HOW TO ENSURE THE CORRECT IMAGE IS SHARED IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Whenever you share a web link to any social media platform, you’ll notice that it automatically pulls through a preview image from the page you are sharing.

A problem that social media marketeers often have however, is that the wrong image is displayed – which can be very frustrating. This can be caused by a number of reasons, but if it’s a link to your own blog, online event (Crowdcast), or other social media content, then you do have some control over this.

First of all, you can test (and re-scrape) how a link will be displayed by using these services.

Facebook Debugger (no laughing at the back)
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Twitter Card Validator
https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

LinkedIn Post Inspector
https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/inspect/

Checking with these tools will usually resolve the issue of pulling the wrong preview image.

If this doesn’t work, then you need to go to the originating source of the link, and make changes, where you can.

Website

If your website is Wordpress based, then every page and post can (and should) have a Featured Image specified. If it isn’t, then sharing a link will mean the first or largest image on that page is shared with your link – or often no image at all (which can be worse).

So specify the Featured every time. Additionally, you should use the YOAST SEO Wordpress Plugin to specify exactly which image should be shared, and any preview text too!

Crowdcast

Whenever you share a Crowdcast event, your Show Image is pulled across in the same way. If you have set the dimensions of this image to 1,200 pixels x 630 pixels, then this will work well (always allow a buffer around the edges, so important information isn’t dropped off.

What can happen (rarely) with Crowdcast, is that the image from a previous event is shared. This is very rare, as you should have made a new url for your event, with your new image. If making a multisession event, remember to update your image, and test it with the tools listed above.