Are your Facebook links sexy?
On the CYM Facebook page you may have noticed that our links are just a little sexier than they used to be. By creating a fun little image and telling Facebook where to look, we can control which thumbnail is used with all of our links. This, hopefully, will increase your click-through rate and help your links get a little more attention.
Sound techie? It is, a little. Just follow these 4 simple steps to take control of your thumbnails!
Customizing your Facebook link thumbnails
- Create the Image Create an image no more than 200 pixels wide. I have found that tall (portrait) images work better as FB thumbnails than wide (horizontal) images. Facebook has a width limit so they will shrink a horizontal image down to the point where it is not really useful.
I suggest creating an image that is related to the linked page but also draws the attention of the viewer. Your link has to stand out from all of the other links and updates in the reader’s Facebook feed. - Upload the Image Now, simply upload the image to your FTP server or to an image hosting site such as www.photobucket.com.
- Add the Code The code will need to be inserted in the code for your webpage in between the <head> … </head> tags. In WordPress, go to Appearance/Editor/Header. Look for your meta title and description tags. They will look like this:
<meta name="title" content="Your Blog Title" /> <meta name="description" content="Your Blog Description" />
Before the closing head tag (</head>) copy and paste the following code, customized with your domain and image location (or the image’s html link from photobucket). Be sure not to delete those ” ” marks before and after the link.
<link rel="image_src" href="http://www.mydomain.com/thisismyimage.jpg" />
After you have made these changes, save your html file and re-upload it to your server.
(If you work with Bludomain or another website service you may be able to email them this image and the html code and ask them to put it in the page for you)
- Test it out! Yay! You did it! … Maybe. Go to Facebook and post a link to the page you just edited to see if you were successful. If not, come back here and post a comment and we will help you through it.
Our Facebook Link Thumbnail
As long as Facebook is correctly pulling the right thumbnail images from your blog posts you may not want to implement this on your blog. It is good to have session-specific thumbnails as far as that goes. A great application here would be your main website. If your site is HTML you can even set a different thumbnail for each page of your site!
What other ways have your found to increase your Facebook link clickthrough rate?
I have it working now :) But thanks :)
That works when I write the link in the status line. However, when I click the Share on Facebook link that I placed on my website, it did not show my custom thumbnail but other pictures I dont want.
Any suggestions?
Hey Gerry, What is the exact link used in your code next to link rel="image_src" href="---what is here?----" ?
[...] while back I published a post about how to customize your Facebook link thumbnails. The problem with this method is that you are limited to one specific thumbnail for every post on [...]
[...] while back I published a post about how to customize your Facebook link thumbnails. The problem with this method is that you are limited to one specific thumbnail for every post on [...]