Yesterday, Twitter announced the release of an updated app for iPhone and Android. This release brings the expanded tweet to the mobile platform. What does this mean for small businesses? Let’s explore the elements of the expanded tweet on mobile and see how to use them to their maximum potential.

Expansive experiences in updated iPhone, Android apps blog.twitter.com/2012/07/expans… Featuring expanded Tweets, events, improved notifications, more

— Twitter (@twitter) July 10, 2012

Page Preview

In the release, Twitter unveiled the new page preview feature. The elements include an image, title, author, and preview text.

The post image precedes the article title making it the first piece of content from your page the user sees. Providing an eye catching image that also provides some context of the content of your page will entice users to click-through. The title and preview text is the next prominent item on the page. Based on expectations users have built from your image, your title will either solidify a users expectation of page content or turn them away. Crafting powerful and accurate titles and serving valuable content is an art not to be taken lightly.

This raises the stakes for webmasters to properly include the open graph meta tags so that the twitter app can find and serve the correct image in the expanded tweet.

Takeaways
• Provide an eye-catching image on your page
• Craft compelling content
• Include proper Open Graph Protocol meta tags

Tweet Activity

Along with a tweet, Twitter’s app serves replies, retweets, and favorites. These are cues to the popularity of not only the tweet, but also of the content provided in the tweet or on the page linked to. Tweets with more replies, retweets and favorites will be clicked through and shared more than tweets with few or none. This increases the importance of staying active and building a list of power users and fans that you can rely on replying, retweeting and favoriting your tweets.

Takeaways:

• Have a strong list of power users
• Importance of engagement

Conclusion

While page previews have not been rolled out online or in the web app, currently, it is a good idea to implement these features and tactics before they roll out so that your content, when shared, has the necessary pieces to be successful in the new Twitter app. (Not to mention every other social media site provides previews when links are shared.) Below is a check list of things to do to get ready.

1. Provide an eye-catching image on all pages
2. Craft great titles and preview text
3. Correctly implement Open Graph Protocol meta tags