When Twitter announced profile changes back a few weeks ago, a collective grown could be heard across the social-spheres, “Oh, no, not another change.”

In this post we’ll discuss why you may want to consider updating your profile sooner than later.  We’ll also take a look at brands who have already updated to see their approaches.

4 Reasons Why Brands Should Care About Twitter’s New Profiles

#1 Impressions

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing social media terrain. Just when you thought you had the hang of a platform they go and change something on you. When consumers follow brands, they tend to notice the companies who have adopted the new look and feel before it becomes the norm. By changing your Twitter profile now you’ll communicate the message that you’re current, a trend-setter/keeper-upper, and that you can adapt to change. All good messages to get out to your customers and followers.

#2 Brand Pizzazz

The new headers will give your brand pizzazz (and conversely, you can see in the example below what happens on iPad for example, when you don’t update.) Compared to the old Twitter look, the new headers can be as designed and colorful as you’d like them to be while maintaining everything you’ve come to love and appreciate about Twitter.

As I sat down to work on this post and since I hadn’t yet updated my own profile, I was curious how my profile appeared on an iPad. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised to see the default black header and since I hadn’t been taking advantage of tweeting photos, only one image showed up. And, as you can see, there was room for five more photos that was going to waste.

Twitter Profile Before Updated (Viewed on iPad)

Twitter Profile After Updated (Viewed on iPad)

# 3 Maximizing Twitter’s Real Estate
Headers give you more real estate to take advantage of—creating brand identity, giving you an opportunity to showcase more about your business in your profile picture, header, background and through the most recent six images you’ve shared. By updating to the new profile headers you get to take advantage of all the precious real estate that can help to visually communicate information and make valuable impressions.

A Look at 4 Brands with New Profiles: Let’s see how they’ve designed their profiles and taken advantage of the space allotted for six photos. Brands have 160 characters to describe themselves within the header which includes location, web URL, and Twitter handle.

Starbucks: Takes advantage of both sides of the background and tied the six images into their brand theme. Their profile photo and header consist of the infamous logo which at this point needs no explanation, along with a good photo of coffee beans.

Ford: The profile is a clean and strong use of the background with the company logo and slogan. All six images are of cars and represent the brand.

Samsung Mobile US: This is a great example of a brand who is showing a bold and creative use of the real estate that Twitter afforded them by using both sides of the background and using six colorful photos. The profile picture is both logo and complimentary image.

SAP: On this Twitter profile, SAP has used both sides of the background and ties their images together in the profile picture and header. They’ve also used the upper left side of the real estate as a way to introduce the contributors who tweet on the company’s behalf.

# 4 Easy to do

Twitter provides a helpful info sheet for what you need to know before attempting to update your profile. There are some other helpful posts you may want to check-out, by Corey Eridon via HubSpot and Amber Mac via Fast Company.

Your business likely has protocols and sign-offs before you can launch online profile/page and this may be the most time-consuming part of the process. The nuts-and-bolts of making the changes will literally take you a few minutes.  And, you may have to resist the urge to keep designing!

Has your business adopted the new Twitter look? Let us know about your experiences in the comments below.