You may soon notice some changes to your Twitter profile, or to those of users you interact with.

Just last week, Twitter announced that it would be rolling out a new profile design. Anyone who signs up for Twitter now will receive this new layout immediately, while it will be rolled out to all other users in the next few weeks.

While Facebook tends to roll out changes pretty regularly- see our thoughts on what the latest Page redesign means for your local business here– since its creation in 2006, Twitter hasn’t made quite so many major changes to its users profiles. Now that a big redesign is coming, you’re probably wondering exactly what it will mean for your local business. 

The big picture.

Perhaps the most striking difference in the new Twitter profile design is that it will feature a larger header image (taking the place of the previous background image and smaller header image) and larger profile image, which has also been moved from the center of the header to the lower left corner. The end result ends up being similar to Facebook’s cover photo design- compare First Lady Michelle Obama’s profiles on Facebook and Twitter:

The larger header image offers you significantly more visual real estate to promote your local business or product. Also consider including links to your social networks and website, your contact information, and location, so that people can easily find you both on- and offline.

Of course, a new header image size (1500 by 500 pixels, versus 851 by 315 pixels for a cover photo on Facebook) does mean you’ll need to invest some time/money in designing a new header image, but we think it’s worth the investment.

Important things will stand out.

Tweets themselves will appear in a larger font size. More interestingly, though, is the fact that the most engaging Tweets– those with the highest amount of favorites, retweets, and replies- will appear even larger on the new profile.

This is great news, right? Well, maybe. After all, your tweets with the most interactions are the most popular and probably the most interesting to your followers. But that doesn’t mean the tweets that show up largest are the ones you want to get the most attention. A Tweet with a lot of negative replies could show up larger because of the amount of attention it gets.

Thankfully, Twitter is also now letting users pin a Tweet to the top of their profile, similar to being able to pin a post on Facebook. When you “pin” a Tweet, it will remain at the top of your profile until you un-pin it or pin something else, making it the first thing people will see when they view your profile. So if your most engaging tweet isn’t one that you think is really “best”, find one that you like and pin it.

When looking at another user’s profile, you’ll also be able to filter Tweets, and choose to see Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies. Social media loves images- The Huffington Post found that Tweets with images have twice the engagement rate of those without- and this new option will make it even easier for people to see only Tweets with images. Adding photos or videos to your Tweets might make it more likely that your followers will read and engage with them.

Twitter can be a great way to grow your business, and if you’re not already on Twitter, you can sign up. For more info on other ways to grow your business with digital marketing, see our ebook below.