Twitter Cards: Mission Accomplished

If you've been keeping track of my personal mission to teach myself how to implement Twitter Cards into my Blogger site, you may recall that I was concerned about the low number of resources that I found to be helpful towards completing my task. After posting Part II of this series, I'm happy to say that a few new resources were discovered and proved to be just what I needed.

RECAP OF WHY

In additional to the educational benefits of teaching myself about Twitter Cards, I really wanted to gain the social media benefits that come with gaining this new skill. Everyone knows that photos included in social media posts help drive up responses to said posts. Think about it ... which posts do a better job of catching your attention as you zip through your social media feeds? The posts that feature photos, right? And that's what I wanted - particularly with my tweets.

WHAT I NOTICED

I share a lot of links to articles that I find to be helpful or interesting. I noticed that when sharing links from a major website, my tweets would feature a summary of the article along with a photo. Like this:

Why Do We Like #Brands As Much As We Like People? | http://t.co/lqh8OMg7X2 | http://t.co/tC1hoqSJ8s

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) June 19, 2015

Naturally, these types of posts produced better interaction stats than my posts that included links to my blog, which featured no such summary or photo.

I tried to compensate by including a photo file with my tweets (that promoted my blog posts) that I scheduled through Hootsuite but that did not produce the desired result. I mean, it did...but it wasn't the same.

Double Dipping Days Over for Voice Acting Celebrities? http://t.co/OMzCl6g2ah http://t.co/v9HL1vukBk pic.twitter.com/RvXFVnApJ9

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) June 25, 2015

This method positioned the photo above the tweet, includes the photo file as another link within the tweet and features no summary. Again, not exactly what I wanted.

After searching for a solution, I leaned about Twitter Cards and the different kinds of Twitter Cards. I determined that I wanted to add Summary Cards to my Blogger site. As I've mentioned in my previous posts, Blogger's mechanics presented a bit of a challenge for my project - or so I thought.

WHAT DID I DO?

Twitter's developer site actually offers a link to a Blogger user's page that explains how to edit Blogger HTML for the purpose of adding Twitter Cards. Must be legit if Twitter links to it, right? Actually, um...no.

That was a dead end so I conducted a search of my own. I tried many of the suggestions that I came across but none worked as well as the solution I found at this very helpful blog. I simply copied the code found here and pasted it into my Blogger site just as the author instructed (as well as updated the Twitter handles within the code).

The author even provided a link to Twitter's validator, a helpful tool that gives a preview of your Twitter Cards. I gave one of my recent posts a test run through the validator and initially liked what I saw. It seemed the HTML code I plugged into place almost did the trick - nice, large photo...but no summary. Something wasn't quite right and the validator told me so - I was missing a meta description, or so it said. I was sure I was missing a line of code so back to searching I went.

Almost immediately, I came across this post that helped me realized that meta description error was due to a very simple reason: I had not utilized the "Search Description" feature found within the Post Settings that every Blogger user knows about. Duh!

So, I went back into one of my posts, entered some text in the "Search Description" section and....

Here's the latest on my project to teach myself how to implement Twitter Cards on my Blogger site. It's getting good! http://t.co/YvxPbhiaHg

— Nick Baggett (@Nick_Baggett) July 13, 2015

SUCCESS! Just like the FastCompany tweet above, I know the summary card is working because the photo is below the tweet and features a summary. Plus, response to this particular tweet saw a significant rise in clicks.

All in all, this task didn't turn out to be as difficult as I thought. But, I'm glad I took the steps to learn about Twitter Cards on my own. I hope that this, the third post of my series, provided clear details on the steps I took to accomplish my mission. If not, feel free to leave a question in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

{Top Photo: Courtesy}

Twitter Cards: I Fold..?

It's been two weeks since I set about teaching myself how to implement Twitter Cards in my Blogger site. I have my reasons. First, I wanted to give my tweets a little "extra" when posting links to my blog. Also, I thought it would be a nice addition to my collective skills.

