Last week I reached out to my friends over at Twitter for some advice. I was asking them what to do with my profile. Unfortunately I didn’t take a screenshot of my old profile to be able to show you what it looked like, but I’ll attempt to describe it here:
- My avatar was the icon/logo I use here on my blog. 
- The background in my profile was a tile setup of my little lifesaver image with a black background (this was my old avatar).
That was pretty much it.
I had been watching my Twitter feed and seeing some discussions here and there regarding the proper way to build a good Twitter account. Being that I was feeling a little in the dark about it since I’m only now starting to really use Twitter the way it’s supposed to be used (I think.. no really, I am!), I thought I’d ask the group of peeps whose Tweets I’m following what they thought I should do. I put out the following Tweet:
Question: Should I change my twitter to my real name and use a real photo? Why? Appreciate your feedback and will link to u on a blog post.
Here are some of the answers I received:
WhiskeyChick: I would do it. Your reach is still relatively small on here so making the switch is better earlier than later.
… then she sent one more: Besides, Real photos and names take you away from the awkward meetings like “Hi, aren’t you ladiesman500?”
IssaHines: If you have a lot of followers it may confuse people especially if you’ve been on twitter for a long time. If not go for it.
tysoncrosbie: http://tinyurl.com/dg7e6w My thoughts on having a photo of yourself.
SearchBuzz: -Yes – i would like to do the same. Why? Well, first time I met you I didn’t even recognize you without your life preserver on?
palisade14: On @twhirl your real name appears below your handle. Consider @leelefever | @commoncraft ’s approach too.
imnotadoctor: Stash it! (I’m hoping he was referring to putting up a photo I have with a mustache… I hope
)
I appreciate the advice and after taking all of it under consideration, I started the changing process with my Twitter account. My first step was to upload a real photo of me, and then to change my Twitter profile page. After that, I received a little more feedback from some closer friends and will be making a few more tweaks here and there, but overall I think I’m moving in the right direction. Here are some lessons I learned during this process:
1 – It’s okay to use an avatar and not your real name on Twitter (duh!). However, if you want to network in the real world, then you should try to just have your name there somewhere. In my case, I chose to display my real name within my profile page, but continue to use “seosurvivor” as my username.
2 – It’s important to have consistency with your avatar, especially while building up your account. I also seemed to have received an overwhelming amount of feedback pointing towards making my Twitter avatar a real photo of myself rather than the logo image since it wasn’t very personable. Since I changed my avatar to my actual photo, I have started to lean towards finding a middle ground. I’ll be spending some time on Photoshop tomorrow trying to come up with a real photo that also incorporates the seosurvivor life raft.
3 – It’s helpful to develop your Twitter profile page with something creative. Feel free to edit the background and make it your own. See mine for example.
That’s it for now. I’m looking forward to connecting with you on Twitter, so get in there and follow me!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I wrote a post last week on my blog on how to improve your personal branding on Twitter. The profile picture and background are definitely high on the list of little things you can do to make a good first impression to people who visit your Twitter page. I also think using your real name is a good thing to do, but obviously not mandatory.
@Sebastien Page:
Thanks for your comment on this Seb. I checked out your post and recommend it to anyone reading Sebastien’s post on improving your personal branding with Twitter: http://www.sebastienpage.com/2009/01/27/improve-personal-branding-twitter/
I had checked, this was true about twitter. I haven’t used twitter too. But I have an inspiration to use it. Thanks for sharing.