Create the perfect Twitter profile

Twitter doesn’t give you much space to talk endlessly about yourself or your services. That is kind of the point. There are ways you can maximise your “footprint” however, by using the profile page and the background image to your full advantage.

Below are a few tips about how to use your profile options.

1. Create a Custom Profile Page Background

I’ll cover this in detail in the next post.

2. Create a Twitter Landing Page as your “Web”URL

 A good tip for business related tweeters is to create a “Twitter landing page” instead of sending users to the front page of your website. Advertisers create custom landing pages for different markets, so why not treat your Twitter audience differently, too? You can create one that explains to potential followers how you use Twitter and how to interact with you.

Some things you may want to include on your Twitter landing page:

- who you are / an abbreviated intro with a link to your more detailed About page, if available

- how you use Twitter (including frequency of Tweets, topics and if you use Twitter to tweet your new blog posts)

- your “follow” policy and how others should contact you if they want you to follow them back (with a “@user hello,” for example).

3. Think about your profile photo

Keeping your profile pictures consistent across all your social networks, such as Digg and Facebook, will help people find you and recognize you online as well as offline. A picture of you with a hat obstructing your face  should probably be swapped out for a picture that looks like you almost all of the time. A hard-to-recognize picture may result in users squinting at it and clicking away instead of clicking “Follow.” Aviod the temptation of putting picture of your car or cat in this space, it makes you look like an idiot (unless you sell cars or run a cat rescue home).

Of course, using a photo of your face may not be the only way to be recognizable. If your business has a memorable logo (and you have the permission to display it) you may consider using it to increase brand recognition. Note that this is best when the content of your Tweets is close to your company’s mission/communication strategy. You could also create a graphic which spells out your service, such as the one @freetoparkuk uses to explain eaxctly what they provide.

4. Use your Profile “Bio” to your Best Advantage.

Be clever, be witty, or just be yourself! In a few words, sum up who you are and make it sound interesting. Since that’s what Twitter is all about, writing an intriguing biography in such a small space shouldn’t be hard. Here’s also another opportunity point your audience somewhere. If you are going to point users to a site that is not your website or Twitter landing page, I recommend putting it here so that users see the entire URL instead of in your Web link which gets cut off. Transparency is always best.

5. Break up any @ Reply Marathons with Useful Tweets

If your potential follower is still on your profile page, and they’re not yet convinced about following you, they are going to check what you’ve been tweeting recently. Hopefully, they won’t see a sea of @ replies, which might insinuate that you spend a lot of time in micro-conversations that they may be left out of if they follow you.

I recommend breaking up any @ reply marathons with some useful, wide-audience tweets, share links or re-tweet a fellow Twitterer’s useful link.

For more on @replies ettiquette, read the Twitip article Twitter as Dinner Conversation: A Guide to Using Replies.

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