How to change the thumbnail when sharing your blog on Facebook

written by Marie

Last updated on: March 7, 2018

Published on February 12, 2018

 

Do you get the wrong image displayed on Facebook when you share your blog? I'm sure you do! Learn how to change the thumbnail when sharing your blog to FB! A complete step-by-step guide!

I see this question every day on the Facebook group of l’Académie du Blogue: how to change the image that Facebook shares when sharing an article, how to change facebook link thumbnail? Or, how to modify the image that Facebook uses when we share the link to the home page of our blog?

I will answer once and for all these questions related to images posted on Facebook!

For all the instructions that follow, I assume you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed on your blog. That’s what I’m going to use to edit our images in one!

How to tell Facebook which image to use for your home page

To do that, I remind you that you must have the Yoast SEO plugin installed.

  1. In the left pane on your WordPress dashboard, click on “SEO,” then ‘Social.”
  2. For the “Frontpage settings” section, click on “Upload” and upload the image you want to use. It is recommended that your picture is around 1200×630 pixels. If that’s not your case or you don’t know the dimensions of your photo, read the last section of this blog post.
    change facebook link thumbnail - yoast SEO page
  3. You can also change the title of your blog as it will be displayed on the Facebook preview, as well as write a Facebook description that will be shown when you share your blog!
  4. For the “default settings” settings, you can upload the image for the second time. She will now be used if Facebook doesn’t find any picture to represent one of your blog posts, there will be a default one.
  5. Click on Save
  6. Go to the section “Let’s test that our changes have worked” below

 

How to tell Facebook which image to use for a specific post

When you share an article on Facebook, is not the right picture displayed? Follow the steps below to correct this problem!

  1. Edit the article that causes you problem
  2. At the very writing section, go to the section for Yoast.
    change facebook link thumbnail - yoast section blog post
  3. Click on the social media sharing icon, framed in blue below change facebook link thumbnail - yoast section of a blog post
  4. You can now add the title you want Facebook to use, a description as well as the image you want to use!
  5. Save the changes to your article, and voila!
  6. Go to the section “Let’s test that our changes have worked” to make sure everything is perfect for the next time you share your blog on Facebook

Let’s test that our changes have worked

  1. Go to the Sharing Debugger of Facebook
  2. Enter the address of your blog, then click on “Debug”! You should see your new image displayed as shown in the screenshot below. If this is not the case, click on “Scape Again” a few times, it may take a few clicks to work for good!
    change facebook link thumbnail - facebook debugger
  3. If you still do not see any changes to your image, you may need to clear the expired cache from your WordPress blog, especially if you are using a cache plug-in. For me using WP Super Cache, I had to go to “Settings> WP Super Cache> Remove Cache> Delete Expired Cache. Then, I went back to the Facebook debugger, and two clicks later on “Scrape Again,” my changes were well displayed!

 

Your image does not fit in the Facebook preview?

change facebook link thumbnail - oversized facebook thumbnail

Here is an example of an image that you would tend to want to change. Felicia’s blog logo is not displayed in full! Here’s how to resize an image on a mac:

If you are on a Windows computer, this website offers a detailed step-by-step guide!

If you want to resize the displayed image:

  1. We will have to resize your image to make 1200×630 pixels, the recommended dimensions!
  2. If you have a Mac, you can double-click on your image; select Tool > Adjust Size…
    change facebook link thumbnail - resize image
  3. Well, that’s where it gets a little more! 😉 Your image will probably not be precisely 1200 by 630 pixels because the tool will try to keep your ratio of size and length of your image so that the image does not look any distorted. Adjust your picture in the best possible way to get closer to the size you want! The image must have a minimum of 200 x 200 pixels.
    change facebook link thumbnail - Resize image
  4. Save your new image; you can now use it in the steps above!

 

Conclusion

I hope I have been able to answer all your questions about the featured images used by Facebook! If you have other questions, feel free to write me a comment so I can help you!

Did you like this post? Support me with a coffee!

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74 comments

Saryan Sha March 15, 2018 - 11:47 am

So, to get facebook to use the image, you want it to use per blog preview, you’ve got to make your image to become suitable to the specifications listed on facebook.

And, to make an image, you’ve got to use an image-making program.

Last of all, you’ve got to upload the image on your blog or web site.

And, here, I used to think it was all done automatically!

That’s a lot of work!

Reply
Shahzan khan June 28, 2018 - 10:37 am

Very useful post. I know your very intelligent because your blog is very good and it’s loadind speed very fast. Design also so better. Thanks for sharing this post.
Aapjano.blogspot.com

Reply
Marie July 13, 2018 - 5:13 pm

Hello, Shahzan!
Thank you for your comments, I’m glad you enjoy my blog! 🙂
Marie

Reply
Aalejandro P. Hamblin September 6, 2018 - 3:11 am

When I share my website link to facebook post. I get this error (“Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited.”). My website has no content that violates fb community guidelines. My website link is namobot.com. Please help.

Reply
Marie September 9, 2018 - 7:59 pm

Hello! Have you tried searching your error on Google? It would seem like your blog got banned for some reason I don’t know. Good luck!

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donald September 11, 2018 - 2:27 pm

Thanks for the post! Followed the steps but no luck. Image is still the same. I do not have a cache plugin but I cleared browser cache. Any ideas??

Reply
donald September 11, 2018 - 2:50 pm

Never mind! Finally got it. Thanks!

Reply
Marie September 20, 2018 - 9:19 pm

Hello again Donald,
Oh yes, how did you do it? 🙂 I’d love to know.
Marie

Reply
Marie September 20, 2018 - 9:17 pm

Hello Donald!
I think that since I wrote the blog post, Yoast changed their plugin after Facebook API changes. I haven’t had time to update the blog post and get more accurate information about it yet!
Marie

Reply
Iain Barker September 23, 2018 - 3:24 am

Hi Marie,

This was an exact solution to the problem I was having – how to use a different image on FB link previews rather than the default featured image for the URL.

