Ready or not, a new Twitter profile design is coming your way in the near future and it gives businesses some handy new features!
You can get a visual of the new design in the image below or by visiting some of the profiles that have already been switched over:
- First Lady Michelle Obama @flotus
- Boxer @FloydMayweather
- Musicians @JohnLegend and band @weezer
With that said, let’s dive into what some of these changes mean for your business and how you can use the new layout to attract more customers!
New Twitter Profile Cover Image Dimensions
The new Twitter profile cover image is 1500×500 pixels.
Rather than being behind the logo — which rendered the cover image mostly useless in the past – the new layout places the cover image at the top of your profile.
This is perhaps the most significant aspect of Twitter’s redesign for businesses, because it provides a great opportunity to capture leads and customers in a way similar to Facebook’s cover image.
You can now use the cover image and a bit of creativity to:
- Include calls to action for customers to follow you.
- Include shortened links that drive customers to landing pages.
- Highlight current promotions, discounts, coupon codes, and so on.
- Promote your products visually more easily than you could with the past cover image.
- Provide location and contact information for people to easily find.
Twitter has pre-loaded images to use as your cover, but I highly suggest you call upon a design team and create something unique that drives customers to your business.
New Twitter Profile Picture Dimensions
The new Twitter profile picture is larger than before — now at 400×400 pixels – and is no longer top-center on your profile. Instead, much like Facebook, your profile picture will be in the top left and overlaid with the cover image.
I know what you’re thinking: “Now I have to resize my profile picture.”
Never fret. As long as your profile picture had square dimensions before the new design, Twitter will automatically resize it. However, this is a good opportunity to think about how your profile picture and cover image could work together.
The picture below is, of course, from Facebook, but it provides a good example of a profile picture and cover image working together!
New Twitter Stream Options
Pinned Tweets
Much like pinning a post on Facebook, you can now pin specific tweets to the top of your profile stream. When people land on your Twitter profile, the pinned tweet will be at the top of your stream until you unpin it.
This is a good tool to highlight a high-performing tweet or keep attention focused on a special promotion. You can pin a tweet by clicking the “More” button underneath a tweet and selecting “Pin To Your Profile Page”.
Scroll back to the first image in this post to see what a Pinned Tweet looks like on Weezer’s profile.
Tweet Filtering
Near the top of the new profile, there are two filters for “Tweets” and “Tweets and replies”.
This probably won’t impact your use of Twitter for business purposes, but hiding replies can be helpful to quickly skim a profile and see what kind of content they tweet.
High-Performing Tweets
Tweets that are performing well — presumably based on number of replies, favorites, and retweets — will be shown slightly larger in your Twitter stream.
Public Twitter Activity
Your Twitter stream will begin publicizing events and actions. If you followed someone in the past, you and that person were basically the only two people who knew it.
With the new layout, Twitter will now show when you’ve followed someone directly in your Twitter stream.
Social Elements on Profiles
In the left column of the new profile design, under your profile picture and Twitter bio, there is a new “Followers You Know” widget (see image to right).
This box was previously the “Who To Follow” widget. Rather than suggesting users, it seems Twitter is now trying to boost profiles’ appeal by showing which of your connections currently follow a profile.
Key Takeaways
A number of these changes won’t have any significant impact on how you use Twitter for business purposes.
With the exception of the new cover image, profile image, and pinned tweets functionality, I would recommend continuing business as usual.
There are no specifics on when the new Twitter profile will be rolled out to everyone. Currently, only a small number of users have access, but it shouldn’t be long before it’s available to everyone!
Do you have the new Twitter profile yet? What do you think about the similarities to Facebook?
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