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How To Design Your Twitter Profile For Growth

November, 2022

Your Twitter profile page is your first impression to users when they first discover you. It needs to tell a story and answer the question: "Why should I follow you?". Some people think this begins and ends with the bio section, but your bio is just one piece of the puzzle to telling your story.

Let's dissect the different sections of your profile:

Photo

Your photo doesn't necessarily have to be a head shot, but mainly it should convey the personality you want your whole account to portray. I could be a cartoonized version of you, or something else entirely. If you're a corporate career coach, you probably want a professional headshot. If you're involved in the crypto space, you'll probably want some sort of NFT. There are also tools that will hook up some sort of progress bar to your profile picture via the border of your photo. This is a great example of leveraging the little expression you have on your profile page. This type of tool will cost money, but for the other sections there are nifty techniques you can do for free.

Website link

If you have just one website you want to send people to, then put that here. Otherwise, a linktree or a similar link display tool will help leverage this little space. This is the portal to your main work, project, endeavor, whatever. Use it wisely.

Bio

The bio gives you an opportunity to say a few words. But really this should tell people what you do. Tell them why you're tweeting. For us tech people, it'll be something like "I'm building this thing!". Use this opportunity to include your projects, and maybe a bit of your personality.

Background photo

This one is pretty simple, and while there isn't anything clickable you can put here, you can edit your background photo to include a url or phrase related to what you're offering on your Twitter.

Location

Of course you can put your actual location, specificity to your choosing, but you can actually put a lot more here than you think. Get creative, and add some sort of progress bar here with symbols. Show your current and goal monthly recurring revenue, if you're trying to bootstrap a business. Maybe you run a non profit and you have a fundraising goal, or maybe you're a fitness influencer, and you can track your monthly running goals! Another good one I've seen is to write a phrase here with some sort of call to action, with an arrow pointing to their link. Pretty clever.

Pinned tweet

Your pinned tweet pretty much says: "This is the content I want everyone to see indefinitely." Maybe you had a viral tweet years ago and keep it pinned to remind people you're funny (no shame, gotta show off those banger tweets). But if you're trying to optimize your profile, your pinned tweet should really be one of: the most popular tweet within your target theme, your latest project release or milestone, or a call to action which can mobilize your audience.

Newsletter

If you have a newsletter or email list, you can display it on your profile now! This is an incredibly powerful call to action to include in your profile. The email list is the most valuable following you can grow on the internet. Even if it's not a newsletter, it gives you a direct link to your biggest fans.

First few tweets

That's right, you really should be mindful about what you leave hanging out at the top of your profile. If you go on a tweet storm during the world cup, but you're a public transportation newsletter writer, maybe recycle some old tweets after your rant to your target audience doesn't get confused on their first impression. This is seriously nit picky, but if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your first impression on Twitter, this will go a long way.

It's all about telling a story or keeping a theme. Find your target audience, and shape your profile to look as attractive as possible for that community. Don't be afraid to experiment to see what works. Check out your favorite accounts and see what works for them. You'll notice a theme where the accounts with the most engaged followings have well crafted, targeted profile designs.

The Twitter profile really doesn't give us much to work with, but you have to be creative. Maybe someday Twitter will update this feature, and give us more freedom for what we can display or how we can display it. The most recent newsletter update is awesome, and I really hope they go more in that direction. Here's hoping.