Hi guys... for many of us it took awhile to figure out why we should be using Twitter. I was one of those late to the Twitter party!
And now that Twitter is part of our daily routine, it's almost like having our online friends in the same room with us where we bounce around ideas, exchange links, questions and solve problems in real time, i.e. Lane Bailey's post What good is Social Networking?
The web is such a visual medium and more often than not, the first impression people have of us is when they stumble onto our blog, website of one of the many social networks we belong to.
A large part of creating a great first impression even before they read our content, is how our content is presented. Twitter is a perfect example and in my next post or two, I'm going to cover some of the basics about...
- creating a custom Twitter background
- building your brand into your Twitter page
- and reserving/using extra Twitter accounts for marketing
The Basics
Before we get into adding text, logos. photos, branding, etc... let's start with the basics. This image is what most of our Twitter pages look like when we first sign up.
The pic above is a standard screen resolution of 1024 X 768 pixels, that is what most people have their monitors set to and how they'll see your Twitter page.
Branding Your Twitter Page
Branding your name or logo into Twitter takes a bit of balancing, trial and error. First we have to remember that anything you add in the background will look different depending on the viewer's monitor.
We also have to make sure that any text or graphics you add looks good in all resolutions and on all monitor sizes. The pic above is a screen capture of my slightly branded Twitter page set to the most common screen size of 1024 X 768 pixels.
Larger Screen Resolutions & Monitors
This image shows the same page but at a much higher screen resolution and you'll notice 3 main differences from the previous image...
- 1st, we see a lot more of the background
- 2nd, there is more space between the "tweets" and the branding on the left
- 3rd, elements on the right that were hidden are now visible
A common boo boo I see people make is designing their backgrounds at a high resolution but not adjusting the elements for lower screen resolutions which means text and images will be cut off or hidden. Not good!
If you're designing your own Twitter background, once you upload the background image into your Twitter profile, be sure to look at it in various screen resolutions to be sure it looks good in all sizes.
Let's Get Naked
This is a photo of my Twitter background image without all the Twitter stuff. It's fairly simple, clean and has enough branding built in to make it different but not overwhelming.
In the next post we'll get into how and where to place various elements like text, images and logos in a way that makes your Twitter page easy to read no matter what screen size your viewers have,
And if you don't want to brand your Twitter page but would like some decent looking, properly sized Twitter background images, we'll be giving away some of those as well. Later...
In the next few weeks, The Art Of Marketing You will be offering free marketing partnerships to real estate professionals looking for innovative ways to attract & interact with clients & potential clients.
The short story is that we're removing all of the technical and financial barriers from designing and launching high quality, interactive marketing promos both on and off the web.
As I do here on ActiveRain, much of this will be free! Right now we're polishing up the finals details before releasing it. For more information, just send an email with "Partnerships" in the subject line to...
and we'll send you more details when the new "goodies" are ready to download.
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The NameCheap "Fun Facts" Twitter Contest – Free Domains Giveaway
March 10 to 24, three domains given away every hour!
We will be giving away three domain names every hour on the hour for two weeks on Twitter. The top two players to answer the most questions correctly as well as one player at random will win customizable Dell Inspiron Mini Netbooks up to $500. At 1.03 kilograms, it’s one of the lightest notebook computers on the market today. read...
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Twitter Can Be a Primary Traffic Source
Reports suggest that social networking is now more popular than email. Twitter in particular grew 33% in only a month according to Compete data. Skittles increased its own traffic by 1332% in one day after a campaign that sent Skittles.com directly to a Tweet-stream. read...
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Twitmatic turns Twitter into a TV channel
Twitmatic is a new video aggregator from the creators of Ffwd. It taps into Twitter's public stream and pulls together a grouping of videos people have posted in their Tweets. read...
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