Twitter Cards enable you to attach rich photos, videos and media experience to Tweets. Creating them is as easy as adding a few lines of HTML to your webpage. Users who Tweet links to your content will have a “Card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers.

One of the attractions of Twitter Cards is that they provide control of how content is displayed with Tweets. This can be used to:

                  • Drive traffic to a website or online community
                  • Increase the number of people following a Twitter account through content attribution
                  • Promote E-commerce

Below is a great before and after from Harveys Furniture in the UK:

 Twitter Cards come in eight formats so that you can match their capability and visuals to your business needs:

  • Summary Card: Default Card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
  • Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but with a prominently featured image.
  • Photo Card: A Card with a photo only.
  • Gallery Card: A Card highlighting a collection of four photos.
  • App Card: A Card to detail a mobile app with direct download.
  • Player Card: A Card to provide video/audio/media.
  • Product Card: A Card optimized for product information.

In addition to displaying your content in a more engaging way, Cards also drive downloads and even link directly to your mobile applications. Twitter has also launched Analytics for Twitter Cards to help users determine how well their media rich tweets are performing on the network.

 Twitter Cards are a first step towards facilitating purchases directly on Twitter – which opens a new sales channel for B2C brands. Twitter Cards have launched campaigns with: Delectable, Etsy, Flickr, Foursquare, Gumroad, Jawbone, Path, Rovio‘s Angry Birds, SoundCloud, Storenvy, Wine Library and Vine.

Only time and metrics will tell if Twitter Cards deliver on their promise and can unseat Facebook’s mobile app install ads, which already allow users to buy directly from Facebook via the ad.

Colleen Nolan

Colleen Nolan

Colleen is an advocate at heart who believes that with the right message and motivation anything is possible. A strategic campaign designer and communicator, she is skilled at defining and analyzing a desired result, and then developing the marketing and communications pathway to achieve success. Colleen quickly makes an intellectual and emotional connection with key audiences and uses these skills to craft communications programs that have strong resonance and dramatic impact.

Colleen has 20+ years experience in engagement, issue management, community building and mobilization.