Top Tips for creating an engaging space on Twitter and Facebook

It is evident that social networking is growing exponentially with the popular sites quickly becoming a household name. Even my grandmother has heard of Facebook and in fact she probably has a profile. Sure who doesn’t, right? Which leads me onto the important fact of individuality on the web. Each Tweeter or Facebooker has a unique story to tell and almost every post is designed to bring something fresh and exciting into the mix.

However, Twitter and Facebook present a barrier for many. Twitters somewhat limited choice of background designs, however pleasant they may be, leaves much to the imagination and Facebooks determination to keep each profile uniform means creativity is a necessity. With an interest in design, it’s not surprising that i feel the need to spice up my profiles in an effort to look a bit different from the millions of other users out there, and this should be no different for a business. Here are my top tips for creating an interesting, engaging and eye catching profile on Twitter and Facebook.

Be Unique

Whether you use Twitter for personal communication or to promote a business, you can be creative. Create a distinct background which sets your page apart from the crowd. Use vibrant colours, interesting images, photo collages or funky patterns. Be unique!

Use Sidebars for additional exposure

Creating sidebars is a great way to communicate additional information which cannot fit into your bio. Using a larger profile image is common along with providing website details, contact details and services offered. The background offers a valuable space to tell your followers more about you or your company. You may just want to keep it simple using corporate colours and a logo. However, you could really engage the space by introducing interesting details about yourself or the company in a fresh way.

Know your dimensions

Dimensions, screen resolution and pixels are terms that can often confuse people when creating graphics for Facebook and Twitter. I have found that best practice is design for the most widely used screen resolutions. In layman’s terms “screen resolution” is the size of your screen display whether this is on a laptop, notebook or desktop. Screen resolution is most important when designing background graphics for Twitter. The following are the most common resolutions used today:
According to W3Schools, the majority of users, almost 96% infact, have a screen resolution of 1024×768 and higher. It is therefore adviseable as a best practice to design with this in mind.

Facebook requires a less tactical approach, requiring you to know only two sets of dimensions. As your designed content sits inside the facebook frame, screen resolutions make little difference. The usable area of the facebook profile image or logo is 200 x 600. This means that you have 600 pixels in height of usable space to use. You can use this however you like whether it’s to promote your latest release, your website, your contact details, your services… the opportunities are endless. It may be worthwhile keeping in mind however, that the image displayed with your Pages updates are square, so build a 200 x 200 px space within your design that can effectively communicate your brand mark through page updates.

The second most important set of dimensions you will need is to create your own unique FBML tab. FBML is a cut down version of HTML which can be used to create engaging content on your facebook page. Previously this usable space was 760 pixels however this was changed to 520 pixels in width making it more challenging for Page owners to design engaging spaces.

Optimise your graphics for Web

Saving images for use online is important when dealing with Twitter and Facebook. If your images are too large, your page could take quite a long time to load impacting upon the user experience. Twitter imposes limits on the file sizes you can use. The background image for twitter can be no bigger than 800k and the avatar can be no larger than 700k.

One of the most common issues we face is creating an image that Twitter won’t allow you to upload. Using the “Save for Web” option within your editing software will allow you to reduce your image size and optimise it for web. You will have the option to save images in a number of format including .jpeg, .gif, .png etc,. Best practices say that graphics which contain text and headings should be saved as .gif to give a sharper appearance to the text. When it comes to colours, graphics using 1 or 2 colours should also be save as .gif and images containing multiple colours should be saved as .jpegs or png’s. Gif’s are really small files so will always load quite fast, serving your pages content quickly for your users.

Get your Avatar right

Whether creating a personal or business account on any social network or web utility, it is important to ensure your Avatar or profile image is a suitable size and optimised for the platform in which it will be used. Avatar’s in general should be square images (apart from Facebook). The dimensions you need to use differ for each platform, a brief outline of which are below:

Plan your composition

- Design your Twitter theme and facebook tabs following the style and colors of your website. If you have specific branding guidelines, it is adviseable to stick to these to reinforce the corporate brand identity.
- Add your company logo and company name to all communications whether on an FBML tab or twitter background to encourage recognition and awareness of your brand.
- Giving a link to your website is always adviseable as it gives users the opportunity to find out more with little effort exerted in the process
- Clearly highlight clickable links within tabs by using action words or inviting phrases such as “Click here”, “Find out more”, “Enter the Competition”, “Win Big prizes” etc. Make people want to click on your content.
- Show off your talents and examples of your work. Display a portfolio or previously completed contracts or details of services offered to give users a greater understanding of what you do
- Don’t overload readers with too much information or clutter.
- Use wireframing to plan your design before setting off. Some people like to sketch, however i like to use some free online tools, which help me to create a layout. Two great free resources that are available to use are Pencil and Mock Flow. Both have their pro’s and cons but as they are free, try them out and see which you prefer.

Avail of the Freebies

The internet is full of resources and free tools to help you in various areas. Design is no different. You don’t need to spend a fortune on graphics packages to achieve a great looking background or facebook tab. There are a number of Open Source Graphics packages available which are free to use and give great results.

GIMP – (Comparable to Photoshop). GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities, can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Inkscape – (Comparable to Illustrator). Inkscape is anopen source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.

Paint.NET – (Comparable with photoshop but for Windows Only). Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Don’t forget that there are tons of stock photo sites that you can use such as http://www.sxc.hu, http://www.istockphoto.com, http://www.123rf.com and http://www.dreamstime.com. If you are in search of some free fonts, you can also find these at http://www.dafont.com, http://www.fontyukle.net and http://www.fonts101.com.

A Final word on Simplicity!

Facebook and Twitter design can help you deliver key messages about your business but it is important to keep it simple. Try not to cram too much information into a single space. It is important to note that web users tend to scan new pages quickly as opposed to methodically reading line by line. Displaying graphics and information on FBML tabs or Twitter backgrounds should bear this in mind. Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, has done much research into how we read online and points to note from his findings are as follows. Try to:

-Direct the users attention at the information you want them to focus on.
-Present text concisely and keep your audience in mind when composing
-Use corporate branding and stick to your colour scheme.
-Try not to use too many colours, textures, vectors etc.
-Make linked content clear and obvious to the user and avoid obscurity.

Happy designing!