Many people think custom twitter backgrounds or themes with anything other than their business network profile and personal site links are not for the tech/business folks or only for the teenie-bopper Myspace crowd. I say it couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s 6 reasons why all Twitip readers should dispose of those generic Twitter backgrounds today! Why? Because you could start gaining more followers by connecting with your target audience and relating to your peers.

1.Identifying mutual interest in tastes and preferences. For example you may be one of the many Twitter Fail Whale fans or are interested in the TV show “Lost”. Guess what, there’s a background for that. Why wouldn’t you follow somebody with similar likes and interest? Isn’t that how we make friends in the real world? Twitter is no different.

2 .Automatic recognition. Your profile becomes a standout in a crowd full of clones. If nothing about you is unique (for example you’re not famous like 99% of the top followed Twitter users) then a standout background is just another edge over your competition.

3. Setting yourself apart. Reason 3 confirms the point that I spoke on above. The key to gaining followers on Twitter is setting yourself apart from everyone else. Don’t think Darren has that huge picture of his face on his Twitter profile because he is thinking about a second career in modeling. It stands out! Duh.

4. Credibility. A custom Twitter background brings more credibility to your Twitter profile. Considering the fact that there are many fake pages on twitter or marketers who join with the intention of spamming users and as you will see most of those pages still have the default theme and very little visual appeal. Making sure you have an attractive avatar is a plus.

5. You’re Boring This might ruffle somebody’s feathers, but maybe some of you guys are just not interesting or haven’t posted anything worth following on Twitter, but maybe you’ve designed a creative background that catches the attention or gets your sense of humor across without a Tweet or word spoken.

6. (Bonus) It’s Easy. Last but definitely not least. If you’re using Doctor Twitter its free, and with one-click applies the twitter background of your dreams. Free and easily accessible is always a definite perk!

Here are a few themes that might get your personality across and they can all be applied in one click:

Show your sense of humor with a April Fools Theme:

Who did you vote for on election day? Maybe a fellow Twitterer also has that in common:

You need your weekly Family Guy fix:

You’re not the only Toronto Maple Leafs fan I bet:

There are Hello Kitty fans of all ages:

So what is your reason for the stale Twitter background? (Lack of photoshop skills, lazy, no time?)

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



6 Reasons To Get Rid Of That Generic Twitter Background Once and for All

While Twitter offers a few themes for your background and color them, if you’re an active twitter user you’re more likely to notice and appreciate a unique theme that helps you see the personality of another twitterer. Making your twitter presence a bit more colorful isn’t very hard and here are few suggestions you might want to consider for choosing a great color theme for your twitter profile:

Things to Consider When Choosing a Color Theme

1.) Personality. Let the colors speak for your personality… professional, fun, wacky, natural, etc.

Obviously, the Internet and social networks are all about transparency and truthfulness, and everyone treats them in that way… well, okay, maybe it’s more about forming the person you truly see yourself as; who you truly are without outside pressures or expectations. So, choose colors that align with your own style and taste. However, while you may be really proud of the university you attended, the colors you so proudly spilled beer all over don’t really speak to who you actually are, only one aspect about you.

2.) No Seizures. Super bright and colorful makes a theme very hard to look at.

As the main purpose of Twitter is to communicate information, you’ll want stay away from choosing any ‘Pokémon Shock‘ color themes as it will only distract from the few carefully chosen characters you put in each tweet.

3.) Contrast. Make sure there is a noticeable difference between your background, main text and link colors.

Unless you are @hidenseek and you want people to have to decipher each of your updates, make sure the colors you choose are not too monochromatic or analogous with your text and links. For the most readability choose complimentary colors or stick with the classic black on white.

4.) Fresh. Updating your theme is easy… so why not let it reflect your evolving life.

If you’ve got enough spare moments to let us know about that meany 6-egg omlette your stomach is now doing battle with, then you have enough time to change up your color theme or background from time to time…. And we’ll make it super easy for you by sharing with you some color love:

Color Palettes and Patterns for Your Twitter Profiles

Find a Great Color Palette

First find a palette that speaks to you. You can search through the over 700,000 palettes on COLOURlovers by most popular or by specific colors you want in the palette. If you know you love blue, then simply enter the Hex of your favorite shade or choose blue from the drop down hue menu.

