Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards allow you to add images, videos and product descriptions to your tweets. This can help you to increase the amount of people who check out products on your website. Twitter cards allow you to add attractive media to your tweets making them interesting and much more engaging.

There are nine type of twitter card you can use:

·         Summary Card

·         Large Photo Summary Card

·         Product Card

·         Website Card

·         App Card

·         Lead Generation Card

·         Player Card

·         Photo Card

·         Gallery Card

Summary Cards and Large Photo Summary Cards are same in type. Both allow a user to include a title, description, thumbnail image, Twitter account attribution and a direct link to the content. But large photo summary cards also provide a space for product image. Product Cards are designed for ecommerce website owners. It allows a site owner to add description, thumbnail image and also a small selling detail. Website Cards allows user to check out a landing page of your website. App Cards are helpful in driving traffic directly to an app. Lead Generation Cards allows user to sign up for a special offer. Player cards can provide media for your products. Audience can listen or watch media without leaving twitter. Photo cards works as a photo link to your website. Gallery cards allow you to add more than one image in a single tweet.

With these twitter cards you can ask your audience to do things like sign up for an email list, register at a website, view and use a coupon, visit a landing page and download an app. And they don’t need to leave twitter for doing these tasks.

How to Get Started with Twitter Cards?

First of all you need a product web page with an image of that product.  After that you need to add the appropriate Meta tags for a card onto your product page. If you don’t have website developing knowledge then you can try alternative ways to set up twitter cards. Tweeter recommends these plug-in to integrate your website with twitter cards:

o   Jetpack

o   JM Twitter Cards

o   Wordpress SEO by Yoast.

After adding a plug-in to your website you will need to submit a URL from your blog or website to Twitter Card validator. Twitter can take up to few weeks to approve your card if you implement it correctly. When you are approved you will get a confirmation message for it.

 

Photo Sharing and website promotion

Photo sharing websites are becoming more and more popular now a days. By using a photo sharing site once the photos are uploaded they can be shared around the world in few seconds. Great advantage associated with using photo sharing sites is that you have all of your photos in one place. This is more convenient than storing them on multiple devices like computers, mobiles etc.  If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share then on many of the major photo sharing websites. It can benefit your website in search engine ranking. People will be able to see your products photos. These websites allows user to comment on photos and see photo link and details. So there will be chances that interested user can follow a link and can visit your site. If we placed alt tag in image then search engine crawler can easily recognize a photo, otherwise never. Here are some useful tips for photo optimization:

·         Make image size as small as much as possible.

·         Set a descriptive and product related file name before uploading an image.

·         Add image caption name.

 

Some photo sharing site allows their user to upload photos free of cost but many of sites are paid photo sharing sites. Paid photo sharing sites charges a small fee for sign up.

These are some of best photo sharing websites:

1.       Flickr: Flickr.com is most popular photo sharing site. It’s free to use Flickr or upload photos on Flickr. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to upload content onto the website. It allows user to use 100 MB of storage space per month.

2.       SmugMug: SmugMug.com is a paid photo sharing website. It allows its user to upload photo and videos. There is not a limit for members on how many photos are stored or uploaded to the site.

3.       Photobucket: Photobucket.com is an image and video hosting website. Photobucket allows you free photo upload option with the option to upgrade for an annual fee. Free account users receive 2GB storage for photo sharing. If you need to use more space on website then you must upgrade to paid accounts.

4.       Shutterfly: Shutterfly.com provides its user an Internet-based image publishing service. It allows its user to store photos and create unique greetings with them. There is totally free and unlimited space for users.