Twitter cards – what and how

Twitter card

Twitter cards deliver 43% more engagement than regular ads

Have you tried Twitter ads? Their new cards claim greater engagement than regular ads.

Benefits of Twitter cards

Twitter claims the specific benefits of its new ad platform include:
This allows you to advertise on Twitter (for example to gain more followers) and although there’s a web link and you can click on this, you only pay when people click on the ‘buy’ button. These buy buttons contain every possible option, as shown here:

Twitter buy buttons
Twitter buy buttons


Twitter has developed its ad offer which looks and feels similar to the one promoted by Facebook (explore my next training course Facebook advertising) and offers different promotion options for business. From promoted tweets to promoted trends, it’s the same principle every time – you pay to get an eye-catching message or link to appear in front of your target audience. With good content you may get retweets, but it’s less popular with social media adverts.

How Twitter cards work

The whole process is driven by data users give to Twitter when registering, as well as their profile information and location. Using this information allows Twitter to target your adverts at the people you want to see them. The same applies when it comes to Twitter cards, an advertising function where you can attach a ‘card’ to your tweets by adding a few lines of HTML to the webpage you’re linking to.

This ‘card’ works like a tag, either linking you to a website, app store or other product, and it looks very similar to the open graph images that are already frequently used across the platform. There are several different types of cards, and it is recommended that businesses should experiment with various types until they find which one works best for them.

For instance, you could start off with a simple summary card where the image displays a description of your business alongside a thumbnail and attribution to your account. There’s also a version which does the same thing, only with a bigger image.

Once you’ve tried that, you can move onto either an app card – with details on the mobile app it links to – or the more creatively named player card, which provides the same basic service as the others only this time by attaching video, audio or other media to the tweet.

Best practice tips for Twitter cards

To ensure you are measuring, monitoring and maximising the benefit of investing on social media adveretising, you need to consider

If you’d like to know more, there is a great social media ads course I can recommend, that runs in London :)



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