Sometimes 140 characters just aren’t enough to say what you want or stand out as a brand. So thank god for Twitter Cards, allowing you to add multimedia content and even a Call-To-Action to your tweets.
Only thing you need to do is add a few lines of HTML to your webpage and request approval via the Twitter Card Validator, and when users tweet links to your content a Card will be added to the tweet, which will be visible to all of their followers. Pretty cool! Just a side note: if you’re site is a WordPress website like mine is, you’ll need to work with this plugin 😉
There is a variety of Twitter Cards that you can use, let’s start with the ones that drive engagement:
Summary Card & variant with Large Image
This Twitter Card allows you to include the title, description, a thumbnail image & Twitter handle attributions for a web page. So if you have a blog or a webpage only containing information this one is ideal for you! You can also opt for the Summary Card with Large image which will show a larger image from your webpage instead of the square thumbnail image.
Photo Card
A card only containing a picture, can be used to showcase photography or art.
Gallery Card
Want to combine multiple photos? The Gallery Card is the answer, allowing you to show up to 4 photos in your tweet. Embedded tweets only show one of the four images, but tweets on Twitter show all the images.
Player Card
If your company has videos and audiofiles, you can use the Player Card to provide media (= video or audio). Thanks to this card a video or audioplayer will be integrated within your tweet so that users can play it on Twitter, and in embedded tweets.
Product Card
The Product Card is the ideal way to represent product items on Twiter. It’s designed to showcase your products via an image, a description, and allows you to highlight two other key details about your product.
And here are the Cards that drive action from your tweets:
Lead Generation Card
The Lead Generation Card allows people to seamlessly and securely share their email address with you without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form. They just need to click on a button, and they can share the email address associated with their Twitter account with you.
Website Card
Want to drive traffic to your website? Then you’ll need this one! This card includes a thumbnail image representing your website, your website title and a ‘Read more’ call-to-action button to encourage viewers to click through.
App Card
When someone sees a tweet about your app on their mobile device they are prompted to directly download it. In case they see the tweet on their desktop, they will get a link to view it on the web. This Card will show the APP name, description and icon, and you can also highlight attributes such as the rating and the price.
Are you planning on using them? If you already tried them please don’t hesitate to share your findings! I’ve tried a Summary Card linked to this website, and this is what I got to see when clicking on my tweet:
