Twitter’s newsfeed has evolved into a media-rich environment that seems to function way beyond traditional 140 character limits. I started noticing this when certain tweets generated a graphic attachment, and other tweets did not. What’s the magic behind making these images appear in order to post the perfect tweet?
The answer is found with Twitter cards, which are auto-generated visual aids associated to specific links for a blog post or web site. This article (Twitter Cards 101) explains how to set them up for a WordPress site. There are several different types of Twitter cards, but the one I wanted to implement is called a Summary card. These cards are ideal for blog posts because they feature a thumbnail image and title for every link.
Here are two examples of tweets. Can you tell which one has a Twitter card?
As you can see, the link in the first tweet did not generate a Twitter card. However, the link in the second tweet generated a Summary card, which swallowed the long, ugly, blog post URL into a nicely formatted graphic window.
The Twitter card found meta data for the post, pulled up the feature image, added the blog post title and description, and formatted it into a clickable window attached to my tweet.
This is how I activated Twitter Cards for my WordPress blog:
I spent a few hours researching Twitter cards. Hopefully these steps will save you that time.
- Login to WordPress admin dashboard
- Install Yoast SEO
- Set feature images on blog posts
- Go to SEO > social
- Click Accounts and enter the Twitter username for the blog
- Click the Twitter tab, and toggle Twitter Card meta data to Enabled
- Save changes
- Preview blog post links in Twitter Card Validator
- See your Twitter Card pop up!
This is how I activated Twitter Cards for my WordPress home page:
- Login to WordPress admin dashboard
- Go to SEO > Social
- Click the Facebook tab and enable Open Graph meta data
- Upload an image for Frontpage settings
I’m still learning about the exact input fields for description text and where it shows up across social media platforms. If you have experience setting up Twitter cards for blogs and websites, I’d be thrilled if you left a comment to elaborate on best practices for helping people along. Thanks!
Lorraine Akemann | Co-Founder and Editor | Moms With Apps
Photo credit: Flickr
I am SO happy to find this info. I was wondering how writers were making their links look so great with Twitter. I set it all up… now it’s time to see if I did it correctly! Thanks!
Thanks Amy for leaving the comment. I’m glad you found the article helpful and that you were able to set up the same result. Awesome! –Lorraine
Hey, this is awesome. I’ve been wondering about how this has been achieved for quite a while. I have a question though, will it pull the same meta-data for every post since the meta data is coming straight out of the ?
Hi Andrew. The plugin seems to be pulling separate cards for each blog post, so it must add metadata to each blog post. However, in the Facebook Tab, there is a front page setting, which pull one source of designated meta data for the home page URL. Let me know if that makes sense. –Lorraine