Twitter is one of the world's biggest social networks and it's a powerful platform that can be leveraged to send your blog a lot of highly targeted traffic. But there's always been a limitation of using only 140 characters in your Tweets.
The 140 character limit doesn't give enough of the space we often need to promote our blog posts. You can only enter a line or two and a link to promote your content.
We are allowed a lot more characters for Facebook, and Google+, to share a longer snippet of our content which provides a lot more information to our potential readers. Twitter users have needed more space for a long time and now Twitter has finally responded by introducing Twitter Cards.
It's like a open graph implementation from Twitter Cards API, that enables them to have their own card format. This can actually add a title, image and description to your Tweets.
Once you set it up, you can check the Tweets going out from your blog and look for the Expand button in your Tweets.
Users who Tweet links of your content, will have a “card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers. If they click on the expand button, they will see a detailed summary of the blog post.
How To Setup Website For Twitter Cards
Now lets see how can we setup Twitter cards for our website. There are many WordPress plugins, which can help you in implementing Twitter cards.
One thing is that if you are using Facebook open graph and want to implement twitter cards along with it, you don't have to implement all cards. It falls back to open graph information if it doesn't fine any specific twitter tags.
Twitter Cards Types
Twitter has introduced many types of twitter cards like summary, photo, gallery etc. Here is a list of all cards which is supported as of now:
- Summary Card: Default card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
- Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but offers the ability to prominently feature an image.
- Photo Card: A Tweet sized photo card.
- Gallery Card: A Tweet card geared toward highlighting a collection of photos.
- App Card: A Tweet card for providing a profile of an application.
- Player Card: A Tweet sized video/audio/media player card.
- Product Card: A Tweet card to better represent product content.
Here is a video guide on How to Activate Twitter cards on your WordPress Blog:
Note: For more tips you can subscribe to MakeWebWorld YouTube channel.
WordPress SEO By Yoast
This is one of the most widely used SEO plugins for WordPress and it is developed by Joost de Valk (I don't see any reason why you would not be using it).
This provides an easy integration for Twitter cards. You can activate it from WordPress SEO social settings, you just need to select the check box and add the twitter handle for your account.
It automatically takes care of adding meta tags to your post. It also avoids duplicity of the tags by using open graph tags, if you have it activated on your site.
It provides an easy integration if you are just trying to implement summary card on your site. If you want any other type of card you need to do some coding.
JM Twitter Cards
This is another good plugin, which can help you implementing Twitter cards on your site.
JM Twitter Cards plugin allows you to customize the Twitter cards for each post, which is good if you have multiple types of contents on your site. So your one post can have summary card and other can have an app card.
The plugin is already compatible with WP SEO by Yoast and All in One SEO. You can activate this plugin and it will get the data automatically from the SEO plugins.
Apply For Twitter Card Integration
Once you have implemented it correctly on your site, you have to apply for Twitter Cards Integration for your site.
Twitter takes a week or two in approving the request and you will receive an email once it is approved. My experience with them is little better, I got it approved within a day for Makewebworld.
For the twitter cards request, you need to go to Twitter Cards Validator. Select the type of card you are trying to verify and it will take you to a screen where you can enter the URL.
You can enter the URL and preview the card, it will also tell you what tags are available on the page. If you find any issues, you can correct the tags on your pages.
Once you are satisfied with the presentation, you can submit your request for review. Twitter will review it and will approve the domain integration for your site.
You will receive an confirmation email once it is approved and details of your post will start appearing on the twitter with twitter cards.
It is already activated on YouTube, so if you promote your YouTube links on Twitter, you will get the “view media” links in there.
You need to apply multiple times if you are planning to implement multiple twitter card formats on your blog. You need to raise 1 application per type.
If you have not activated Twitter cards yet, this is the time. Go and have more details embedded in your Tweets with Twitter Cards for your blog promotions.
Wow !
This is simply amazing and unique . I never knew that such tool existed that can help us add more than 140 characters in our tweets . I’ll read more features about twitter card plugins and will test it through my blog . Thanks for sharing this tool with us Sanjeev .
-Pramod
Its really great and helps increasing the reach on twitter. With the available plugins it is easy to setup also…
Let me start with big “THANK YOU”. This is because I never know that there is what is called Twitter card which as valuable as this. I will definitely apply now
Its a great way to promote your blog and only a one time activity to set it up!
Sanjeev, I’ve been using them a while with Yoast and love it. But one question, sometimes the image they pick is not the one I’d like. They seem to grab the last image of the post and not the featured image from WordPress. Any idea why that is?
Thanks for this post to show us a variety of ways to get the Twitter Card feature 🙂
Hi Lisa, if you are facing issues with image, you can check it in Twitter Card Validator (mentioned in the post above).
Usually with Yoast, if you have open graph activated, it picks the image from open graph text…
Thanks Sanjeev, I will check it out.
Twitter cards add a lot of interactions to our tweets. We added them to our site and now our interactions have gotten a lot easier :).
I have also added them on Makewebworld and seen an improvement in the interactions on twitter…
Thanks for the headsup Sanjeev. I’ve recently started using Twitter cards and have seen a noticeable increase in my Twitter referral traffic. With the wise choice of images and the excerpt it should not be too hard to see an increase in click through rate.
However the only hurdle is getting approved. I got my application for Problogging Success and other sites like Find All Answers approved instantly, but my application for my personal site janesheeba.com stands unapproved for weeks now!
And there is no really a good way to track the status of an application or there is no explanation (or most common reasons) as to why it would take a long time for approval for some sites.
Apart from that, cards are a great way to break the 140 character barrier!
I agree Jane, Sometimes they can take some time but for me also I have got it approved instantly.
They should have some place where you can see the status update but currently once application is submitted we are on their mercy…
I still think that its on trial basis and it should open for all without the registration step needed. If you have tags on your site, it should show up in Twitter….May be they will change it later on….
Your title of this post attract me when i red it, Every twitter user knows that 140 characters are not too much because you can’t discuss anything which have long contest. In this scenario your shared information is very helpful and effective to understand the technicalities of about the usage of twitter with more then 140 characters. Before read your post i was completely unaware about twitter card but now i learn got knowledge about it and find it more interesting and helpful.
To be honest i have seen many people having the expand button on their tweets but when you click them there is no information. its because they have not applied for domain integration and only updated their SEO plugin…Both steps needs to be completed before we will start seeing the twitter cards for the domain….
Hi Sanjeev
Well that is very interesting thing to know and implement that will surely increase your strength on twitter world…and surely gonna read more about it so that I can implement it in most optimum manner
Thanks for sharing
Keep Posting
ZENELIA
Hi Zenelia, Hope this post will you implementing the Twitter Cards on your site. Its a good way to engage with your followers….
Getting the 140 characters on Twitter is always a challenge. The URL of a blog post seems to be the spoiler most of the time but then I suppose you can shorten it with bitly or other shorteners. Not set up Twitter Cards yet but that’s something I need to do. Thanks for explaining it.
Yes we can but at this point of time Twitter Cards works with domain name integration and does not play well with those services…
Hi Sanjeev,
I’ve heard of Twitter cards but I must be honest with you. How many people actually use Twitter itself to tweet? I haven’t used Twitter in years. I only check my followers and follow them back but that’s really it.
I know that this is not available yet on TweetDeck which I’m really surprised about since it’s owned by Twitter. But that’s the platform I use so had I not read about this over a period of time I would have never known anything about it.
Do you have any idea how long it might take before we start seeing this option on the other platforms? Not that you have the inside scoop but just curious if you would know anything.
Appreciate this video and post, thank you.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, I agree that many twitter client does not support them yet but they should be doing it soon..I have started this getting implemented on mobile apps and twitter official application…soon other platform should also start including them…..
Hello Sanjeev,
You know, I have heard about twitter card before but i haven’t used it on my blog. Since this is the in-thing in town, i guess i should try it out and see how it goes.
Thanks for the video tutorial as well. do have yourself a wonderful week ahead 🙂
I’ve been using them a while with Yoast and love it. But one question, sometimes the image they pick is not the one I’d like. They seem to grab the last image of the post and not the featured image from WordPress. Any idea why that is?
Thanks for this post to show us a variety of ways to get the Twitter Card feature
Thank you for tip, im gonna use right now!
140 is very minimal. :/
thank you for telling , what is Twitter Card 🙂
Because i do not know About Twitter Card Before Reading This Post 🙂
By The Way Nice Post Admin !!
Hi, Sanjeev,
Thanks for sharing tips about twitter cards information it will help blogger to get more referral traffic from twitter.
I am already a user of twitter cards and I love only these two twitter cards summary, photo, gallery
Hi Sanjeev
This is Sanjib 🙂 I have read a lot about this Twitter cards recently. I have not used it personally so I may not be the right person to comment on this but I will definitely try this. I liked the photo card concept.
Regards
I have not used this particular site, but I have used many others similar to this one and they all require people to click on a link in order to read or reveal the rest of the tweet and in my experience people are unwilling to do that.
Still a nifty tool to have, I’m just not sure if too many people are willing to click the link. 🙂
Hey sanjeev
Thanks for sharing such a great and unique post. I never heard about the tweet with more than 140 characters but through this post this can be possible to tweet with more than 140 characters. Nice information. 😉
Twitter Cards are awesome! I love how they show a preview whenever a tweet is shared now. Was so happy when I found out about them! And they really are easy to setup and use with Yoast’s SEO plugin.
Great Discovery Sanjeev.
I only know one tool created by Amit Agrawal called tall tweet. The mention tool by are also great and useful. Thank you for sharing this post with us.
Nikhil 🙂
Hello,
Well yes i’m not a fan of twitter i rarely use it for tweeting the links of the published urls or some quotes of the days. But after reading your post it seems like i missed so many things. I must implement the mentioned tips.
thanks