Recently I looked at my Twitter background. No big deal; everybody has one, right? Now, mine is OK-sorta.
By that I mean it’s not one of the plain vanilla stock backgrounds Twitter supplies. But what does it say about me, my business and what I do? Does it give anyone looking at it any usable information? Does it ‘brand’ me? Short answer-NO.
Before deciding on a new background I looked at several used by other tweeters. While my sample was by no means scientific, It was interesting.
One account with a massive following uses a plain white background. Minimalist. But, and this is important, they are a recognized brand. Within and, for years before, outside the social media sphere.
A couple accounts had run of the mill scenics behind their profile pages. Since they promote social media marketing expertise that seemed unusual. Some used bright colors, others did the ‘gray-on-black’ thing. Hard for some eyes, including mine, to read.
From a couple backgrounds it was obvious who they were and what they do. Easy to read and good basic information bits. Let’s face it, you really can’t do a full presentation within the confines of a background image, but, you can whet an appetite!
So, having come to the conclusion I was wasting space, I decided to change mine. The first problem doing so is, I’m not an artist. As best I can tell ‘art genes’ skip generations. My dad was an artist and my oldest son is a graphic artist. I barely passed mechanical drawing.
The first task was to find a background designer with a decent, affordable, collection of stock backgrounds. Backgrounds that I could customize with my specific branding information.
Sometimes you don’t have to look too far to find what you need. My son designs print ads and doesn’t do the kind of work I was looking for. But, all was not lost.
One of my online friends is a Twitter background designer and has a massive, affordable, collection of designs. Even better, her package comes with ‘psd’ files for all the designs. Because of this I can use Photoshop to customize the designs myself!
Now, my only problem is deciding which of Kathleen’s excellent designs to use.
Decisions, decisions, decisions…
By the way, her twitter background website previews many of her designs and provides quite a bit of technical information about using them.
Here’s where you can view this exciting background collection: http://scrnch.me/np9mx
Two or three paragraphs up I mentioned you can customize the designs using Photoshop. You can also use other image editing software like GIMP, which is open source, therefore free, or any other image program that can open a ‘psd’ file. I also said Kathleen is a pal of mine. That’s true. We’ve been known to wax eloquent–or not eloquent way into the night, via Skype, on numerous occasions.
