What is a Social Share Image? And Why Should You Care? Ep72

Ever hit the share button brimming with excitement, only to have a wonky or mismatched image sabotage your website's first impression on social media? We've all been there, and that's why this episode is a game-changer for anyone looking to solve the mystery of perfect social share images. We're tackling the common frustrations and providing a non-techy, step-by-step guide to ensuring the images that accompany your shared links are always professional, on-brand, and just plain accurate!

This time around, we're stirring the SEO pot and peeking behind the curtain of back-end settings that make or break your content's online appearance. Discover how to craft a default, device-friendly image that avoids the awkward crop, why simple designs reign supreme, and tips for keeping your web presence polished across platforms.

For those grappling with LinkedIn's notorious image caching, we've got you covered with savvy tricks to keep your visuals fresh and accurately updated. So, grab your notepad and let's get your website's social shares looking as impeccable as your content deserves!

Related Blog:
https://www.mellermarketing.com/blog/what-is-a-social-share-image-and-how-do-you-set-it-on-your-website

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

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

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Transcript

Brenda Meller: 1:01

Have you ever shared an image from your website and it's something you're sharing on social media and, for whatever reason, that preview image isn't displaying properly? You may not be aware, but this is called a social share image and this is actually something that you can set yourself at the time that you're creating your web pages and that way, when you share a link on social media, you'll have an image that will display that is relevant to the web page. Now, sometimes, when I see these online, it's either a broken image in the middle or it's something that looks like an illustration a very crude illustration of a landscape image, and sometimes you even get a broken graphic that is displaying almost like a puzzle piece graphic or something that looks odd. It's not what it should be, at any rate, right, and this is just a really a sign of somebody who is maybe not aware of what the process is to set up the social share image. This podcast episode was inspired by a blog that I've got on my website, and the blog is called what is a Social Share Image and how Do you Set it on your Website? I'll link to that below in case you want to read it Now the reason I'm sharing this with all of you is because, if you are self-employed, there's a really good chance that you're doing this yourself. Maybe you have outsourced some website services to an outside provider, but maybe they didn't set this up for you, or they could have set up one image for every single web page display for you, and the image that is appearing when you're sharing a link is not really relevant to the topic that the web page is all about. I won't explain this to you, but I'm not going to get too techy on you here.

Brenda Meller: 2:33

Every website has a front end and a back end, and the front end is what we see as site visitors. It's what your site visitors see when they come to your website. The back end is what happens on the inside of the page to make it do what we want to do. The back end of a web page is what's referred to as SEO, search engine optimization and sharing settings, and these typically include items such as the URL or web page address, and you may have noticed that you can change your web pages to be a friendly URL Right. That might be something familiar to you. They also typically will include what's referred to as a page title, and typically that's 60 to 80 characters, not depending on your website. It might be a little longer, it might be a little shorter, but it's typically between 60 to 80 characters. Then there's a block that's called page description, and typically that's about one to two sentences. It's around 150 to 180 characters. Then there's something called a page image, which, depending on your website, it's usually rectangular. My website provider is Kajabi, and they recommend a dimension of 1280 by 720 pixels. That's the size that we use, and there's also on these web pages. There's the ability that you can add in tags or alt text as well, and that helps people to understand what the image is if they're using screen readers or other programs, and sometimes there's other things that you can add in, but that's got a high level, what the back end of a web page does.

Brenda Meller: 3:57

Now, when you're first building your website or adding in a new web page, the SEO and the sharing setting should be established. Now what I do is I recommend putting together a default image for all of the web pages on your website, and I recommend that image be your company logo on a white background, something really simple that's easy to see. Now, since all websites show images differently based on if the user is visiting on a desktop versus their mobile app or on their phone. I recommend that your image be square and centered in white in the middle there. That way, the image won't be cropped, showing only a portion of your logo. It looks messy, in my opinion.

Brenda Meller: 4:37

A lot of times when you share images online, you may notice that the website is displaying it a bit different. You might share an updated website on Facebook and the social share image is updating, but you share the same thing on LinkedIn and it's the last version. It didn't catch up with the new social share image. Have you noticed that? That's because LinkedIn remembers the first time a webpage is shared. Even if you've updated that social share image, it's not going to remember. It's like a catch-up bottle getting stuck. What you have to do is you have to run it through the LinkedIn post inspector in order to get that updated. More on that later.

Brenda Meller: 5:15

This is something that I see for a lot of clients. That's happening and I wanted to make sure that you are aware that there is a way that you can go into your website and you can update that social share image. With all of that said, here's my advice for you. The first thing is set up a default social share image for every page of your website. Just get it set up by default. You should have the ability to go back later and customize individual web pages, but make sure you have a social share image in place for every page of your website. It should be fairly easy to do this. If you're not sure, do a help, search for your website provider and just type in social share image and it should give you instructions on setting that up. Then again, I do recommend that this image be of your company logo on a white background. My third piece of advice here is, since all websites show images differently based on if the user is visiting on their desktop versus their mobile app, I recommend that your image be square and centered in the middle of that block on a white background or with some background around it. That way, the image won't be cropped, showing only a portion of your logo, because it looks a little bit messy. The next thing is, if your website's SEO gives you recommended dimensions, follow them. If not, I recommend 1280 by 720 pixels, because that's what my website provider recommends and it seems to work out pretty well.

Brenda Meller: 6:43

Before you share a link on LinkedIn or, for that matter, on other social media. Test it by just prepping a post and putting the link in there and letting it display, but don't publish it. This allows you to see it in a preview mode before you publish it. Now, if you've done so and it's not the right image, then what I want you to do is to go to the LinkedIn post inspector, put your link inside that page and that way it'll update and refresh it with the new image that you've uploaded. The website for the LinkedIn post inspector is linkedincom. Slash post dash inspector. I will put it in show notes as well.

Brenda Meller: 7:24

This is a link that I also have listed on my website. If you're ever getting stuck, just come back to the homepage of my website, and if you scroll all the way down to the bottom this is actually a pretty cool thing I've set up for all of you you scroll all the way down to the bottom and what's referred to as the fat footer and I'll talk about this in a show another time In my fat footer and the left hand side of the screen you're going to see at the very bottom it says LinkedIn help, and then there's a link underneath that that's called contact LinkedIn. I do have the LinkedIn post inspector included in there. All right, my friends, that's it for today.

Brenda Meller: 7:56

I hope that you found this podcast helpful, that you learned a little bit about what a social share image is, and maybe it's given you some inspiration to take a look and make sure that these are updated and refreshed properly. If you did find this helpful and we're connected on LinkedIn, message me there, let me know. Maybe send me a link to one of your web pages and I can check it out and see what that link looks like. Until next time, stay safe and be kind to each other. Take care.