Are you ready to learn to make Twitter Cards?
There are many advantages to using Twitter.
One of them is extending the reach of your brand.
Twitter Cards help you reach this goal.
Twitter Cards get the attention of people with whom you want to network.
By getting consumers’ attention, Twitter Cards help you make sales.
Are you ready to learn how to make Twitter cards?
What is your leading traffic referrer to your blog?
Most people answer Facebook or search engines.
Where does Twitter fall on your list of blog referral traffic?
If you could get more attention to your tweets on Twitter, would you try it?
There are so many advantages to using social media for business, I invited my guest author and friend Trudy from Rendezvous En New York to explain how to get people to click on your links at Twitter by using Twitter cards.
Using Twitter Cards to Get More Traffic
We, as bloggers, are always in a chess match to try to bring attention to our posts, aren’t we?
You put in the effort to research and edit this amazing work of blog gold, the post that may have taken a week, and that we so lovingly put together, so what is next? Promotion starts, of course, at least that’s what we have been told; that is how you make your post go viral and gain followers.
And I’ll be concentrating on one aspect of that on Twitter, called Twitter Cards. This what one of my previous Twitter cards looks like.
Twitter cards are tweets where you add pictures, summary of the tweet, video, ads and a call to action. The tweets pop in your feed and draw a lot more attention than the usual dry tweets that you tend to scroll through past and encourages engagement in your feed. Here are the types of Twitter cards with their descriptions:
- Summary Card: Title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
- Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but with a prominently featured image.
- App Card: A Card to detail a mobile app with direct download.
- Player Card: A Card to provide video/audio/media.
Also, with Twitter cards, there will be analytics information to let you know how those tweets are doing with engagement when you sign up with a developer’s (business) account.
In this post I will only focus on the free aspects to Twitter cards, that would leave out app card, and ads with calls to action (calls to action are tweets with directions such a “subscribe” or “ask me how”). Twitter cards are available to WordPress.com blogs and WordPress.org blogs, but on WordPress.com blogs they are enabled automatically without adding a plugin.
For WordPress.com blogs, you just have to go to:
- Login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
- In the left sidebar, navigate to “Settings→Sharing”
- Next to the Twitter section, click on the “Connect” button and continue to allow your blog to Authorize to your Twitter account.
Also make sure that:
- Make sure your site is accessible by Twitter’s web crawler by going to the Dashboard and configuring “Settings→Reading→Site Visibility” to allow search indexing.
- Be sure to submit one of your example posts via the Twitter Card Validator. Once you have the confirmation e-mail, a tweet with your site URL will have a Card attached.
For WordPress.org blogs, all you need is to have a regular Twitter account and then get a developer account and to do that go to, https://dev.twitter.com at the top of the screen click on developers, then documentation, and then cards. This will land you in the getting started guide, and it will go into you putting code into the head section of the page. This is often too technical for most and the easiest way to get around this is to add one of the plugins available for WordPress.
The three most popular are Jetpack, Yoast SEO and the official Twitter plugin for WordPress. The Yoast SEO and Jetpack plugins are the ones I use because they do other things than just manage Twitter; they both help me handle all my SEO duties, but that is off-topic and I won’t go into those descriptions in this post. But the Twitter cards are under the social tab of the plugin for Yoast SEO.
As you can see, I chose the Summary Card with large image, but the option for App Card and Player Card is not supported on this plugin. However, this definitely serves the purpose of promoting posts, so don’t feel that you are lacking something because you don’t have the option for video. GIFs also work with this option as well.
After you save these settings, you are set up for Twitter cards and can start using them right away pending approval.
With the plugin Jetpack, all you have to do is activate your sharing block in your settings, and when you do that authorize Twitter by attaching your account to your blog. And, when you publish a new post, your right-hand sidebar of the screen will look like this:
As you can see from the image on the right side you can see a list of all my social media that I have connected to my blog, and when this post is published a tweet will be
generated to Twitter containing my feature image for my twitter card and custom message if you wish, easy as pie.
After finishing your post and publishing it, use your link to validate that the Twitter cards will appear the way you want through the Twitter Card Validator. The approval team can take up a week to approve your Twitter card the first time.
This step is for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. They want to make sure that the content is yours, doesn’t contain viruses or doesn’t run with sound on, and doesn’t break with Twitter policy.
After that first time, in my experience, the cards appear within an hour. But each time you have to make sure the picture generates the way you want, just in case.
In the image, you can see that I’m “whitelisted” which means I’ve been approved, and here is how the preview looks when you enter your URL into the preview card box. Neat huh?
Related: Guide to Read – How to Buy Twitter Followers the Right Way
Conclusion: Twitter Cards
All of this work ensures that your Twitter cards will be viewable on smartphones and tablets as well.
I can say from my personal experience that my Twitter engagement has gone way up since setting up my Twitter cards, more retweets, and the interactions that have led to adding followers and being approached by sponsoring opportunities that I don’t believe would have happened otherwise just for being noticed in the swarm of other bloggers. It has made me stand out and look more professional amongst others who don’t realize what an awesome tool they have at their fingertips.
Again your pictures have to be clear and persuasive enough to catch someone scrolling quickly through their Twitter feed on their phone but once you’ve chosen the right image you’ll notice people will start noticing you.
I hope this post helps explain how you can extend your hold on possible new followers’ eyes on Twitter. Please tell me if any of the tips help your visibility. Good luck!
In the meantime you can catch me on my blog Rendezvous En New York, where I write about my New York City life without the Jimmy Choos and Mr. Big.
Me: In this, her first guest post, Trudy wrote a wonderful tutorial for Mostly Blogging‘s readers. Let’s go show her some blog love and visit her site.
You, too, can Write for Mostly Blogging and be a part of our Tuesday Guest Author series.
Readers: In the introduction I posed two questions. Who is your leading traffic referrer, and where does Twitter fall? Do you think you might try Twitter cards to boost Twitter’s referral traffic to your blog? Have you already made them? What is their effectiveness? I look forward to your views.
Before you go visit Trudy’s blog, please share this post, so others know how to make Twitter cards and their value for bloggers.
Related Post:
How to Quickly Tweet Your Way to Blog Traffic
