What I Didn’t Learn At School

Today I’ve used a lot of time studying Twitter profiles. A few profiles stand out and are really cool to look at but most of them still use the standard twitter backgrounds. I believe that you need to stand out from the masses with your twitter profile if you want people to follow you. Don’t just be another follower, be interesting so that people actually pays attention to your twitts and follow you back. So get ready for transformation, I’m here to Pimp Your Twitter Profile!

First, let’s answer an important question. What should be included in a custom Twitter profile background? Short answer, everything you can’t fit into your profile bio. All types of contact information,  more websites you would like to draw attention to, a bigger picture of yourself and a bigger about you text. It also depends on why you are on Twitter. But if you are there for business and networking, you should draw attention to your business and tell people why they should follow you. But don’t over do it. Less is still more on Twitter too.

Knowing that her is my 5 ways to pimp your profile.

1. Design it yourself.
If you are a graphic designer or you have a little know how on how it works your should totally do it yourself. Some Twitter background guidelines will help you out with the template sizes and what to do and not to do when making your own profile background. Remember that there is a lot of different screen resolutions out there, and you don’t want important information disappearing in the background of your profile.

Here is also 2 templates in Photoshop format to help you get started. Big thanks to @epelboin for making them available on his blog.

2. Awesome tiled pattern backgrounds
In the Twitter design settings you can choose if you want to tile the background or not. If you are using a big picture it’s normally a smart thing to not tile the background. Since it looks stupid with the same picture tiled side by side when it’s not supposed to. But here is many cool tiled background to choose from if that’s your style. There will be hard to get your personal information on tiled background but you can draw some kick ass attention from it.

Here is 26 awesome backgrounds for twitter fanboys. (and girls). and Twitter Patterns to help you get started.

3. Find nice background on Flickr
There is a lot of good website backgrounds out there but my favourite place to look for images for backgrounds is Flickr. So many talented and skilled photographers on one single place can never be wrong. Be sure to ask the owner of the photo if you can use their picture for a background. In most cases this will not be a problem. And for an easy move of the picture use Flickr my background and your profile will be updated in no time.

4. Twitter Themes
If you are not into custom made backgrounds, don’t find tiled pattern backgrounds good enough for you and didn’t find anything good on Flickr, there is people out there that solved this problem for you. Finished and ready to install Twitter Themes brings you everything from your favourite car to your favourite celebrity to your Twitter background.

5. Little bit of both worlds
The last tip I will give you is a little bit of both worlds actually. I found this site called My Tweet Space that let’s you pick a theme/background and then bring it to an online generator where you can custom make your badge so that you will get all that personal information I talked about in the beginning of this post on to the background. You can then download the background and add it to your twitter profile. Works like a charm.

Do you have more great tips about how to pimp your Twitter profile, let me and everyone else know in the comments.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter too: @skavhellen