Businesses make the mistake all the time. They know having a social media presence is important, so they hop on Twitter and start sending Tweets right away! Having an active and engaging presence is important for Twitter, but not everyone realizes the importance of their profile and what it says about their company.
Picking Theme Colors
After you sign up to Twitter, the first place you need to go is your profile settings. Yes, Twitter will encourage you to send your first Tweet out, but don’t give into temptation! Your first Tweet is very important and needs to be handcrafted to perfection.
Underneath your banner on your profile, there is a button that says Edit Profile. Click that and you will get the fast-pass access to editing your Twitter profile. Underneath your description is the Theme Color option. You can choose one of the pre-decided colors or enter your own HTML color code.
Cover and Profile Photos
Twitter gives you two chances to showcase your brand visually on your Twitter – a profile picture and cover photo. Before even thinking about choosing photos, make sure you know the dimensions. Many people try to upload an odd photo size that stretch or cut off, hurting their brand perception. The dimensions change often with updates, so refer to a frequently updated dimensions guide before posting.
When choosing your profile picture, a good starting place is your business logo. However, if you have a great team picture or an engaging photo of your business leader, then upload that. People connect more to real photos from businesses.
There are so many options for your cover photo. You can upload a sweeping image of your logo with a slogan. You could upload a recent event photo you attended or hosted. You can showcase your products or services. Whatever you choose, make sure it is different from your profile picture and is extremely high quality.
What to Put in Your Description
Twitter allows a “generous” 160 characters for your description as opposed to the 140 character limit on Tweets. Your description is used to quickly showcase who you are as a business. My advice is to list your primary offerings and include your slogan. Some businesses choose to place hashtags in their description to get their brand spread further across Twitter. If you like this idea, use popular hashtags (ie: startup) and limit yourself to only using three spaced throughout your description. Any more and it looks like you are a spambot.
Using Hashtags to Extend Reach
We briefly covered hashtags in the previous section regarding your description. The same line of thought goes towards using hashtags in your Tweets. They are a great way to spread your brand, but limit yourself to three hashtags per Tweet.
It is tempting to jump in and start hashtagging any word in your Tweet or to start using trending hashtags like crazy. Always research before using hashtags. Many businesses (especially big name brands like DiGiorno) have used hashtags without researching and have caused a scandal.
It is a good idea to come up with a branded hashtag. Even though it gives you no current reach, eventually your audience will want to track conversations about your business and that hashtag will help them easily join in the conversation and spread your business further.
When you don’t complete your profile correctly or go against the trends set by other Twitter users, you risk your reputation. Regular users can spot an amateur and not optimizing your profile will label you as inauthentic and out-of-touch with these Twitter fanatics. So get to optimizing and showcase your Twitter expertise!