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Updated January 28, 2020Thereβs a case to be made for keeping your profile picture the same over the years, even if it means itβs not always up to date. The Founder and CEO of Product Hunt, Ryan Hoover, keeps his profile picture the same, saying, βOn Twitter, your @username is secondary to your profile pic. People recognize you by your avatar. Once changed, followers need to re-associate the new photo with your person.β
While the safest bet is to use a photo of yourself, some people opt for cartoon avatars or an illustration.
This practice is more common if youβre already well known. Here are a few examples:
Kim-Mai Cutler, a Partner at Initialized Capital and a Contributor at Tech Crunch.
Hunter Walk, a Partner at Homebrew.
Brad Feld, a venture capitalist at Foundry Club.
Itβs also common to use an illustrated avatar if youβre demonstrating an affiliation with a well known company.
Notion employees use avatars in the same style:
Ivan Zhao, Founder and CEO
Camille Ricketts, Marketer
Cory Etzkorn, Designer
New Yorker employees also have illustrated profile pictures in matching style:
Michael Luo, Editor
Helen Rosner, Food Correspondent
Amanda Petrusich, Staff Writer
If you donβt fall into one of these two categories, and your goal is to help people get to know you, itβs probably best to use a photo of yourself.
Your Twitter bio serves to give people a reason to follow you. Itβs common to mention where you currently work and where youβve worked in the past. You can list these companies in plain text or, if the company you work for is lesser known, @mention them. In most cases, itβs a good idea to give people a sneak peek on the kind of tweets they might expect if they were to follow you.
βcautionβ Try not to be self-aggrandizingβwatch out for words that make people cringe: βthought leader,β βprovocateur,β βinnovator,β or βcontrarian.β Often a one-liner on the type of work you do and what interests you will be more effective than those cliches. Use the link section of your bio to link to your companyβs website, personal website, online portfolio (i.e. Dribbble), or your newsletter subscription page.
A Twitter bio can signal which professional community you belong to or the corner of Twitter you inhabit (like βDesign Twitterβ (#designtwitter), βHistory Twitter (#twitterstorians),β or βBlack Tech Twitterβ (#BlackTechTwitter). Different corners of Twitter or Twitter βcommunitiesβ have different Twitter bio conventions, for example: