How to Optimize Your Twitter Profile in 5 Easy Steps

Twitter is a fast-paced social network with over 240 million users. So, it can be easy for your profile to be overlooked if it’s not optimized properly. But what main aspects should be optimized, and why?

As a major brand, you have the support of traditional marketing efforts to showcase recent tweets and your Twitter profile. For a personal brand, some of the same efforts may not be available to you. So, take advantage of Twitter as another form of marketing by ensuring that your profile is optimized, especially for B2B relations. Here are 5 key points to look at to optimize your Twitter profile.

1.      Your Twitter handle (@) should be appropriate and directly related to your business.

Your Twitter handle (@username) is significant and choosing one that’s appropriate can be difficult. The most effective usernames are as simple as your company name and for personal brands, using your own name. This allows people to easily search for you, and it increases your chances of coming up higher in a Twitter search.

Your username can only be 15 characters long, so be sure that you choose one that correctly suits you. Play around with the words, put yourself in your audience’s shoes, and ask yourself, “What would my followers search for if they were looking for me or someone in my profession?”

As an offline marketing tip, place the Twitter share and follow buttons on your site’s homepage and/or blog to bring awareness to your profile. Even installing a Twitter tab on your Facebook page can go a long way.

2.      Your bio should state your business’ purpose and how you can help your clients.

Your bio should include the purpose of your business and how you can help your clients. The words in your bio are another chance for your profile to come up in a search, so make sure to include keywords that are relevant to your business.

You only have 160 characters for a description, so choose your words wisely. You can always go back and change what you’ve written, if something doesn’t sounds right or needs to be updated.

Try to leave 3-5 characters in your bio, so you have space to include hashtags. Write your bio first, and re-read it to see if there are any keywords that are popular hashtags. You can find how popular a hashtag is by searching it. This gives you another chance to come up in search results for your top keywords. Choose hashtags that you want to be searched for; don’t include them if they don’t fit with your business expertise.

3.      Your location and link should be accurate and always up-to-date.

This is the easier portion of optimizing your profile. Your location and link should be accurate and always up-to-date. Your city should be where your business is located. If your location changes, make sure you change it on all your social profiles.

The link can be to any portion that you want to highlight. Brands usually choose to go with their website and sometimes with their company’s blog. For growing your personal brand, your link can be to a blog you own or another social profile that you want to promote (i.e. LinkedIn or a Facebook page).

4.    Follow relevant people, but don’t follow too many at a time.

For those who have just started using Twitter, you may not have as many followers as you hope to have. You want to follow relevant people, but don’t follow too many at a time. I say this because you don’t want to seem desperate. Some people can get caught up in following one person after the next and before they know it, they have over 100 followers but only 5-6 people have followed them.

Follow people that are similar to you in terms of interests and profession. Even following people in your local community will give you a higher chance of those people following you back. Also check out the Who to Follow board to the left of your newsfeed. Twitter may show you people you didn’t know you wanted to follow.

Keep a 2:1 ratio when you’re following. For every 2 people you follow, allow downtime for 1 person to follow you. This is a steady increase and can help you to focus on other important aspects of your profile. Use your downtime to create and post relevant and valuable content that you’re followers will enjoy and are likely to be engaged on.

It will take time to build up a strong following, so keep at it in your spare time. Being engaged in your followers’ tweets daily lets them know that you care not just about the number of followers you have, but the quality as well. Again, post valuable content that your followers want to see to help grow your engagement and following.

5.      You profile, header, and background image are key components of your profile.

The images on your profile are one of the most important aspects of optimization. They relay a message through a picture of who you are, what you do, and how important your Twitter profile is to you.

Your profile image is small (81 X 81 pixels), and it should be professional. For a company, an image of your logo is the perfect way to go. For a personal brand, a headshot (similar to what is used on your LinkedIn profile) lets your followers draw a closer connection to who you are. (Examples include: Walmart and Old Spice.)

Your header image (520 X 260 pixels) should provide a peek into what you do. It can be a solid color (one that’s present in your logo) or an image of a company outing or recent award. (A few great examples include: Coca-Cola, Cheerios, and Katy Perry.)

Your background image size varies, but you have a lot more space to showcase your brand. You don’t want it to look cluttered or contain words that are too small to read. (Remember: your background image size changes across devices so make sure your image will look good on any device.) (A few examples include: Oreo, Intuit, and GoldieBlox.)

There are many other aspects that can be optimized on your profile, but these are a few of the main ones. Let me know what you think! Would you add or change anything on the list?

2790 views