Once you find a palette you love, click on it to bring up the palette page where the individual colors can be identified. Located below each palette is the Hex of each color that makes up the palette. You will need to use these numbers to change the colors on your twitter profile. So, copy these to a text document or keep the palette page open while you open up your twitter page.

Once you have your Twitter page open select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Design’, then ‘Change Design Colors’.

There you’ll see the breakdown of page the section colors and the corresponding Hex boxes. From here simply copy over the colors from the palette page. You may need to play around to find the best options for the background, sidebar, text and links. Once you get the theme you want click on ’save changes’ to share it with the world.

Using or Creating a Pattern

If you are looking for a pattern to use, follow the same instructions on how to locate a palette only use the ‘Pattern search’, or you can create a custom pattern from any palette by simply clicking ‘Create a Pattern’ on any palette page. One note should be mentioned, while palette and patterns already in the library are free to be downloaded by everyone, in order to create a custom pattern you will first need to sign up for COLOURlovers. It is quick, simple and painless to join the community of over 180,000.

From there you can browse through the selection of patterns with the drop down menu and pattern thumbnails to find the one you want. To make adjustments to the concentration and position of each color, change the order of the colors in the right hand column next to the preview of the pattern by clicking and dragging them. The best way is just to play around with it until you get it just right.

Once your pattern is created, click on ‘1600×1200′ under ‘Get This Pattern Image’ and save the image to your computer.

Open up your twitter page select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Desi

gn’, then ‘ Change Background Image’. Select the image from your computer and click ‘Save Changes’ to share it with the world.

A Small Gallery of Colorful Profiles from the Twittersphere

What Colorful Profiles Did We Miss?

Twitter is growing like mad these days and we only took a small sample of pretty themes to share in this post… undoubtedly there are tons more colourful, fun and charismatic twitter themes that we didn’t link up, one of those is probably yours. Leave a link in the comments below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Profile Design Help from COLOURlovers

Since Twitter’s focus is on saying a lot with very little, it makes sense that the Twitter profile space is very brief and the default settings leave little room to present yourself in detail. It’s also the first and last thing potential followers will see before deciding to click “Follow” or to click away from your profile. Here’s a few tips to customize your profile so that potential followers will be convinced they can’t miss your Tweets!

1. Create a Custom Profile Page Background

Since the visual impact of your Twitter background is the strongest tool you have available, customize it to give people an eyeful of who you are.

You can make your own image on your computer and upload it under Settings – Design – Change Background Image. The first 200-250 pixels width on the left hand side is a great place to put additional profile information and list websites.

For a quick solution, you can create just the sidebar (250×700) as your background image with “no tile” selected. Then, modify the rest of the Twitter color scheme to complement it. You can use the first 200 pixels from the top for your picture or “header” for a possible logo and tagline.

The rest of the 400-500 vertical pixels should be used to tell others what you’re about and most importantly, what you’re looking for. Are you using Twitter to get business? To gather ideas for a project? To get feedback from customers? This is the best place to reflect your interests and other facets of your professional life if necessary, so that others can see it immediately.

Alternatively, you can use it to tell people how best to contact you like @garyvee who encourages people to email him instead of sending a Direct Message on Twitter.

Still not sure about the dimensions? You can use Browser Shots to see what it will look like on different screen sizes and browsers.

For an in-depth look at how to create a custom Twitter background, read the Twitip article – Make a Good Impression with a Custom Twitter Background.

Also check out these resources on Background images”

• Boinblog provides two different Photoshop templates to download, or you can create your own!
• Several templates for free at TwitterBacks

Other interesting uses of Twitter backgrounds:

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

@pistachio had a great tip for this months ago when she created 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).

See Laura’s (@pistachio’s) Twitter Landing Page (Who is @pistachio?) as an example of this.

3. Use a Profile Picture that Reinforces Your Brand (You!)

Keeping your profile pictures consistent across all your social networks will help people find you and recognize you online as well as offline. A picture of you with a hat obstructing your face or you in your Halloween costume 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.”

