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Why Do You Need An Effective Twitter Background?

Ever heard the phrase “First Impressions Last“? Well, that applies to your Twitter account as well! Especially if you are using Twitter as a way to generate interest and traffic to your site, then you’ve got to give a good first impression for people who visit your Twitter account.

One of the first things that people see is the background image – in Twitter language, this is also known as a Twitback. Having a good background will give you the chance to stand out from the rest of the crowd and cause people to remember you when they see your Twitback.

How To Design A Twitback Then?

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, you know that you have the option of choosing your own background. However, those are the default designs and they hardly help to cause that good first impression, if at all. Let’s first find out about the average display resolution of users these days.

Display Resolution (figures from W3Schools)

The current trend is that most computers are using a screen size of 1024×768 pixels or more:

Date Higher 1024×768 800×600 640×480 Unknown
January 2009 57% 36% 4% 0% 3%
January 2008 38% 48% 8% 0% 6%
January 2007 26% 54% 14% 0% 6%
January 2006 17% 57% 20% 0% 6%
January 2005 12% 53% 30% 0% 5%
January 2004 10% 47% 37% 1% 5%
January 2003 6% 40% 47% 2% 5%
January 2002 6% 34% 52% 3% 5%
January 2001 5% 29% 55% 6% 5%
January 2000 4% 25% 56% 11% 4%

Based on the figures above, the 1024×768 resolution is on a downtrend. It could phase out just like where the 800×600 resolution is heading right now. But that doesn’t mean that you should neglect these people when you have your twitback design in mind. Twitter is designed in such a way that all the updates are right smack in the middle, so that means that the only spaces you’ve got are at the left or the right of the Twitter updates.

The best chances of showcasing whatever details you want should be displayed to the left of the background.

What Should You Display?

Most people that design their backgrounds stick lots of web addresses in the background in hopes that their followers can check it out. While this is definitely a good idea to promote all your sites – the issue is, you can never be sure whether or not it’s effective as people have to manually type in the address.

The only place where they can click is at your bio profile box.

So what I did was to actually test out by creating a simple but different kind of Twitback. This is what I’ve got displayed currently.

The reason why I did this instead of using the kind of design which most people use is because Twitter is essentially a Web2.0 social networking site that acts as a communication tool. One thing which I’ve learnt from communication courses is that part of effective communication is to have a “give-and-take” kind of approach.

I call this “A Talking Twitback“.

Since people who follow me on Twitter don’t know me, I decided to give them some information about myself that they would find useful and can relate to. It doesn’t have to be something amazing – just something which is real and personal.

So I stated in my twitback that I manually follow people (which I still do to this day), I don’t like Twitter bots and spam accounts, I use smilies in my tweets and I really love sushi and pizza.

Giving some simple information like that actually got people tweeting that they too like sushi and pizza. New followers sometimes state that they don’t like bots as well and are also part of the group of Tweeple (another Twitter language for people who use Twitter) who do manual following.

So this actually helps me because they get to know me and I get to interact with real people – which is what social networking is about!

Do You Need Great Design?

Thankfully, no. You don’t need to be a great graphic designer to do this – as you can tell, my design is really very simple. It’s not complicated and sophisticated. Although, if you’ve got the skills, then go on ahead and flaunt it!

The best Twitbacks is something which your followers can remember you for – the best way which I know of to this day is still a real human picture in a memorable Kodak moment. If you’ve got it, feel free to showcase it as well – you’ll have people tweeting you to find out about your picture really soon because of that “talking” picture.

So now that you know why and how you should design your twitback, get out there and start tweeting!

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Filed under: Other Useful Tips

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