How Your Brand Can Make The Most of the 2014 Twitter Layout Changes
The Complete Guide to Image Sizes For The New Twitter Profile and Header Layout.
This month has seen some interesting changes for Twitter. With the new Layout for Twitter profiles, brands really do have something to get excited about. As businesses continue to see the decline in the reach of their Facebook posts Twitter is offering yet more improved ways to help businesses reach their audiences. Perhaps this is a way to attract the disgruntled businesses that have given up with Facebook over their new Algorithm and pay to play culture governing posts within the News Feed. Whatever the reason Twitter is changing for the better and is becoming much more visually appealing with additional space for you to promote your business. Now when you visit your Twitter profile you will be invited to try out the new layout which includes the following:
Larger profile Image
Once you have migrated over to the new layout your profile picture sit to the left of your profile (similar to the Facebook layout) and Twitter have given you a much larger space to show off a much larger logo or photo with a recommended size of 400 X 400 px. On mobile your profile picture will sit and the very centre of your cover photo.and within.
Large Cover Photo Design
Your cover photo will now span the whole width of your profile with an image 1500X 500 pixels, actually the best size for your cover photo is about 420 px when taking into consideration the area which will be taken away for the Twitter menus above and below the header. For mobile display the area to the left and right of the image will be cropped ( as shown in the diagram above) so make sure any text or anything important is fully visible in the right and left of these areas and avoid the central area too where your profile photo will be displayed. If you are adding text to your image make sure that it is large enough to be readable on mobile.
New Pinned Tweet Feature
This feature is perfect for businesses because it allows them to display their most useful or informative tweet at the top of the feed. This is particularly good if you have found it difficult to communicate your message in the 160 characters provides for your bio as the pinned tweet can be an extension of your bio. The pinned Tweet also offers you the opportunity to highlight your most important offer. If you are a Twitter user then you'll know how fast the Feed can go so this lets you show off your best Tweet to new followers.
Best Tweets
Your best tweets will now be much more visible and your tweets that have received the most engagement will appear in a larger font so your best content will be easier to find. This will hopefully make users concentrate much more on delivering the best possible content in order to achieve the highest engagement so their Tweets will be more prominent.
Filtered Tweets
You can now choose which timeline to view when viewing other profiles, Tweets, Tweets with photos/video or Tweets and replies. This makes it so much easier for you to find what they are looking for and stops you getting lost within endless text.
New Grid view for your followers and following pages
The new way that profiles are displayed on the followers and following pages gives brands a much better opportunity to visually communicate what they are all about. The mini profiles displayed within a grid somehow gives a much better visual impression.
Multiple Photos in Tweets
Did you know that Tweets with photos receive 35 % more engagement than Tweets without? Twitter now not only includes images in the Newsfeed you can now include up to four photos in one Tweet which will be displayed in a collage in your followers timeline. If they want to take a closer look they can click on each image to expand and images are even included if you get retweeted.
Photo Tagging
You can tag up to 10 people in one image and names will be displayed alongside the photo. Twitter Filters If you are uploading your images on the mobile app there are 8 creative filters you can choose to enhance your photos.
No More Backgrounds
Yes Twitter backgrounds are going to be no more and it seems the platform is following the others with a more uniform layouts. The result however will be a much cleaner and less confusing appearance.
I have to say I think this is great news for social media. The competition is on and it seems our platforms are going to continually get better and better in order to stay in the game.
What do you think about the new changes? Do you think more people and more business are going to be tempted to use Twitter and move away from Facebook as a viable way of reaching their audiences? Would love to hear what you think in the comments below.