Of course, using a photo of your face may not be the only way to be “recognizable”:

@photomatt Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of Wordpress, has a profile picture which is simple a bright pink square. It’s certainly recognizable in a Twitter lineup, but unless you’re on magazine covers like he is, you’ll want to use your picture as a way for people to identify you and to create a visual and hopefully emotional connection with your Tweets even if they haven’t met you in-person.

If your company 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.

4. Utilize 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 Bio 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.

@jowyang uses his Bio to give a brief explanation of who he is and points those interested to an article he wrote “How I use Twitter.”

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.

How would you personalize your Twitter profile to encourage newcomers to follow you?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



6 Tips for Using Your Twitter Profile to Get New Followers

I know what they say about making assumptions but I’m going to make one now and assume that most of you already understand the potential of Twitter, especially for those of us with something to promote. If you aren’t yet convinced that Twitter is going to do for the Internet what sliced bread did for the sandwich, I encourage you to spend more time reading Twitip. My job today is not to evangelize Twitter — which I love to do — but to talk about how to create cool Twitter backgrounds and show you how valuable the proper use of that space can be.

Generic is Only Good for Prescriptions

In addition to the generic Twitter background, Twitter currently offers 12 stock backgrounds along with pleasing preset colors for the elements on the page. You can also modify the colors of the overall background, text, links, sidebar background and the sidebar border. The first thing any Twit (easier to say that Twitterer) should do is change the generic background, unless you don’t like standing out from the crowd, in which case you can stop reading now.

Switching backgrounds and changing the color palette of your Twitter page is easy to do. Simply select "Settings" in the top row of links on your Twitter page, click on the "Design" tab and then either select a "theme" or click on "Change background image" or "Change design colors" and get creative. Don’t worry about goofing anything up. Any changes you make will not be visible to anyone but you until you click "save".

Themes are Good but Why Stop There?

Now I know that some of you will be perfectly happy with one of the themes Twitter has provided for you but there are still going to be thousands of Twits with the same background as you. It’s like going out in public wearing the same exact clothes as a bunch of other people — which is only cool if you’re going to a football game or a funeral.

With the holiday season fast approaching, this would be a good time to start looking for a nice Christmas-themed background, or Hannukah, Kwanzaa or whatever holiday you celebrate.

The best way to make sure that your Twitter page doesn’t look like anyone else’s is to upload your own background image. Those of you with the necessary skills might want to use Photoshop or a similar program to create your own from scratch. If that’s not a possibility, then there are other options. You can simply upload a photograph you’ve taken, for example. Another option is to find an image that will tile (repeat) in an appealing way. Search Google for "tile background" and you’ll find thousands of places to get them.

Colour Lovers is an excellent place to start if you want to make your own tiling background patterns. They also offer palettes that will help you pick colors that go well together so your Twitter page doesn’t look like you picked the colors with your eyes closed or let your 3-year old do it for you.

Twitter Patterns is another great place to find patterns for your tiled background.

Here are some pattern generators that are a lot of fun to play around with:

• Stripe Generator
• Stripe Mania
• Tartan Maker

If you want to make a pattern from your own image there are plenty of tutorials out there and a quick Google search will point you to them. Once you find the tile section you want to use upload it as your twitter background and be sure to click "tile background" before you save.

Here are a few pattern backgrounds from Colour Lovers:

Another way to create a unique background is to use a photograph. There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind, though. For one thing, a limited amount of the photograph will actually be visible. Realistically you have a couple inches on either side of the main text area to work with. That means if you upload a cool picture of your kid playing with the family dog and they are in the center of your photograph, no one is going to see them.

If you want the photo to fill the entire background, the size of the image is also important. It should be at least 1280×1024 pixels in size and preferably larger. Depending on the background and whether or not it can be nicely blended into a solid background color or not, I typically use 1600×1200 and even 2048×1600 for some backgrounds. It’s not likely that folks with huge monitors stretch their browsers to fill the entire screen, but you never know.

It is possible to create a pleasing background using a photo that isn’t large enough to cover the entire area but I recommend blending the edges of the photo into the background to eliminate the harsh edges around the photo. Here’s an example of that technique.

