If you use Twitter, you may have noticed the recent redesign – and if you’ve moved across to it, probably not been too happy when your existing design work doesn’t look so good anymore! (UPDATE: Everyone is getting these changes from 28th May– so it’s best to prepared!)
Instead of a background and a small cover image behind your text, there’s now just one long cover image across the top. At first glance you might think, “great! Look at all that space I can fill with information about my business!” but if you’re viewing Twitter on a phone, this space goes behind your bio, so you need to keep it really simple and visual so it doesn’t look confusing on a phone.
The cover image size needs to be 1500 x 500 pixels so that it looks good even on larger screens. Your profile picture also shows up bigger, so you need to make sure that it still looks good! That Twitter background you used to have, will now only show up on the pages that other people can’t see – you’ll see it on your home, notifications, discover pages. So it’s not going to make any difference to your business!
Twitter is really focusing on images now, as photos and videos get their own filter both along the top and in the left column on your profile.
IMPORTANT TWEETS
Before, all your tweets looked the same and appeared consecutively. Now, Tweets which have more engagement – replies, retweets and favourites – appear larger on your profile, so the important stuff (hopefully!) stands out more. This also gives you a really quick look at what’s working best, so you can make sure you’re putting out the most interesting content.
You can also pin a tweet to the top of your profile – much like pinning a post on a Facebook page. This is great, because people clicking onto your profile can see what you want them to see first – putting you in more control of your brand. I’m currently using this to show my latest blog post, so it’s changing every week, but you could use it if you have a promotion, or if you want to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter or know about an event.
TWEETS AND REPLIES
If people are using a computer (i.e, not a phone) they can now read just your tweets – the stuff you’ve posted out to your audience – or they can choose to read your tweets and your replies. This is an interesting feature which means that when people arrive at your profile, they will see the information that you want them to see first and can be nosey and check out your conversations once they’ve got the gist of what you’re all about!
Do you need your Twitter profile design to be updated to fit within the new layout?
