No matter what your business is, there is a Twitter Card to suit you. Here is the lowdown on what they are and how to make them work for your company website.
What are they?
Have you ever been scrolling through your Twitter timeline and come across a tweet, with a choice to ‘view media’ or ‘view summary’ for example? I bet you’ll notice it now! When you click on it, it displays a photo or video and creates a link to an external webpage. Once you have expanded the tweet, it’ll look something a bit like this….
They make tweets look eye catching and professional. It basically adds a visual element to anyone who tweets a link to your content from your website, rather than it just being the standard 140 characters worth of text. We have implemented Twitter Cards throughout our website, so if you were to tweet a link to this page, it will appear with the article image and the title, go ahead and try it!
What are the benefits?
Having Twitter Cards greatly increases the chance of someone clicking the link, therefore visiting your website.
There are quite a few different types of Twitter Cards:
• Single photo cards (like the example above)
• Summary cards with link and further information
• Product cards
• Video cards
• Gallery cards
• App cards
• Summary cards with images
• Player card (particularly used for Vines)
Depending on what your business offers and what each particular page offers will depend on which type of card suits you best. For example, if you have anecommerce website, your individual product pages will require product cards, but your blog pages may suit summary cards with images.
And, what’s even better, now that Twitter has started its own analytics, there is a Twitter Cards section, so you can track how well they are doing!
How to get them?
To get Twitter Cards attached to your website, you have to embed some code onto your pages. If code or web development is a bit alien to you, ensure you ask someone who knows what they are doing before rummaging around yourself, you may cause more harm than good!
The best way to implement these cards on your website is to visit the Twitter Cards official ‘Getting Started Guide’ page here. You will find the line of code for the relevant card you need there, and once implemented on your website, you’ll need to visit the Twitter Card Validator, insert the URL and get Twitter to approve it. You’ll then receive and email saying it’s all ready to go!
Have you noticed Twitter Cards before? Do they entice you to click? Will you be implementing them on your site?