File size is something else you’ll want to think about when you create large photographic backgrounds. Twitter limits the file size to 800k but I recommend staying much smaller than that or otherwise your beautiful background will take too long to load. In some cases I’ve gone a little over 300k but I prefer to keep them under 200k. When you’re saving the .jpg file, you’ll want to experiment with the compression percentage to get the smallest file size you can achieve without degrading the quality of the image too much.

Once you’ve selected your background, you may want to change the colors of the sidebar background and border so they complement the colors in the overall background image. Don’t pick a dark color or your text will be hard to read. You might be tempted to use white or light-colored type on a dark background but the problem is that if you use light colors for your text links they won’t show up in the upper row of navigation links.

I’ve added a section on my web site with royalty-free backgrounds which you are welcome to use or that might give you some ideas. All of the photographs I use to make these backgrounds are either royalty-free or published under the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ license and used with permission because I’ve added a credit line for the photographer.

A Picture Might be Worth a Thousand Words but I Want to Say More

Your Twitter background can actually work for you like a business card or brochure does if you use the space on the left side — and to an extent the top — to promote something. A professional-looking Twitter background also makes an excellent first impression and will help you pick up followers that might have otherwise overlooked you. Someone recently told me that the background we had done for a client "induced me to follow her". The way I look at it, you only have one chance to make a good first impression; that’s why they call it a "first" impression. Even if someone only looks at your profile one time, the results could end up being well worth the time and effort you put into creating an attention-getting background.

A custom Twitter background gives you the opportunity to tell someone more about what you do than you can in the 160-character bio you get to put in your sidebar. An obvious choice would be to use your logo along with a bit of text, perhaps something like, "Mention you saw us on Twitter and get 10% off on your next purchase". If you don’t offer a product but just want to promote your blog, you might want to use design elements from your web site and then add a bit of text about your blog along with the url and your email address. If you have more than one web site, a custom background gives you a spot to list them all.

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A custom background is also a good way to let people know at a glance what company you represent, which is especially important if your company is well-known. For example, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has a Twitter page with over 17,000 followers, but word has it that nearly 400 employees of Zappos also have Twitter pages as part of the company’s marketing plan. Since only one Twitter page can use the domain twitter.com/zappos, the best way for the employees of Zappos to let people instantly know what company they are with would be to use a custom background with the Zappos logo on it somewhere.

When you’re creating a custom background using the left side for your "business card" you’ll have to make a decision. Monitors with a resolution of 1024×768, which is the standard resolution of a 15-inch monitor, will shift the main center section of your Twitter page to the left more than a monitor with a resolution of 1280×1024 (17-inch or larger) will.

Viewed at 1024×768

Viewed at 1280×1024

I made the decision to work with a live area of about 200 to 225 pixels in width, which unfortunately means that some of the images and text in that area will be covered up when viewed on smaller monitors. If you decide that you want the promotional area of your background to fit within the live area on monitors with a 1024×768 resolution, you’ll be working with a width of about 120 pixels.

Although it’s tempting, it’s not a good idea to frame the main text area in some way like creating a border or placing something important like your logo on the right side. The problem is that depending on the size and resolution of the viewer’s monitor, the center section is not stationary, so your carefully planned background probably won’t look good to everyone. The same applies to placing something near the bottom of the background. It might look great to you but your picture of a tree that appears to be growing out of the bottom of your browser might look completely different to someone else with the same size monitor if they have multiple toolbars open taking up 2 inches at the top of their browser and moving your background image down 2 inches.

Do a Little or Do a Lot; Just Do Something

Whether you only take a few seconds to change the generic Twitter background to one of the provided "themes" or you take the time to upload a photograph or make a custom background, it says something about you. If you don’t care enough to change the standard Twitter avatar and generic Twitter background, what it tells me is that you probably aren’t worth following, and if you’re using Twitter to promote your blog or company and don’t have a custom background, you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity.

Please be aware of copyright laws and only use images and photographs that you create yourself or that come from sources that specifically allow you to use them.

Share Your Favorite Twitter Backgrounds

Thanks to Hugh Bris from Twitter Image for writing this post.

Have you customized your Twitter background? What approach have you taken?

We’d love to see your suggestions on great Twitter backgrounds – share them in comments below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Make a Good Impression with a Custom Twitter Background