What are Twitter Cards and Why Should I Know About Them?

Currently, Twitter is home to more than 288 million monthly active users. These users post more than 500 million tweets per day.* Those are big numbers!

But how do you reach this audience? You may have a Twitter account and tweet occasionally, but what if there was a way to boost your tweets’ engagement by more than 43 percent? Good news, there is a way to do this: Twitter Cards.

What are Twitter Cards?

Twitter Cards are a customizable way to turn tweets into a creative showcase of your website or app with a photo, link and a direct call to action for the viewer. What’s even better about a Twitter Card? It is free to use, but at the same time easy to add advertising dollars behind to increase your reach and gain more followers.

I recently watched a #TwitterAcademy webinar hosted by Brendan Zhang, a marketing manager on the @TwitterSmallBiz team. (This is a great Twitter handle to follow for marketing tips and tricks). Zhang shared the basics on Twitter Website Cards and walked the webinar audience through the steps to setting one up. It’s an easy process that starts at ads.twitter.com/getstarted.

Why use Twitter Cards?

There are a variety of reasons to implement Twitter Cards into your social strategy and I’ll touch on four major ones:

Give users context – Twitter Cards give users a preview of the website they are about to visit. Users are more likely to click on a link when they feel more comfortable knowing what’s on the other side of it.
Deliver strong ROI – Twitter Cards are proven to catch the attention of Twitter users, making them more likely to click on your tweet. The direct call to action button on Twitter Cards also increases the likelihood that your followers will click on your link, which makes it easier for them to buy, view, or read what’s on your website.
Analytics – If you decide to take your Twitter Card usage a step further and create a campaign, Twitter provides great analytics and insights of your audience and the actions they are taking as a direct result of your Twitter Card.
Customizable – Twitter Cards allow you creative freedom to customize a tweet and schedule it to deploy at your convenience.

So what now?

If you’re ready to give Twitter Cards a try, talk to your Marketing Specialist in the C3 to make sure you have developed everything on this creative checklist: