Fix my Twitter profile

A profile gets read by somebody who just saw one tweet and tapped your name. They are deciding in a few seconds whether there is more where that came from. They are not reading a CV and they are not reading in order.

Most bios answer a question nobody asked. They describe a job title, which tells a stranger what you are paid for and nothing about what you post.

Step 1: work out where they arrived from

The arrival changes what has to do the work:

• From a tweet in the timeline. They liked one thing. The profile has to suggest there is a pattern, not an accident.
• From a reply. They saw you being useful under somebody bigger. The bio has to explain who is being useful.
• From search or a recommendation. They have a problem and are checking whether you are about it.

Step 2: the name field, which most people waste

It renders larger than the bio and appears next to every tweet and reply you write. A name alone is the default and it says nothing.

This is the place for the four or five words that say what you are about. Not a slogan. The thing you would say if somebody asked what you post about.

Step 3: the bio has exactly one job

Say what somebody gets by following you.

Failures, in order of how common they are:

• A list of nouns separated by bullets, which reads as a search query
• Job title and company, which is a LinkedIn answer on the wrong platform
• Credentials nobody asked for, stacked
• A joke with no information, which works only if people already know you
• Keyword stuffing, which reads as stuffing to the human deciding

Test it by reading it aloud after "I follow this person because".

Step 4: the pinned tweet is the most valuable space you own

It is the one piece of your writing you choose, rather than the one the timeline happened to show. Most accounts either pin nothing or pin something a year old they have stopped thinking about.

Pick the tweet you would want a stranger to read if they only read one. Not necessarily the one with the best numbers: the one most representative of why somebody would stay.

Check what is pinned now and say plainly whether it is still the right one.

Step 5: the picture and the header, at the size they are actually seen

Both are small in a timeline. An avatar that is a wide shot is a grey circle at that size, and a header with small text is unreadable on a phone.

Judge them at the size they appear, not at the size you uploaded them.

Step 6: say what to leave alone

Name the parts that are working and why. A review that rewrites everything usually produces a profile that sounds less like the person than it did before.

What this will not do

It will not promise followers. A profile converts the visits a tweet earns; it does not create them, and no bio has ever rescued an account nobody sees.

It will not stuff keywords. A bio written for a search index reads like one to the person who arrived from a tweet, and they are the one deciding.

What changes when VoiceMoat is connected

A profile written in a register the tweets do not share is the mismatch a visitor notices first, and the person who wrote both cannot see it:

• get_voice_profile gives your Twitter register, so the bio sounds like the tweet that brought them there.
• get_voice_insights shows the subjects and patterns you actually post on, which is usually a better answer to "what are you about" than the one people give when asked directly.
• score_voice_match scores the rewritten bio against your profile, which catches the drift into brochure voice this exercise invites.

VoiceMoat also runs free Twitter profile tools at voicemoat.com/tools: a bio generator, a profile roast and an account audit. No account needed for those.

VoiceMoat is at voicemoat.com. The connector needs the Pro or Enterprise plan.