THE LATEST

Let me begin my update by saying my decision to go with a Blogger site is hindering my ability to accomplish this goal. Not that it's not possible to add Twitter Cards to a Blogger site...it just requires some steps that I haven't been able to clearly understand. I haven't looked into whether or not it's easier to add Twitter Cards to a Wordpress, Weebly or other blogs. Prior to this blog, I had a Wordpress.org site and chose Bluehost to be the host. Even though it wasn't costing a great deal of money, I couldn’t justify spending any money to keep the site running based on the low number of views I was receiving.

I gave up my personal web domain and moved over to Blogger because I'm on #TeamGoogle, as I've admitted before. It's easy to tweak the layout and customize the theme and if it's good enough for the official Google and Motorola blogs, it's good enough for me.

MY FIRST STEPS

OK, back on track. When I set out to accomplish my goal, I was excited to see many examples of other Blogger users wanting to add Twitter Cards to their sites. Even more, many of these people shared examples of the HTML code they applied to their blog (along with instructions) that helped with their issue. Not all of the codes are the same and not all of the examples call for the codes to be placed in the same spot. I tried several variations of the code in various spots but I never found that ideal, full solution for which I was searching.

Surprisingly, the extremely grainy video that I linked to in my previous post is really the only video I came across that even remotely touched on the subject. Equally surprising, many of the forum posts and articles that I found to be helpful were fairly dated - many being 2 to 3 years old. Which made me wonder...

CAN IT BE DONE?

Twitter features a lot of helpful information about the different types of Twitter Cards on its developer blog and they provide access to a convenient tool that allows you to test the URL of sites on which you implemented Twitter Cards. I struggled to see the results I wanted to see with this validator though. I had enough failed attempts to make me wonder if Twitter no longer allows us Blogger users to enjoy this feature.

Nay -  I'm sure it can be done and I'm not stopping. I know that I could benefit from devoting more time to this project but I've been busy over the past few weeks and I don't foresee my schedule slowing down. I think I might just go FULL GOOGLE FANBOY and scout for help in the Google+ Blogger Community! Of course, I'll still appreciate any assistance you could send my way in the comments.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your help!

UPDATE: The final part of this series can be read here.

Twitter Cards: Teach Myself

When faced with the task of learning a new skill or technique over the course of my career, I've benefited from lots of training. But I've also had a lot of success in teaching myself - Google search and instructional videos on YouTube have been helpful (and quick) tools used to increase my knowledge.  

Twitter cards have been around for a few years now and for just as long I've been aware that I need to know more about them. I want to learn how I can implement Twitter cards on the sites I manage, including this blog. Learning about Twitter cards is something I want to do on my own so in this post, I'm going share more details about why I want to do this and how I plan to do this. 

WHAT ARE TWITTER CARDS?

We all know that fans and followers respond much more to social media posts that feature images. Twitter cards take that notion to the next level by allowing users to feature media within your tweet. The following text taken from Twitter's blog provides a much better explanation:

With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experience to Tweets that drive traffic to your website. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpage, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a “Card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers.  

The Tweet below shows a Player Card below the 140 characters:

Connect & discover: The Twitter story in 1:40 http://t.co/TRRiDAbkUR

— Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) November 8, 2013

HOW WILL I LEARN?

I'll be spending a lot of time reading the previously-mentioned Twitter blog. I've also already done enough Google searches to learn that adding Twitter cards to a Blogger site requires a few extra steps. Unfortunately, I've only one tutorial on YouTube to help with this process but it's such a poor quality that some of the articles I've come across are more helpful. 

I'll study up before I take any action. My early understanding is that there are multiple variations of Twitter cards and each alter the way your tweet displays the extra media. I'll provide an update on my progress in one of my future posts. Feel free to leave any suggestion in the comments!

UPDATE: Read Part II of this series here. Part III can be found here.