There have been a lot of articles praising athletes, celebrities, their agents, social media experts, instructors that taught them to tweet. A couple things have happened though – the experts have missed a couple things along the way to enjoying all their praise – namely using the Twitter background as an advertising billboard.

A lot of brands, celebs, and athletes are now on Twitter, but they’re not using their “space” properly. Working with a good designer you can use your background space provided by Twitter as your very own advertising billboard.

Basics:
Factoring a 1024×768 screen resolution there’s a set amount of space available on a Twitter page:

• Left Column – Under normal circumstances you need a good quality vertical photo, and include their logo/name/official site address as an overlay graphic.
• Top – Twitter recently added their logo above the small bird (left corner) so they took away some valuable real esate that could have been used to place in a branding header.
• Bottom – Until the user actually posts, you can use the full bottom panel for design space.
• Right Column – It’s a thin area, but you can use the top right for a logo or smaller graphic.

Some examples:
http://twitter.com/danicapatrick
http://twitter.com/scottdixon9
http://twitter.com/sarahfisher67
http://twitter.com/daratorresswims

Protect the reputation of your brand – don’t just use a given Twit background, and don’t just throw in a repeat background.

Schedule It:
Your team should schedule out some important events or marketing programs that are going to be happening (season schedule, appearances, sponsor announcements, charity involvement, major award/accomplishment) and change out the background design to reflect the ongoing storyline of your brand. There’s a lot of options here, just need to have a little creativity.

With some of our clients we’re in the process of scheduling out the remainder of the year and working with their sponsors to develop all the backgrounds in advance over the next two weeks.

Sell It:
This is for the agents. There is a good opportunity to sell the space to a current or potential sponsor to better promote their association with the athlete, or their product, or a contest or promotion they’re running. The image can even be changed out on a scheduled basis (see above). Branding a Twitter page is a great opportunity to get an athlete’s smaller sponsors involved as well. Many times one or two major sponsors overshadow all others and by getting smaller level sponsors involved in this manner – you can really help activate their association online.

The experts have also been misfiring on posting and content strategies, and we’ll post on those two areas shortly.