Does having an animated Twitter Icon Benefit you and gain you followers?

I personally believe that having an animated twitter icon is a bad idea, and many people on twitter agreed with me. I can see the logic behind a company or person having one, and why they think it would make their tweets stand out in search results and a twitter feed, which it does, but I strongly recommended that you change it to a standard image if you do have one, the reasons for this are as follows:

• It looks cheap. Web design has moved on from the days of the '< marquee >' tag which would make your text scroll across your webpage, as this was seen to be more of a distraction from the copy on the page, which as we all know is the reason why people have visited the page in the first place.

• It’s intrusive, a bit like an advert on TV its very flashy and loud, to gain your attention, but it’s not what the viewer has tuned into view, again strengthening the the fact that it shoud be your tweets that gain your page attention.

There are some of the responses I received: to the question this question I tweeted ‘Do animated #twitter profile pictures attract or distract you?’:

@almalbon – Wrote: @tim_eem Animated profile pics are cheap and gimmicky. Let your tweets do the talking. Quality content is king

@Bizitalk Wrote - @tim_eem Come down on the side of distraction and slightly annoying I think!

In short, you should allow your tweets to gain you more followers, rather than employing a cheap, loud tactic to get your profile noticed. Great copy is always key

The socialjamm team.
www.socialjamm.com
www.twitter.com/socialjamm