If you use Twitter then you should be using it as a way for people to connect with you. When people view your profile you don’t want them to see the plain boring default Twitter background. You want them to see something that catches their eye and shows them that you are interesting. That way they will follow you. I’ve noticed lately a lot of people have been changing their Twitter backgrounds and even people selling custom twitter backgrounds. I decided to jump into it and make my own custom Twitter background.

You really don’t need much design experience to make a custom Twitter background, but this tutorial assumes you have some basic Photoshop knowledge. You don’t have to use Photoshop, and imaging software will do, but I used Photoshop. First you want to create an image that is 570 x 1200, that is an ideal size for Twitter. Next to give it some dramatic effect you can use the gradient tool and make the color fade from one to another. This will make it look better, I used white and blue for my gradient.

Next you can go ahead and add whatever you want to the background. I would suggest maybe a picture of yourself, your blog URL, a paragraph describing what you do, links to other social networks you are on, or whatever else you think is relevant. For mine I used the comic book picture of me, my blog URL, and links to my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr. That way people can connect with me on more than just Twitter.

So that’s the final product, sized down to fit into this blog post of course, you can see the full thing over at my Twitter page. Now when you add the background on Twitter you will notice that it will not stretch all the way across the screen. You can change the rest of Twitter background to a solid color by going to the design tab in your settings, then going to change design colors. There you can also change the links, text, sidebar, and sidebar border colors. So make them match up with your background so the page looks good.

Let me know what you think of my Twitter background and if you have made a Twitter background link your Twitter profile in the comments so I can take a look.