Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, with over 10million users and millions of tweets each day. This week, Twitter broke it's own record, following the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden; the site experienced a maximum 5106 tweets per second and an average of 3440 tweets per second from 10.45 to 12.30pm. (Stat thanks to The Wall and full article available here...)
With statistics that high and the potential to interact with that many people, it is no surprise that more and more users are joining! An account is easy to set up and enables the user to include a description of who they are and what they do, additional links (e.g. blog, facebook, website), as well as an 'avatar' with a picture of the person, company etc. For personal use, the avatar is arguably not that important, because your followers are likely to know you by sight and/or be interested in what you have to say. The same is true of celebrities, as their twitter handles, updates and image will all be instantly recognisible to the audience.
As a business however, you have to work hard to stand out in a crowd, developing relationships by offering intelligent insights, following the right people and offering value to those you follow and who follow you. It's amazing however just how many business users fail to get the basics right at the beginning...
A sweeping statement maybe, but from our own experience, one of THE most important things that a Twitter user can do is to pick the right avatar! Twitter forces users to pick a square image, which will be resized to 128px square. This isn't much space and it gets even smaller once you're viewing the stream - just 48px square:
It really isn't that big and a space this small makes it difficult to read text or identify what's in an unclear picture. At the moment, apt currently follow just under 1000 users, which can get confusing when we're trying to keep up with the stream! We don't want to reduce the number we follow as each user has something unique to offer, but we do want to make sure we can identify each one separately. As such, we've produced our top tips for picking an Avatar that makes a statement:
- Choose your own picture - there's nothing worse than the default twitter 'egg'; this makes you seem like a spambot and you'll have to work harder to develop the relationships.
- Keep it simple - don't pick a complex pattern, a grainy or dark picture or something completely unrelated to you!
- Don't include lot's of words - Whilst a typographic logo will work, a strapline will be too small to read and uses up valuable space. Don't bother!
- Make sure it fits - A lot of logo's are rectangular, however the Avatar is not. Try to make sure your logo fits within the space available, even if you have to design a special twitter graphic, otherwise it looks messy!
Bonus Tip:
- Test it out - Don't rely on assuming it'll look ok, post a tweet then check how it looks in the stream - does it fit, can you read it, is it clear?
Out of our 1000 followers, here are some (but not all) of the examples that catch our eye...
There are plenty of other examples out there and these are not all of those which catch our eye, but they are good business based avatars and they work for us!
Excellent. I agree what you say particularly about sound.
Posted by: Boutique Website Design | May 04, 2011 at 01:37 PM
Yes I agree with you. Choosing avatar in the Twitter is very important things because it affects many way to our accounts. Thanks for sharing this information.
Posted by: דרושים הנהלת חשבונות | February 13, 2012 at 07:07 PM
As a company however, you have to perform tirelessly to take a position out in a audience, creating interactions by providing brilliant ideas, following the right individuals and providing value to those you adhere to and who adhere to you.
Posted by: classified free ads | March 05, 2012 at 06:53 AM