Micheal Savoie

Your Profile Says A Lot Without Saying A Word!

How To Create a Customized Twitter Profile Account Background with TwitterBacks

You Twitter profile is important. Whenever someone clicks on a message that you have tweeted, they are taken to your home page, and there it is in its glorious splendor!

You aren’t embarrassed about your Twitter profile, are you? After all, you can tell the world about you in pictures with your twitter background. Look at mine in the image below. That was my first attempt at creating a Twitter background and I really liked it.

Twitter background from http://twitter.com/michealsavoie

Show Us Your Pics

On your background, you will find that a lot of it is wasted space. Mine has a good chunk wasted where nothing shows, because the Twitter timeline is covering it. Some of the newer ones that I create are more efficient at using the space, because it also takes into account the people who “View Background Image” when they visit your profile. I didn’t think many people did it, but now that I find myself doing it more often than I care to admit, I figure I am not the only geeky dude out there!

Photos are a great way to share what is going on with your life. As you can tell, I shared photos of events that made a significant change in my life. But on yours, you can place photos of your family, your hobbies or even your products. On the following background that Scratch My Background did for Gina Gaudio-Graves, I added her products and training courses.

Twitter Background Created By Scratch My Background For http://twitter.com/JVQueen

Just The Facts Please

I wanted to give you the instructions to create your own background like these. If you are good with Photoshop or Gimp, then you can create them with little difficulty as long as you do the following:

1. Create a new image with the dimensions of 2000×1000 (you can go longer, but it is really overkill).
2. Select a gradient that you can use to fill in the background, or use a photo that you like (remember that the photo will not be visible to most of the people who visit your Twitter profile, because the timeline will hide it, but it is still cool to do in case someone uses the View Background Image option)
3. Use a guide line at the 230 pixel mark or create a box that is 230 pixels across for the left side of the image. That is your prime real estate!

   Links, pictures and data about yourself will go there.

4. Enter the text one the left side of the image, making sure that none of the text goes past the 230 pixel marker. If it does, you will have to shrink the text size.

   Reduce the size of photos that you are going to place in that section as well.

   You really only have about 600 to 800 pixels down the side of the image before the image is no longer visible in a browser. So keep that in mind.

5. The top 60 pixels of the image are visible for at least 800 pixels across, except for two sections that are used by Twitter.

   The Twitter logo starts at about 270 pixels and ends around the 420 pixel mark.

   If you use a ruler on your graphics program, it will help you figure out where to place the images. Something you will sometimes run into is the fact the not everyone uses the same screen resolution, and you will have some people who do not see the elements properly, anyway.

6. At around the 1100 to 1200 pixel mark is where you would place a large block of the links that you had on the left hand column and maybe a larger image. The reason for this is when someone views the background image, your links will be plainly visible to them!

Once you have created a background image, you can upload it to Twitter using the settings menu and select the design tab. Simply upload the image (no need to tile the image, since it is larger than the browser window) and click save changes!

Tomorrow I will be discussing the great twitwall of Twitter!

How much are you catching of what is going on in the social media that you are following? The twitwall is a great place to spread the news about yourself and catch up with what others are saying.

Have an amazing day!

Micheal Savoie
http://twitter.com/michealsavoie

PS – I am still creating backgrounds, you can get yours made for as little as $75 if you come here:

http://ScratchMyBackground.com