Social Media Design For Dummies

Chapter 6

Tweaking Your Twitter Profile

In This Chapter

• You have a lot of options on how to present yourself on Twitter.

• Profiles, headers, and backgrounds give you a lot of artistic leeway.

• Take a photo on the fly with your smartphone.

Twitter, which was born of a failing podcasting service in 2006, has grown steadily to become a worldwide phenomenon relied upon by millions of people for breaking news, sharing photos, and reading the innermost thoughts of presidents, queens, sports heroes, and wanted criminals — all 140 characters or fewer at a time.

However, Twitter is one of the trickier social media sites to design for because of how Twitter profiles are centered within a browser window. The biggest challenge with Twitter is creating designs that look good on both small and large screen sizes. Keep in mind, also, that many Twitter users access the platform via popular apps and websites rather than visiting Twitter.com directly. This further complicates what you need to consider when creating your Twitter profile.

For advice on how use Twitter to build followers and connect with people around the world, for the meaning of common Twitter acronyms (say, RT for retweet), or when to use a hashtag (#) to highlight keywords, consult Twitter For Dummies, by Laura Fitton, Michael ...