Creating A Custom Twitter Background
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In this article I am going to walk you through the process of creating a custom Twitter background.
Organizations wanting to stand out from the crowd need to create a custom Twitter background because:
- It gives you instant recognition.
- It sets you apart from other businesses/schools.
- It increases credibility.
- It creates interest in both you and your organization.
- And it’s easy, so why not?
If you have someone at your company/school who knows how to use Photoshop or a similar image editing program, then this would be the perfect job for that individual. If you don’t have such a person, you do have a few other choices.
Background Photos
If using Photoshop is not a possibility, you can simply upload a photograph you’ve taken, for example. This photograph would then serve as your custom Twitter background.
There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind, though. For one thing, a limited amount of the photograph will actually be visible. Realistically you have a couple inches on either side of the main text area to work with. That means if you upload a picture of a student or a teacher and they are in the center of your photograph, no one is going to see them. The picture needs to reach to the sides of the page where they lie outside the main Tweeting area.
Background Patterns
Another option is to find an image that will tile (repeat) in an appealing way. Search Google for “tile background” and you’ll find thousands of places to get them. (Make sure you obtain these images legally. Some images are protected by copyright and you could get sued if you use such images without permission.)
Colour Lovers is an excellent place to start if you want to make your own tiling background patterns. They also offer palettes that will help you pick colors that go well together so your Twitter page doesn’t look like you picked the colors with your eyes closed.
Twitter Patterns is another great place to find patterns for your tiled background.
Keep File Size In Mind
If you want the photo to fill the entire background, the size of the image is important. It should be at least 1280×1024 pixels in size… and preferably larger. Typically background sizes of 1600×1200 and even 2048×1600 are not uncommon.
File size is something else you’ll want to think about when you create large custom backgrounds. Twitter limits the file size to 800k but I recommend staying much smaller than that, otherwise your beautiful background will take too long to load. In some cases I’ve gone a little over 300k but I prefer to keep them under 200k. When you’re saving the .jpg or .gif file, you’ll want to experiment with the compression percentage to get the smallest file size you can without degrading the quality of the image too much.
Once you’ve selected your background, you may want to go back and change the colors of the sidebar background and border so they complement the colors in the overall background image.
Turn Your Twitter Background Into An Advertisement
Your Twitter background can actually work for you like a business card or brochure does if you use the space on the left side, top, and right of your Tweets to your advantage. A professional-looking Twitter background also makes an excellent first impression and will help you pick up followers that might have otherwise overlooked you.
You only have one chance to make a good first impression and if someone only looks at your profile once, the results could end up being well worth the time and effort you put into creating an attention-getting background.
A custom Twitter background gives you the opportunity to tell people more about your business/school than you can in the 160-character bio you get to put in your sidebar. You can also use a custom Twitter background to add yourlogo, mission statement, hashtags, or any other information you deem important.
What About Sizing?
When you are creating a custom background using the left side for your “business card” you’ll have to make a decision. Monitors with a resolution of 1024×768, which is the standard resolution of a 15-inch monitor, will shift the main center section of your Twitter page to the left more than a monitor with a resolution of 1280×1024 (17-inch or larger) will.
This means that you are typically required to work within an area of about 200 to 225 pixels in width, on the left-hand side of the background. If you decide that you want the promotional area of your background to fit within the live area on monitors with a 1024×768 resolution, you’ll be working within a width of about 120 pixels.
Although it’s tempting, it’s not a good idea to frame the main text area in some way like creating a border or placing something important like your logo on the right side. Your important background information should almost always be positioned on the left.
The problem with posting your main background content on the right is that depending on the size and resolution of the viewer’s monitor, the center section is not stationary, so your carefully planned background probably won’t look good to everyone.
The same applies to placing something near the bottom of the background. It might look great to you but your picture of a tree that appears to be growing out of the bottom of your browser might look completely different to someone else with the same size monitor if they have multiple toolbars open taking up 2 inches at the top of their browser and moving your background image down 2 inches.
Whether you only take a few seconds to change the generic Twitter background to one of the provided “themes” or you take the time to upload a photograph or make a custom background, it says something about you and your organization. If you don’t care enough to change the standard Twitter background, what it tells people is that you probably aren’t worth following.
To summarize: If you are using Twitter to promote your business/school and don’t have a custom background, you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity.
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