First impressions count
Twitter can often be the first place where someone sees your brand online. Whether by a retweet, a hashtag or a search, if someone happens to come across your profile, you want it to be the best representation of your brand as possible. Have your logo and any other usable graphics you have associated with your brand on your Twitter profile.
Branding
It often pays off more to design yourself specific cover photo and background with your company colours, logo and any essential information you want to show off, as it were. Designing a cover photo for your profile using the specific dimensions and size guides will ensure that your image is positioned just how you want it. Remember that a profile image is 81 x 81 px, and a cover photo is 520 x 260 px. Unfortunately the Twitter background isn’t responsive, so how it is viewed will depend on the screen being looked at.
Bio
Your bio is also a very important factor, especially when it comes down to whether or not someone decides to follow your account. If your profile appears in a list, then your bio is the main thing people will see, and will inevitably be how they judge you. Be brief, but not too vague. You only have 160 characters to describe exactly who you are, what you do and your style.
To fully take advantage of the bio, you should be aware that words you have written in there will also help you show up on the search engines. If there is a specific term, key word or phrase you want people to find you with, then your bio is a good place to include it. You can also make use of hashtags in your bio as this automatically enhances your search optimisation when someone uses the same hashtag to search with, but these aren’t essential to being found
How do people find you on Twitter?
If someone has searched for your name on Twitter, you want to be the first one to come up.
Your account name, sometimes referred to as a ‘handle’, should be recognisable, easy to remember and relevant to your company. Seeing as you’re only allowed 15 characters, your company name might be too long to have as on your account. The best thing to do in this situation is to come up with a witty and or recognisable abbreviation of your name. Take, for instance, the account pictured below, instead of having @marchofthemermaids, @Mermaids_March is more condensed and still gets across the two main words of the organisation.
Who to Follow
Try not to follow too, too many accounts as this can come across rather desperate. Following more accounts than the amount that follow you is however, very normal and expected, especially for someone who’s just starting out on Twitter. Just keep it in moderation, (say a two to one ratio) and only follow relevant accounts to your cause. Follow people that are likely to interact with you as well, as Twitter can get rather boring if your Tweets just get lost in the over-crowded bustle of a famous account. The purpose of being on social media and creating a presence for your brand is to get seen- keep this in mind when posting and choosing who to follow.
Following local people and businesses as well as influential accounts to keep your feed useful, relevant and easy to communicate with.
Overall, whatever colours, logos and branding you do use and whatever you put in your bio – you should always have one thing at the front of your action plan and the top of your mind: your brand values and your social media objectives!
