What are social cards?

As you know, social network users are addicted to visuals. There is no point in sharing a link to your blog, web portal or online store a thousand times, if it is not accompanied by an attractive aesthetic. This is where social cards come into play as an indispensable graphic element.

So, let’s see what social cards are, how to use them and the 2 most illustrative examples of social cards: Facebook cards and Twitter cards.

Characteristics of Social Cards

Social cards are web elements that allow us to choose what to display when we share content on social networks.

When we share a link to a website, we can use social cards to specify the image and description. This way, others will know what the link is about. If there were no Facebook cards or Twitter cards, our publication would contain a “raw” link of the type , which is not very suggestive.

On the other hand, we can configure the image size of our social cards. We can also select a default image that will always appear regardless of the URL. If we do not specify an image for our social cards, the social media platform will choose it automatically, extracting it from the website we link to.

As we have already seen, the 2 most descriptive examples of social cards are Facebook cards and Twitter cards. But in reality we can find them in almost all social networks.

what are social cards for?

Social cards are a powerful tool when it comes to developing a brand image. When it is your own website or blog that you share on social networks, the image shown must be representative of the brand. That is, it must be in line with elements such as the logo, colors and typography.

The ideal examples of social cards are those in which content and design go hand in hand.

If you don’t set up your own social cards, you will have to let Facebook or Twitter choose it for you. Or upload an image every time you share the link. In the first case, you lose control of how you look on social networks. In the second, you have a tedious task on your hands.

On the other hand, a study conducted by Facebook showed that the use of social cards can increase traffic from this social network to the website by 250%, compared to not using them.

how to create social cards?

To create social cards, whether they are Facebook cards, Twitter cards or any other social network, there are numerous online toolsthat allow us to convert any image into a social card.

If we use WordPress, we can create Twitter cards using plugins like Yoast SEO and JM Twitter Cards. If instead of WordPress we use Blogger, we can also create our social cards for Twitter by inserting a simple code in the template. We can also create them independently of the CMS we use by accessing Twitter Ads.

To get an idea of how to use social cards correctly, I recommend you to study examples of Facebook cards of well-known companies. If you use Twitter as your favorite social network, you will also find plenty of examples of effective Twitter cards. And the same can be said for other social platforms.