Someone would have to be living under a rock to not realize the notoriety Twitter has gained in the past two years. I also knew about Twitter but never really jumped on the Twitter bandwagon until a few months ago when my co worker pitched how good Twitter would be for my freelance business. Just the overall idea of self-promotion was appealing to me.
One video I got a lot of good insight about Twitter was from Social Media Examiner. If you subscribe to their site you are given access to their video tutorial on how to launch a robust Twitter account. Click Here.
One of the main takeaways I want to discuss is how important it is to create your own custom Twitter background. It’s a harsh truth but people on Twitter will determine if they want to read your tweets or click on your links based on how your Twitter page looks. This also increases the number of followers you will acquire. Trust.
Now I’m no graphic designer but I felt like this was a simple enough task for me which involved basic design skills I acquired in school. Here are a few tips on how to make your custom Twitter background:
1. Dimensions: If you’re using PowerPoint (this can be done, esp if you can’t afford Photoshop) set up the page dimensions to 17 x 12.5 inches. This is will give you a pretty good working space relative to working with 1600 x 1200 pixels in Photoshop. It’s important to know to keep your design elements really small and close to the top of the space. On the right side work 2 inches to the right of the edge of the slide and on the left side work within 1.5 inches towards the edge.
If you use Photoshop, make sure your design elements are 300 pixels within the left and right of your canvas space.
2. Spice Up with Fonts: I wanted something to look like it wasn’t too generic so I shopped around for different free fonts. Good places are dafont.com and searchfreefonts.com
3. Format: Save the background you made in either PowerPoint or Photoshop as JPEG or a PNG.
4. Retweak and Retweak: Your background will probably look different on various browsers and monitors so try to get a peek at them on there and retweak if necessary.
At first, I made my original Twitter background in PowerPoint, then later on added additional effects and fonts through Photoshop. I’m kind of on zero budget so I used the trial version. Can you say Photoshop for Christmas this year please :-p
Here are my two versions of the Lion’s ROAR Marketing Twitter background. The first the PowerPoint version, second is the Photoshop Version.
