Twitter Popularity
With over 271 million monthly active users, Twitter is one of the big players in the worldwide social media spectrum. Set up in 2006 by founders Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone, the US based platform has grown rapidly since inception and is now an important marketing tool.
2012 was when we first saw roll out of expanded tweets, or the early formation of Twitter Cards. These were in effect expanded tweets which contained links to ‘partner’ websites and showed the Twitter user a small snapshot or preview of the content at the external link. The idea being that the user got to see what the destination link was about before clicking on it. This acted as a method of enticing them to go and click on the link.
Lead Generation
It was August 2013 when Twitter introduced Lead Generation Cards for advertisers. This card allowed or encouraged users to sign up for a special offer or opt in to a newsletter right from the Twitter timeline. The lead generation card is ONLY a paid option. The new choice of Twitter Cards are similar but they are free (you can promote some options as below). Twitter Cards allow for a lot more specific tailoring of tweets depending on what you want to promote or show in the timeline.
Twitter Cards for Business
In a myriad of text, expanded tweets in the form of what is referred to today as ‘Twitter Cards’ represent a distinct opportunity for brands to stand out in the Twitter timeline. They allow rich media experiences that go far beyond a 140-character written message. The process of adding rich media to be embedded in your tweets is done by adding some simple html code to your website.
Therefore, if planned well, the implementation of Twitter cards can be very effective for business in a number of ways. You just need to decide your ultimate goal with the material you have:
Introducing new products: You can include a picture of a new product with the Product Card to introduce it to your followers (or non followers if you promote the tweet). This is a great way to build some hype around your new product and allow instant visibility in a timeline. As well as having the ability to add an image, and a description, this choice also allows you to highlight two other key details about your product.
Highlighting resources: Businesses can use Twitter cards to direct people to the specific resources on their site and therefore help to build brand awareness. For example if your business has built a specific free app for an event, you can use the Twitter card facility to let followers know of it. They can download it directly from the tweet with the ‘App Card’.
Promoting a blog: Gain greater visibility for your blog posts on the Twitter timeline by implementing a Twitter Summary Card. The big advantage of incorporating this in your strategy is that when other users share your website’s content, the Twitter card links the content back to your Twitter page, thereby protecting the attribution of the content. A similar option is the Summary Card with Large Image . As with the standard ‘Summary Card’ option, this feature allows you to write the content that appears in the summary text. There is less space for an in-depth summary if you choose the ‘Large Image’ card option over the regular Summary Card, but if the image you plan to share is compelling, it remains a good choice. Important to note that the image needs to be at least 280 pixels wide by 150 pixels tall or it will not appear.
Sharing videos/audio: People love videos and this allows you to post one of your videos (or audio files) directly into timelines which is extremely powerful. There are different constraints for different phones from a technical point of view but the information page on the Twitter website explains all about the Player Card.
Highlighting photos: The Photo Card is a fantastic way to show off amazing images. People tend to re-share (Retweet) tweets with images a lot more than tweets without images so this will help to grow awareness and followers and perhaps site traffic. If you have a number of images (up to four) you can choose to use the Gallery Card. The Photo Card feature automatically resizes your photos so it works well across devices.
Promoting Tweets
Back in April of this year, around the time of the launch of the Cards, Twitter said that in testing, Website Cards showed higher engagement and click-through rates and lower cost per click levels, compared to similar tweets containing an image and a link. Twitter advertising is now available in many countries (latest roll out here) and it is possible to promote certain Twitter Cards. Currently you can promote App Cards, Website Cards and Lead Generation Cards. When promoting on Twitter using the Cards option, you are paying for link clicks. Impressions are free. In theory, if you had a link that is never clicked on, you could run an ad indefinitely.
Analytics
As with any marketing strategy, analysing the effect of Twitter Card implementation is both interesting and necessary. Twitter offers Card Analytics for this purpose. Upon account login, Twitter Card analytics includes information on key metrics such as URL clicks, app install attempts and Retweets.
As more people and businesses use Twitter cards, they will have less impact in the timeline, so now is the time to get started and implement them into your marketing plan. Get in touch with DPFOC today to let us help you. We have added HTML code to this post and so click ‘tweet’ below to see the Twitter Card in action!
