How to Use a Twitter Card Generator to Enhance Your Tweets

Twitter Card Generator is a useful tool for those who wish to enrich their tweets with rich previews of media and content, helping drive traffic back to their websites, increase engagement levels and boost SEO rankings.

Twitter Cards appear when an expanded tweet is seen in its timeline or individual permalink page (on web), but do not count against the 140-character limit for Tweets.

What is a Twitter Card?

Twitter cards are an effective way of adding extra details and engagement with a tweet that can drive engagement with content and brand. Studies have demonstrated a significant rise in clicks on links as well as higher overall engagement rates; originally introduced when posts were limited to 140 characters long and companies needed something more than simply linking directly to websites, blogs or products pages in order to grab follower's attention.

To install Twitter Cards on a website, the appropriate metadata needs to be added into the head> section of your webpage. You can find example code for each type of card type on Twitter's Card Developer Page - such as summary card, summary card with large image, photo card and gallery card. Depending on which types you're creating - such as lead generation and website cards - some types may also need validation using Twitter's Card Validator in order to be correctly functioning.

If you use CMSes such as WordPress or Joomla, installing Twitter Card code should be made simpler with one of the many available plugins that take away all of the hard coding work involved in optimizing pages with cards through Twitter's card validator; these plugins make getting started with this highly effective marketing tactic much simpler for less experienced webmasters.

Types of Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards enable you to display rich previews of your content whenever people click a link in a tweet, enhancing brand recognition on Twitter and driving visitors back to your website. These cards are an effective way of increasing traffic flow to both.

Twitter offers four types of cards: Summary Card, Summary with Large Image Card, App Card and Player Card. Summary and Summary with Large Image cards feature titles, descriptions and thumbnail images - ideal for blog posts and articles - while App Cards allow mobile application promotion and downloads, while Video Cards embed playable media directly into Tweets to increase engagement rates.

Twitter Card Generator automatically creates and validates all necessary Twitter META tags for your web page, such as og: description and image tags. Furthermore, they offer a Card Preview utility that lets you preview how your Twitter Cards will look before going live.

To create a Twitter Card, select the type of card you would like and enter any necessary information into its fields. When finished entering this data, click "Generate Tags" to get Twitter Card meta tags which you can then copy and paste into the head> section of your web page for testing purposes. Finally, share the link on Twitter so it can be tested; users should see an outline of your content with an "action button" prompting them to take any needed actions.

How to Add a Twitter Card to Your Website

Twitter Cards can increase engagement on your site by making it easier for other users to share links from your content, and help it stand out against other tweets in the stream - helping ensure it does not get lost amongst the noise.

To integrate Twitter cards onto your website, first ensure both Facebook and Open Graph meta tags have been enabled (this can be found under Accounts tab). Next, to set the type of card that you would like enabled click Settings option corresponding with it.

Twitter Cards for links typically consist of a large image with title and description text; this works well for most types of blog posts or landing pages; however, if your goal for your site involves promoting an app or product directly then an App Card might be more suitable.

Use the official Twitter Card Validator to test your Twitter Card markup. Simply enter a URL of a post on your website and click "Preview Card".

Once a Twitter Card is setup, it is ready for use! Simply post any link on Twitter, and your custom card will appear below the tweet. Additionally, once it has been set up it will automatically generate itself when anyone shares that same link on Twitter.

Using Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards come in various formats, each requiring you to specify certain properties for proper display. Twitter suggests keeping card names short, with descriptions under 55 characters and images below 5MBs for optimal results.

The Summary Card presents a short title and description, small thumbnail image and your Twitter account attribution - making it perfect for pages containing text-based content. The Summary Card with Large Image works similarly but includes an enlarged version of your thumbnail image to draw more eyeballs to tweets with striking illustrations or striking texts that grab reader interest. Finally, App Cards provide mobile applications a direct download link along with full-sized images, features descriptions, ratings information and pricing details to promote them further.

Twitter Cards can increase click-through rates for your tweets by adding rich media. This improves user experience and builds brand trust, as well as helping to optimize the content on your web page for search engines. Twitter card generators are easy to use, saving both time and effort when optimizing web pages' content for SEO rankings. They even let you preview what the card will look like before implementing its tags!