Today is National Voter Registration Day (#NVRD) and organisations and individuals across Twitter are coming together to encourage others to register to vote ahead of the UK General Election on May 7.

Bite the Ballot (@BiteTheBallot), an organisation that want to increase voter turnout among young people, are behind today’s #RegisterToVote Promoted Trend. They’re using Twitter to remind people across the UK to register ahead of the April 20 registration deadline.

Another way that organisations can use Twitter to encourage registration is with Twitter Website Cards, which drive people to a website destination.

Twitter Website Cards are also easy to set up and they are freely available to anyone who has registered to use UK Twitter Ads. They can be run organically and do not need to be backed by Twitter Ad spend.

To explain how Twitter cards can be used in the run up to the election, including during today’s National Voter Registration Day, we’ve put together this Twitter guide.

Five steps to using Twitter Website Cards

1. Getting started
   
   If you are not already a Twitter Ads user visit ads.twitter.com to sign-up. From there simply click on ‘Creatives’ and ‘Cards’ and select Website Card. This takes you to where you can create your Twitter Website Card (same place for organic and paid).
2. Get your headline copy right
   
   This is your chance to motivate supporters to get them to click and to register to vote. A strong call to action often drives people to act. For instance: ‘Register to vote today and make sure your vote is counted on 6, May 2015.’
3. Strong images work
   
   Tweets with great images drive much higher engagement. We have found that Tweets relating to government and politics with photos can achieve 62% more Retweets compared to what they would get anyway. Choose an image that compliments the words and conveys the values you want to communicate to supporters.
4. The website title
   
   Unlike traditional Tweets, Website Cards allow you another 70 characters to craft a message directly under the image to describe the website. It is a further opportunity to drive supporters on Twitter to act.
5. Choose the right call to action
   
   Twitter Website Cards come with a variety of calls to action that encourage users to act. Consider the best one to get people clicking. They include actions such as ‘Learn more,’ ‘Visit Now’ or ‘Read more.’

That’s it, you’re done. All you need to do now is to compose a Tweet with your Website Card and send it out into the world. You’ll be able to see how many people you’ve driven to the voter registration page by going to your Twitter Analytics dashboard.

You can also choose to back this with paid Twitter Ads spend to drive further reach.

You see examples of how Twitter Website Cards have been used by the likes of the @TheGreenParty and @youdecide2014 during the Scottish Referendum here to give you an idea of how they can be used.