Nonprofit organizations, associations and government agencies have relied on online communications platforms—primarily websites and email software providers—to interact with their supporters, members, and the public. These channels have driven donations, petition-signing, and involvement, with varying levels of success.
Meanwhile, Twitter and similar social media networks have been great sources for news and engaging with like-minded people. Yet, until recently they have not served as places for people to take action. Things are changing. Take Twitter for example.
With the introduction of Twitter Cards, organizations are able to do more to spark action directly within their platform. Twitter Cards themselves are fairly simple to create once you understand how to access them, but here are a few things you probably do not know about them:
- You don’t have to pay Twitter to use cards, though you can “promote” them using Twitter Ads. There’s a simple, but largely unknown workaround to this;
- It takes design skill to create a card that grabs people’s attention;
- Cards are much more dynamic than simple tweets with images;
- Cards yield more impressions and more clicks;
- Your website may need prep for Cards. The setup requires coding experience, knowledge of crawling and caching, card and content attribution, and meta tags.
OmniStudio designs Twitter Cards that stand out and function well with the websites and social media channels of our clients and our organization.our mission or promote your business. Below are twitter cards we thought were good examples of the different ways they can be used to advance your mission or promote your business.
Lead Generation Card:
There are many creative ways to use Lead Generation Cards. They are great for securing leads, sign-ups, or opt-ins, and they are customizable, so you can visually display your organization’s brand and make tweets stand out more. Clicking on the call-to-action, e.g., “sign up,” within a Lead Generation Card will automatically share your twitter handle and email address with the organization that created the tweet.
Here is an example. Click the tweet to see it on Twitter, and please sign up for our Studio Updates!
Website Card:
This Card type is useful for promoting a particular page on your site. For example, a landing page that displays your cause or mission.
Here is a second example of a website card, but this one highlights a blog page instead. The call-to-action is “read more” instead of “visit now.” You can click on this tweet too. Also, notice the title of the article under the image. In this way, Cards allow you to exceed Twitter’s 140 character limit.
This Card is meant to drive Twitter users to a landing page where they can donate to the cause:
Once you have prepared your website and learned the method for creating Cards, making a new one is as simple as composing a tweet. Getting Twitter’s busy audience to pay attention to your tweets and weaving them into a coordinated communications strategy is another matter entirely. OmniStudio can help you prepare the technical aspects, design Cards that stand out, and examine your Twitter strategy.
Video uploads:
Normally, you might tweet a video link that is hosted in YouTube or Vimeo. But, the problem is that people would not see the video within the tweet itself—the link would redirect to YouTube or Vimeo, and the user would have to return to Twitter if they wanted to “favorite,” “reply,” or “retweet” the link.
But, there are ways to upload videos directly into Twitter and add summaries to them. When a tweeter clicks the play button, the video will play within Twitter, making it easier for people to interact seamlessly. (You can click this tweet too.)
E-Commerce:
You can take advantage of Twitter’s partnership with third-party e-commerce platforms. It’s a perfect match for political campaigns. In this case, Tweeters can contribute money to the campaign directly from tweets. Imagine the reach you would get if you were running a fundraising platform and asked for donations directly from Twitter, especially if you promoted that Card with Twitter Ads.
OmniStudio, a Capitol Communicator sponsor, can help you set up and design Twitter Cards that work for your organization. Please reach out if you are interested in learning more.
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