Twitip

by Jason Drohn, follow him at @jasondrohn

Twitter profiles are a dime a dozen. Anyone can sign up and start tweeting. Because Twitter locks down a lot of the customization options, it’s a bit harder to stand out from the crowd. The default backgrounds you find in your settings tab are nice, but they’re default! Everyone has access to them. Why settle for the standard background when you can do so much more.

What I’ve done is create 7 free Twitter backgrounds (in .PSD format) that you’re free to download and customize to your liking. I’ve also created a short tutorial on how to add your own pictures, text and information. If you have any questions, be sure to send me a message @jasondrohn and I’ll be sure to get back to you ASAP.

Anyway, here are the downloads:
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by Fredrickus Williford of Doctor Twitter. Follow him @BlackMediaProp

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.

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This guest post was written by David Sommers, editor of the Color + Design Blog at COLOURlovers. Follow the love at @colourlovers.

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.

In this tutorial Hendry Lee from BlogBuildingU (follow him on Twitter at @hendrylee shares some tips on getting Twitter Backgrounds that are optimized for better readability.

Last time I spent some time tweaking my Twitter profile background, I didn’t change much. My goal was only to change the background and sidebar so they match my blog theme.

It appeared to be easy, but there are a few tricks to make the background appears nicely. Well, at the same time it is not as difficult as some people might think as it doesn’t require any specific HTML knowledge.

If you want a simple background such as my older Twitter profile (screenshot above), here’s how you do it. The tricks, summarized, are as follow:
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This is a review by teen blogger and tech enthusiast Riley Kaminer (@rileykaminer) on a new service for twitter, @TwitBacks.

Overview

Have you ever wanted a great background for your Twitter page that would represent you by having your contact information as well as logos and pictures of yourself, but do you not have the time to create one from scratch because of either lack of ability or time? Are you just not satisfied with Twitter’s automatic backgrounds? If these apply to you, TwitBacks is a great, free, and simple service that can make a customized and stylish Twitter background for you in no time at all. They make backgrounds that you can be proud of each time you link someone to your Twitter account.

How?

Part of the great thing about TwitBacks, a very popular and new company (less than a month old), is the clear-cut simplicity of the service. The first step is to visit their site, TwitBacks.com. Press the “Get Started Here” button and you are on your way.

A great thing about TwitBacks is that [many of] the fields are optional; letting you decide how much information you really want on your profile page. You can currently choose from 23 fresh background bases such as these or upload your own design if you’d like. After imputing all your information—including your applicable websites/blogs, logos, bios, email addresses, and other social networking site usernames such as those of Facebook, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed—you can press continue.

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Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) and Ms. Adventures in Italy shares some tips for optimizing your Twitter profile to increase your followers.

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.

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A Custom Twitter Background can make a real impression and enhance your brand – but how do you make one? In this guest post post Hugh Briss from Twitter Image (a service that offers custom Twitter backgrounds) shares some tips on how to make your own.

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".

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