Twitter Cards: A Quick Start Guide

Everyone should know by now, the importance of creating multiple streams of internet traffic to ensure ongoing success. Relying strictly on Google organic traffic is both unwise and dangerous.

No one is immune from being negatively impacted by an algorithmic update, at any time. It is completely out of your control and if you aren't prepared for it, it can be devastating.

That's where social media comes in. Done correctly, it can drive tons of qualified traffic to your website.

Social media is more conversational than transactional, but smart retailers are finding ways to convert conversations into revenues. Twitter and Facebook are the undisputed leaders in the social space and should be the first place to look for opportunities. The challenge is in figuring out just how to stand out.

In the case of Twitter, one of the best ways is to use Twitter cards. Twitter cards allow people to view videos, pictures, and product information, without leaving the twitter feed. Instead of clicking a link, all of the information and content is displayed in the tweet. As more people use Twitter cards, they will have less impact, so now is the time to get started.

Using Twitter Cards for Business

As with any marketing tool, it's critical to have a plan for how Twitter cards will be used. Some of the most effective uses include:

Introducing new products: Because a picture can be included on the cards they are a great way to introduce new products and to generate excitement.Offering resources: Businesses often offer great resources for their customers on their website. The Twitter card can help direct people to these resources and build brand awareness.Using current events: Twitter cards can use popular events to help create a card that is passed along to others. Retweeting of business cards is a great way to spread information for a business.Sharing videos: If a business has a video that becomes popular, the Twitter card be shared and brand awareness will grow.Lead generation: A great way to capture email addresses.Types of Twitter Cards

The process to get Twitter cards is fairly simple, but before you get started, you will need to know the eight types of Twitter cards that businesses are using.

Summary Cards

Publisher Guide for Adding Custom Variables in Google Tag Manager

If you're an online publisher using Google Analytics, I'm sure you've heard this before: you need to use custom variables so that you can really segment and measure your audience.

You also most likely are currently working on migrating to Google Tag Manager in order to make your life easier.

So how do you implement them together? What follows is a step-by-step guide for installing publisher-centered custom variables using Google Tag Manager.

I am going to assume, that you already have Google Tag Manager installed in your site and that one of your tags is the asynch GA js. If you don't, read this first.

Google's Justin Cutroni recommends adding seven custom variables for publishers. This article will go in detail and breakdown how to install four of them:

CategoryContent TypePublication DateAuthor

These four custom variables at the most basic level gets you a good idea of your overall site performance. Once you add these data points, you can also get closer to information that other publisher-centered analytics tools such as Parsely track.

Let's jump in!

3 Things You Need to Know Before You BeginThese custom variables should be implemented on the page level. For all the custom variables mentioned above, the value changes as the user goes from one page to the next. For example, a user might read an article by author one and then click on a link that goes to an article by Author 2. This is true for all the custom variables aforementionedYou're going to need a data layer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The best and only way to have these custom variables on your site is via data layer. If you want to read more about this, here's an article that gives a good explanation of how data layers work.You need the help of your front-end engineer. If you don't know this yet, you will, a good analytics person is always good to his or her front-end engineers.

Ask your front-end engineer to create a data layer that contains the four custom variables we want to add: Content Type, Author, Category, and Published Date. Direct them to the developer documentation on adding data layer for Google Tag Manager. There are two key things to check in the developer implementation:

Make sure that the data layer comes before the Google Tag Manager code (we inserted ours before the /head tag).I like keeping my values in small caps, this eliminates any potential duplicate entries that could be created due to any weird capitalizations.

Check out the way we set up the data layer in one of our sites. The data layer in the source code for that page will look like below.