make sure the content looks awesome.
1. Images: There are quite a few stock photo sites out there, and it’s a good idea to browse through a few of them to find the perfect image to goes along with the content you publish.
2. Personalize: Don’t use the stock image as-is. Add some color, badges, personalized text or other CTA to get more people interested in your visuals. You don’t need Photoshop to do all that—freeware tools like Canva, Paint.NET, fotor or PicMonkey can be used effectively to do a lot of image customization.
Twitter profile designs for inspiration
Are you you a personal brand or a corporate brand? Personal brands can push the boundaries. So what and how you profile your personality will vary between the two.
Personal brands
What is your one thing? Speaking, consulting, writing.
1. Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary V was the wine guy but he has moved onto writing, speaking and a whole lot more.
2. Michael Hyatt
Michael comes form the world of publishing and is the author of “Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World”. He also is a prolific blogger and online entrepreneur .
3. Marshall Mathers (Eminem)
Eminem is about attitude and his Twitter profile says it all with one in your face visual
4. Guy Kawasaki
Guy is a prolific author and entrepreneur and first made his mark at Apple. His visual is all about the book in this version of his Twitter profile. He also is the Chief evangelist for Canva the new start up from Sydney that is reinventing graphic design.
5. Ashton Kutcher
Ashton takes a bit of interest in tech guy and an actor and with 16.9 million followers he can make a bit of noise online.
He was the first person to go past 1 million followers.
6. Richard Branson
We all know who this “Virgin” is. Richard is not afraid to stand out and stand up. With 5.51 million followers he can make a tweet sprint from a standing start.
Corporate brands
Twitter is a great place for companies to create online buzz, break news and share their stuff. Here are a few that give you an tweet or two to think about.
7. Hubspot
HubSpot, the online platform for marketing your businss was one of the first to create free valuable content that adds value. Today its content marketing strategy creates over 65,000 leads every month for their sales team.
Check them out for how to tweet, create content and convert.
8. Bulmers Cider
Bulmers make a great Twitter banners. Here is the current one. I am a bit of an orange fan.
9. National Geographic
National Geographic is the monthly magazine that I couldn’t wait to get in the mail when I was a young “Twitter snapper”. Today they have reinvented themselves into a modern and digital publisher.
Here is their Twitter account for the National Geographic channel.
10. Red Bull
Red Bull doesn’t advertise much but it publishes a lot.
It is a great example of why brands should become publishers. Their banner doesn’t feature their drink neither does the website.
It’s about creating conversations around the brand not about the product. That will take care of it self.
11. Samsung
Smart phones are what is driving online sharing including Tweeting, Instagramming and Snapchatting.
Samsung’s mobile division along with Apple dominates mobile. Being an Apple user I wanted to put up their Twitter account but I couldn’t find it. Apparently they are too busy to tweet.
But Tim happens to have an account with over 1 million followers.
How about you?
What design did you like? Are you happy with your Twitter profile? More to do.
Look forward to your insights and feedback in the comments below.
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