Technical Writing – How to Design a Twitter Background to Market Yourself as a Technical Writer

I hope you’re on Twitter already. It’s a great social networking service through which you can market your technical writing and documentation services with great efficiency.
You can increase the effectiveness of your Twitter account by custom designing a new background instead of the default background that your Twitter account comes with. A great majority of professional marketers use their own custom-designed backgrounds for higher impact and more referred traffic to their business sites.
Here are the steps to design a new background for your Twitter page:
First decide on an overall look, color palette, and the information you’d like to convey on the LEFT SIDEBAR that is displayed in the space to the right of your central message column. That’s where the custom-designed information will go.
Remember: you cannot insert any live HTML links in the background since it will be an IMAGE with no image maps. You will change your background by simply switching the default background image with your own.
One option you’ll have is whether to TILE the image or not. I suggest you do NOT tile for a more cleaner and professional look.
Open your Photoshop or favorite image editing program which can save in JPG or GIF format.
Create a new large image, large enough to cover most computer screens without tiling. I suggest you create a rectangle at least 780 pixels by 1200 pixels in size. (If it does not completely cover your screen, you can try wider and/or longer image.)

I suggest you line up your photo/image and web site and other information inside a narrow and long sidebar rectangle on the UPPER LEFT corner of your background image. That will be your INFORMATION BAR.
You can include the following components in the INFORMATION BAR:

• Your photo.
• Your name.
• Your job title.
• Your specialty as a technical communicator.
• Your main web site URL(s).
• Your blog URL(s).
• Your social networking URL(s).
• Your contact information.
• Any other marketing or personal image you’d like to get across.

Save everything as an image. If you use the “Save for Web” option in Photoshop you can create smaller files.
Then follow these steps:

1. Go to your Twitter Settings screen.
2. Click the Design tab.
3. Click “Change background image” link.
4. Click the Browse button. Browse and find the background image you’ve created.
5. Do not select the Tile Background check-box option.
6. Click the Save Changes button and enjoy your new and informative Twitter background!

Happy twitting!