David Hilton | 
08 3rd, 2009| 
As Twitter consistently gains momentum, more and more Michigan businesses have decided to join the bandwagon of one of the hottest social networks around. Articles from websites and news media have gathered information that proves the marketing power of Twitter. However, some Michigan businesses are still hesitant to join the prolific social network and are still wasting money on other marketing ventures that will only secure them a small amount of new customers and interests. For larger turnouts, and at relatively no cost to your business, a Twitter page can come in handy, especially if it’s “pimped out” to show exactly what your Michigan business, or brand, is all about.
Customizing a Twitter page isn’t hard; it just takes the creation of a background and a consistent selection of colors to make it work. The first thing you want to ask yourself is this: what is my company’s (or brand’s) identity? What colors or images represent my company and how will I continue this trend on the Twitter page? As long as you have a certain color or logo that represents your business, you won’t get lost. And don’t be afraid to get creative with this: if you’d like to put a new spin on your brand or business identity, go for it. Just remember to remain consistent with the overall identity so customers won’t confuse you for another brand or business! With your design selection set, it’s now time to create a Twitter page and decide on a profile picture.
Your profile picture can be anything that represents the business/brand, but a nice logo is the best choice in telling people exactly who you are. The logo is quite small, so it should be easy to see whether it is an image or text. You can change your logo in the “Settings” tab under “Picture”. This logo will be the starting point for the rest of your Twitter page. Now you can create a background to compliment your logo.
Just using one tiled image as your Twitter’s background will fly for a single user, but for a Michigan business/brand it just doesn’t cut it. A well thought out background will be crucial in showing your followers exactly what kind of business you are. Using a design program like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Creative Suite (preferably CS3 or above) will help to create a premium background that’s been customized to fit your company’s identity. Like I explained before, use consistent colors, images, and fonts in your background to support your Michigan business/brand identity and make sure that they are arranged in a way where you will be able to see the background on the Twitter page.
There will always be a large white space in the middle of your page reserved for tweets, so you need to make sure that your background compliments this. Be sure to focus your design on the left and right columns of the page. Place your company’s logo, image, or products here and use a consistent font for text. Also make sure to add contact and other information (like links to your company’s website) in the columns as well. Also, be sure to use a specific resolution! 1280 x 800 or 1024 x 768 are the most common. When you’re ready to apply it, go to the “Settings” tab and click on “Design”. Then, near the bottom of the page, click “change background image” and upload it. The background takes a lot of trial and error to make it work, so be patient with the process: it’s worth it!
Now for the finishing touches. In the “Settings” tab under “Design” you’ll see “change design colors”. Make sure to change these colors to ones that compliment your background and profile picture. For instance, I used purple text, green links, and a white side-bar background for Ingenex’s Twitter page. This is how the final result looks:
As you can see, I did add some images in the center, but this is purely for different resolutions. You’re free to do this too if you wish, although it does consume more time. I hope these tips will help your Michigan business or brand in creating a premium Twitter page. For more information on hiring a Michigan digital agency to help build your Twitter page, log on to ingenexdigital.com today.
