How Your Twitter Profile Picture Influences Your Follower Count

Earlier this year, I switched my Twitter profile picture from the lady you see on top of the blog to a picture of myself. I thought, hey, this is my blog, why not use my face as an avatar? Until last month, I never questioned the effect that this would have on my Twitter follower count, but I should have. In mid October, I realized that in the past year the number of new followers I was getting daily dropped by about 60 or 70%, so I decided to start experimenting with various profile pics, and boy was I shocked by what happened. This was my profile picture for most of the past year:

I then asked my friend Liz Katz if I could use the picture featuring her wearing one of our shirts (which is available via our online store,) and being the super nice person that she is, she said yes. Here’s the picture:

Then, I switched back to the initial profile pic I had for many years:

I then used Twitter Counter to observe the effect that each change brought to my account.

I used almost 2 months of data for the graph, and the effect is fairly conclusive. For most of the past year all I got is around 8 new followers per day. When I switched my Twitter avatar to Liz’s picture, it jumped to 27 new followers per day, and when I changed it back to the lady on top of the blog, it dropped to around 20. It is important to note that most of the tweets that I send are automatically generated are are posted each time a post appears on the blog.

The conclusion? Your Twitter profile picture has a huge influence on the number of new followers you get daily. If you’re really serious about having more followers on Twitter, the right picture could make a night and day difference for you or your business.

Thoughts? :)

[Geeks are Sexy on Twitter]