I’ve been using Twitter for a while now. While its merits are actively being debated, I for one believe that Twitter is just soooo hot right now!
One thing that I particularly find interesting and can’t find much on the online world that talks to it, is the profile picture. Profile pictures range from drawings to professionally edited photos (especially for celebrity Twitterers).
Darren Rows gives 6 useful tips on using your profile picture to grow your followers in this post. While I’m at it, he gives a great example of how Gary Vaynerchuck uses his profile to send out a particular message on how to contact him.
That said, I purposely changed my background image to support the cool dudes over at Grad Connection. The reason I did this was to test how effective Twitter, the site was vs. all the tools (Tweetie et al.). I was was extremely impressed. I got a lot of queries asking if I had joined Grad Connection etc. I plan to discuss this in another post in greater detail.
So back to the point, I’ve purposely put an iSight created photo, up as my profile pic. This was taken when half of the light bulbs were blown in my study. I wanted to be real and appear without makeup 
Regardless of what kind of pic you have, I think it is worth while to keep that pic stable, at least for a while.
Something that personally bugs me as a Twitter user, is how some people are constantly changing their profile picture. Its hard for me as their follower, to gain that instant recognition, i.e recognise their brand, personal or otherwise. I have enough trouble putting names to faces (I’m sure that this is a problem shared by many), so as part of your branding, make it easier for your followers to know who you are.
I’m not sure why some people choose to constantly update their profile pictures but for me, as a follower of someone’s tweets, it makes it hard to know who it is making the tweets. That is, I find it difficult to associate people with their tweets. A lot of bloggers, PR and marketers etc. preach Twitter as a PR/Branding tool. By constantly changing your profile picture, you are making it hard for your followers to associate your brand with what you are saying. Worse still, your followers may even rethink what your brand means to them.
The thing with Twitter, is that the line between personal and professional use has shortened. Tony Hsieh from Zappos is a great example of this. Check out this article from ZDnet. Regardless of how you want to use Twitter, your profile pic helps your followers identify your tweets in the wilderness. After all, how are you, as a Twitterer, going to get your tweet heard amongst people (potential influencers) that follow thousands?
