As one of the leading social networks, Twitter has become more than just a place for friends to keep in touch with one another. It is also a leading platform that businesses are now using to stay in touch with current customers and expand their reach to new clients. One of the central ways to stand apart from other Twitter users is with a custom background. Not only can you brand your Twitter page, but you can also promote yourself in creative ways via a Twitter background too.

Canned Backgrounds

If you’re feeling creatively challenged, or if you’re strapped for time and looking for a quick fix then visit one of these Twitter background sites and explore patterns, prints and images that can be used to spice up your page.

TwitBacks

Twitrounds

Twitter Background Images

My Tweet Space

Themeleon

Custom Built

Here’s a little secret, you can use PowerPoint and Mac’s Keynote software to design your own fancy Twitter background. There are two main elements to consider before you start to build-out graphic elements, monitor resolution size and final image size.

W3Schools current trends show that more than 76% of computers are using a screen resolution higher than 1024×768. The higher the resolution, the more that a user will see of the Twitter background. Having a grid that shows you how many pixels your background components need to be constructed at will make things much easier to put together.

Depending on what resolution size you decide to design your background for your placement dimensions will vary. Try giving yourself a width of 250 pixels from the left margin for your left hand graphics and at least 85 pixels from the top header bar. Experiment to see what works best for your layout and design. Here’s a sample background template from Smashing Magazine to help illustrate how dimensions can be laid out.

Remember that the final size of your design is important because Twitter caps the size of backgrounds at 800k. Try to use JPGs and lower resolution images to avoid ending up with a file that’s 10MB in size.

When you’re ready to start building a background, open up PowerPoint or Keynote and create a blank slide that’s sized to the resolution of your choosing. Use the rulers and drag and drop guides to help you position your background elements. Once you’re satisfied with your creation do a Save As or Export and process as a JPG, GIF or PNG. Try uploading to your Twitter account to see how it looks.

Sidebar Promotion

Just like tweets are limited to 140 characters or less, Twitter bios must be 59 characters or less. That doesn’t leave a ton of room to promote your brand. That’s where the sidebar area comes in handy. You can use the left hand side of your Twitter background to feature other social media profiles, your blog URL, contact information and even some additional highlights about your brand, product and services.

Stellar Backgrounds

A collection of creative Twitter backgrounds is featured below for inspiration and ideas on to set-up your own. Enjoy!

twitter.com/kriscolvin

twitter.com/coreyweb

twitter.com/ijustine

twitter.com/robingood

twitter.com/elitistsnob

If you’re still hankering for more then check out some of these outstanding links and resources below:

How To: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace | Mashable

Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices | Chris Spooner

A Tutorial On Designing a Twitter Background | SEO MoFo

First the Facebook story hits Hollywood and now it appears that the Twitter story has made it’s way to the silver screen. Fortunately, it hasn’t taken long for an excellent parody to hit YouTube. Enjoy a good giggle.

True, Twitter is an amazing social media tool that connects people together, but with 26 million users strong there’s bound to be a few bad apples in the mix. As Twitter’s popularity has increased so has the prevalence of spammers. So, if you’re finding yourself perpetually inundated with direct messages (DM) like “here is something you will like [insert Bit.ly link here]” then we’ve got some simple suggestions to help you cut down the clutter.

1. Follow @Spam

This is the official Twitter spam reporting site and it’s the first step in reporting spammy tweeps. Let them know who’s spam blasting by identifying the person’s Twitter handle. By reporting spammers you’re making it easier for Twitter to put a stop to their unwanted activities.

2. Report Spam Directly

If you’ve set-up auto-following through a service like SocialOomph you’ll need to comb through the list of people that you’re reciprocating follows with and determine whether they’re actual spammers so that you can manually report them. When you use an auto-follow feature and a spammer comes along to follow you, your Twitter account automatically returns the follow. The only way to remove and block the spammer is find them in your follow list, or by searching their Twitter handle and clicking the gear shift icon. This will open a drop down list where you can choose to report the account as spam.

3. Perform Routine Spam Checks

If you have less than 100 followers it should be fairly simple to do a manual check for any spammers and mark them for deletion (don’t forget to report them too). But if you have an account with thousands of followers how do you police it? You do it with a tool called Twitblock. This is a fantastic application and it’s simple to use. Just allow it to access your Twitter account and click the ‘scan for spam’ button. Depending upon how many tweeps are following you the scan can take a few minutes. Absolutely worth waiting for the results.

4. Use SocialOomph

A ton of people use SocialOomph to send out auto-DMs with their auto-follow settings. The nice thing is that as a Twitter tool, SocialOomph recognizes that not everyone wants to receive these unsolicited messages. All you need to do is follow the steps that @optmeout features on their Twitter account:

1. Follow @optmeout
2. Wait for follow back
3. Send them a DM
4. Unfollow @optmeout

Easy as pie.

Helpful Tip

Most people have a ton of DMs in their Twitter accounts. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t offer a simple way to bulk delete them. Here’s an easy work-around to get old DMs removed at the same time once and for all. Head on over to Damon Cortesi’s Blog and scroll down a smidge until you locate Bookmarklet: DM Whacker.

Next, make sure that you’re logged into your Twitter account. Once you are click the home link and then your direct message link. You must have your direct messages open in order to install and use the bookmarklet. Select the DM Whacker link and drag it to your web browser’s toolbar. Open your Twitter direct messages and click the newly installed DM Whacker and you’ll be presented with the option to delete all DMs or to delete based on who sent them to you.

You can further customize your delete options from this point. Click the delete button and the DM Whacker will work its magic. Instant bulk deletion.

Was this information helpful? Let us know about other Twitter tools you’re using to manage spam. We’d love to hear from you.

A retweet on Twitter is a simple, but powerful ways to take your content that you’re sharing with current followers and potentially making it viral. When someone retweets (RT) what you’ve posted the message goes beyond your personal follower pool. It’s instantly sent to other new tweeters, which exponentially increases awareness about your brand through your tweet. Similar to other social media phenomenon, a RT is more coveted than achieved, but by following some of the suggestions below you can finesse your tweets to make them retweet-worthy in no time.

1. Retweet Others

Famous Beatle and singer/song-writer John Lennon once said, “the love you take is equal to the love you make,” and that same philosophy can be applied to Twitter. You need to retweet other tweeps if you want them to retweet you. This doesn’t mean that you need to go on a RT rampage. Pick and choose good tweet content that is worth sharing and make it happen through a retweet. Include @reply so that they’re looped in on your generous efforts.

2. Embrace Hashtags

Overuse of hashtags can appear spammy so employ them sparingly. Because hashtags organize tweets so that people can follow them based on category you have a good chance getting your retweet pushed out to many like-minded tweeps at the same time. In other words, a hashtag is like a group. For instance, if you sent a tweet about your award winning chocolate chip cookie recipe and add #cookies to your tweet it will show up in the #cookies hashtag feed and everyone reading that feed will see your tweet. If you want to know how hashtags are trending or being used visit Hashtags.org.

3. Short And Sweet

Twitter has a 140 character limitation on all tweets. The character cap seems even tighter when you factor in a shortened URL, @reply, hashtag and retweet. So, when you craft your tweets think about the other elements that can encroach on the 140 characters. Your tweet should be short, succinct and simple so that your tweeps know what it’s about and when it comes through as retweet it won’t be partially dissected by Twitter.

4. The Best Time

A-list blogger and social media expert Dan Zarella spent some time analyzing and evaluating retweet data to determine if there were certain days or times that favored retweets in comparison to others. Zarella observed that beginning in the morning business hours on Eastern Standard Time (EST) the quantity of retweets steadily increases. Additionally, content that begins as a tweet during this same timeframe will gain a significant number of retweets than original content posted in during other times.

There has been additional debate about specific hours throughout the day that tend to yield more retweets versus others. Some people believe that the hours after lunch and at the end of the work day are when the largest percentage of retweets occurs, however, because concrete data is unavailable we’ve refrained from exploring this area in our blog post.

5. Ask For It

If you want to get something retweeted then ask for it in your tweet. Sounds simple enough, but surprisingly many people choose not to include a call-to-action on their tweets.

How are you using retweets to drive traffic to your blog? What results have you seen? Add a comment or two down below.

If you’re looking for a Twitter solution that combines both marketing and management then you absolutely must check out Market Me Tweet. Before you roll your eyes at the thought of yet another Twitter tool you’ll be happy to know that Market Me Tweet is a true stand-out from the pack of Twitter apps that have permeated the social media realm. What sets Market Me Tweet apart from the competition is its branding capabilities and that’s good news for businesses small and large.

For the most part, Market Me Tweet is similar in scope to the Hootsuite dashboard and its functionality. Users can integrate multiple Twitter accounts to track and tweet too. It can monitor keywords, schedule tweets in advance, track conversation threads, follow and unfollow users, autotweet RSS feeds and much more. As previously mentioned, the big difference is that it allows users to ‘brand’ their tweets.

For instance, if you’ve ever sent a tweet using a tweet client like TweetDeck, Tweetie or Hootsuite, you’ve probably noticed each tweet is labeled with a backlink to the application used to generate the tweet.

With Market Me Tweet you have the ability to customize your own branded backlink that not only features your business, site or blog name, but let’s you choose the URL to link back to. In essence, you can optimize your brand and drive traffic back to your site.

The benefits of being able to brand, optimize and create backlinks to each of your tweets is a home run for your online social presence. For every single tweet that you send and that someone else retweets you’re creating additional exposure via a customized backlink. Incredible!

Of course all amazing tools come at a price, but the nice thing is that Market Me Tweet is reasonably affordable. There are several monthly price plans available to suit your individual or professional needs. The investment that you make will pay back in spades, especially when you consider how many backlinks your tweets will be generating throughout the Twitter-sphere.

Are you already using this revolutionary tool? What type of success are you seeing? Drop a line and keep us posted.