There are many components that make for great business Twitter profiles.
The name, handle, bio, location, link, profile and header images all contribute to either increasing the likelihood of being followed, and thus giving you a larger audience to engage with, or being overlooked.
Here's what it takes to have a great Twitter profile that will convert viewers to follows, and maybe even followers to customers:
NAME: What's in a name?
As a business, there are two primary options for what the name on your profile should be: it could simply be the name of your business, or it could be the name of the person who is mainly responsible for engaging and interacting with your followers.
The benefits of it being the name of your business is that it will provide brand consistency, and it more easily allows for more people to be involved with the day-to-day operation of your Twitter account.
The benefits of using the person's name that runs the account is that it will humanize your brand, and give followers a deeper sense of connection with the content you publish and the correspondence they have with you.
There isn't really a right way to go here, it's entirely your call. Weigh the pros and cons and make a smart decision that will work best for your organization. This said, my personal take on this is that business names work best for large businesses, and personal names work best for small businesses.
HANDLE: If your audience needs to reach you, they'll do it @here
Choosing your @ handle is very important. This should be a permanent reference to your business and should be chosen carefully to ensure that your current and prospective audience members can easily attribute your content to your business.
The trick is that there are hundreds of millions of Twitter accounts, so chances are pretty good that you may need to get creative with what your handle is going to be. If the name of your business is taken, consider adding a word that describes the nature of your business following your business name, your location, or some other descriptive term to make your handle unique.
I recommend staying away from numbering your @ handle (i.e. @TakenHandle3) because it lacks creativity, looks unprofessional, and doesn't have any meaning.
BIO: Bio is short for biography, so make it one
Twitter gives you 160 characters to describe your business, so take advantage of every single one. Your bio should give your audience a sense of what your business does as well as the nature of what you will be tweeting about. Give interested people a reason to follow you by making this as compelling and relevant as possible.
LOCATION: Where in the world are you?
I've written before about the importance of including your business' location in your social media profiles. To summarize, the inclusion of a location can help to dramatically increase the conversion of interactions on Twitter to your audience including your business as part of their consideration set when making a purchase. Think about it, many of the purchases you make on a regular basis are made where they are in part because of the location of the business. You wouldn't travel 100 kilometers to buy milk, right?
LINK: Where do I go for more information... or to buy your product?
Providing a link to your main website, blog, sign-up for your email list, or e-commerce store is absolutely critical to helping you convert Twitter followers to customers. You should make life as easy as possible for those audience members that want to have deeper involvement with your business, or who want to purchase your product or service. Do this by providing the pertinent link.
PROFILE PICTURE: Let's see you
Your profile picture is another critical element. This is arguably the most visible element of your branding on Twitter, so make it count. Your profile picture is attached to every tweet you publish, so you'll want to ensure that it catches your audience's eye and clearly makes a connection between your business and the content they are absorbing.
HEADER IMAGE: Show the world a bit about your business
The header image gives you opportunity to showcase what your business or brand is all about. Additionally, there are a number of creative ways to take advantage of this visual space including creating consistency with a current campaign that is in market, highlighting a current promotion, introducing a new product or service, and more.