I was out shopping on a weekend when I received a notification on my phone. It was a congratulatory email from Twitter with the subject line ‘Congratulations! @itworldca is now verified.’ I was really excited and quickly forwarded the email to my manager.
After all, we had worked towards getting verified for weeks. But you might think it’s just a blue checkmark, what’s the big deal about it? On social networks, it is a big deal because trust is an important aspect for influencers and brands.
Getting verified gives you credibility but that’s not it. Here are some more reasons why getting verified is beneficial.
- Your customers and others can search for your profile easily. That means you make it easier for anyone at all to find you. That increases the chances of them following you. After all, they cannot follow you if they cannot find you.
- Easier to distinguish you from the fakes. There are a lot of trolls and copycats on Twitter and other platforms. A blue checkmark ensures that you don’t bleed followers to fake accounts.
- Helps to build a reputation as an industry authority.
Now that you know why getting verified is important for your brand, here are the steps you can take to get verified.
- Log into your Twitter profile and then head over to this verification link.
- Ensure that your phone number and email address are current. For your company profile, make sure you use a company email address rather than a generic free email address like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
- Profile picture and header photo: Stay away from low quality and poorly lit images. Go for high-res images that have proper dimensions as specified by Twitter. Recommended size for header image is 1500px by 500px and for profile pictures it is 400px * 400px.
- Birthday and a website: No matter if you’re verifying an individual or a company, Twitter will insist that you reveal your birthday. Also, if you have an active presence on Youtube or have a website that you can show, put that in the placeholder.
- When you apply for verification, your profile cannot be set to private.
- In case of individuals, Twitter asks for ID. So you will need to upload a copy of your driver’s licence or some other ID.
If you have your ID ready, the above process shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes. But we’re not done yet. Here’s what’s next.
Twitter will ask you to provide at least two links that identify the account. This could be your company’s website and other places where it has been mentioned. In case of individual profiles, you can provide links to articles that you may have written in the past and any other notable website that has mentioned you.
Finally, you need to provide a reason about why Twitter should verify your account. Be as descriptive as you can but limit it to 500 characters because that’s the limit. Also, you need to make sure that you’ve been active on Twitter. If your last tweet was 2 months ago, then it’s not a good idea to apply for verification.
That is it. Hit submit and if everything goes well, you will receive a congratulatory email within a few days or weeks when you’re out shopping on a weekend, like I was.