I already had Yoast installed so very easy to do.

Just followed your instructions, step by step. Fixed.

Thanks

Reply
Iain Barker September 23, 2018 - 3:43 am

Also works for Twitter

Reply
Marie October 17, 2018 - 11:29 pm

Hello Iain,
Yes, it’s connected to the same tags!
Marie

Reply
Marie October 17, 2018 - 11:29 pm

Hello Iain!
I’m surprised you’re saying the blog post still works because I was told that since an update of Yoast SEO, this procedure can’t be followed anymore. I haven’t had time to look into it yet but I’d like to do so soon.
I’m glad you were able to do it though!
Marie

Reply
Iain November 14, 2018 - 4:20 am

I successfully followed this process when I first commented Just updated to the latest version of Yoast – social tab is still there with the option to specify an alternative image.

I think you were told wrong….

Reply
Marie December 28, 2018 - 9:22 pm

Hello Iain,

Well, that’s good to know! Haha! Thanks!

Marie

Reply
Happy Diwali Wishes November 1, 2018 - 12:20 am

Helpful post.

Reply
Marie November 10, 2018 - 9:14 pm

Happy I could help!
Marie

Reply
Laura November 15, 2018 - 9:35 pm

Hello, how do I get my picture to show to the left of the text, like a thumbnail, instead of showing a bigger horizontal pictures in line above the text.

Reply
Marie December 28, 2018 - 9:19 pm

Hello!

It’s a good question.

I think it depends on the image you use, whether it’s a portrait one or landscape. If it’s landscape, it should show horizontal, and if it’s a portrait picture than it should show up on the left like what you want to do!

Let me know if that doesn’t work!

Marie

Reply
Roxane Labonté November 19, 2018 - 1:04 pm

Salut!
Je viens de découvrir ton site et c’est vraiment bien fait C’est toujours le fun de rencontrer d’autres blogueuses de Montréal, en étant moi-même une 🙂 Bravo pour tout ce que tu fais! C’est inspirant.
Je me demandais si tu savais quoi faire de plus lorsque l’image ne change toujours pas, même après avoir fait toutes les étapes décrites dans ta procédure? J’ai googlé un peu mais j’ai pas trouvé.

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Naama December 29, 2018 - 5:00 pm

Thanks! this is extremely helpful!

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Marie January 2, 2019 - 7:33 pm

Hello Naama!
Thanks for your comment, I’m happy I was able to help!
Marie

Reply
Jennifer Corpus January 4, 2019 - 11:25 pm

This was so helpful! Thank you! Do you happen to know how I can change the thumbnail that shows up when I send someone a DM on Instagram w/ a link to my blog?

Reply
Marie January 20, 2019 - 4:06 pm

Hello Jennifer! I would believe this procedure and the thumbnail from your Instagram DMs would be the same as it’s coming from tags in the page. Is it still different?
Marie

Reply
Emery March 13, 2019 - 11:36 am

Facebook is very unstable with this. On a few of my posts I was able to upload a custom image to my post and only display it, on certain posts it does not work. However this solution works very well. I’m just wondering what is the solution for none WordPress sites. Thanks so much for much for this post, it saved me a lot of time and headache.

Reply
Marie May 19, 2019 - 7:45 pm

Hello Emery!
You are totally right, FB is unstable with this. It seems like it’s still working for some people and not for others. I’m not sure! 🙂
Marie

Reply
Sarah March 24, 2019 - 11:02 pm

Hi Marie

I’ve tried this with a couple of my blog posts, following the steps to Debug and Scrape several times – I’ve flushed the cache from the ‘Managed Wordpress’ settings menu whilst in each blog post.

When I went back into Facebook and refreshed the timeline, the old thumbnail images still appeared in the Facebook post (even though the correct images were displaying in the Yoast SEO and Facebook Debugger). It was the same result whether I logged into Facebook on Safari or Google Chrome.

Any suggestions?

Cheers
Sarah

Reply
Marie May 19, 2019 - 7:41 pm

Hello Sarah!
I don’t know, sorry! I know Facebook changed some rules around the thumbnails lately so maybe it’s actually blocked now, I’m not sure.
Marie

Reply
Jenny Allen April 2, 2019 - 3:02 am

Is the only way to do this with yoast SEO? I want to share my blog post on twitter and the image its selected in the link is a dull diagram. Is there a way for me to change that image without yoast seo?

Reply
Marie May 19, 2019 - 8:04 pm

Hello Jenny!
I would indeed try to do the steps of this blog post and see if it changes the thumbnail for Twitter as well. Otherwise, I found this guide that could help you do what you want for twitter.
Best,
Marie

Reply
Jennifer May 4, 2019 - 8:09 am

The Yoest piece looks different, but I tried anyway. Nothing. But I might be needing to do something different. I have different iterations of my logo. On my site I use a long narrow one in the header, but for the thumbnail on previews I would like to use my more square-style logo. Any direction on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Reply
Marie November 16, 2019 - 9:56 am

Hello Jennifer,
No, I don’t know. The only procedure I’m aware of is listed on this blog post!
Marie

Reply
Nan May 10, 2019 - 8:39 am

How do you change the preview image when you share a Wordpress site in LinkedIn?

Reply
Marie May 19, 2019 - 7:37 pm

Hello Nan,
I did a Google search and here’s what I found on LinkedIn.
Best,
Marie

Reply
Embolden Adventures July 20, 2019 - 9:47 pm

Very helpful thank you for taking the time to explain how to fix this problem! -Sara at Embolden Adventures

Reply
Marie August 1, 2019 - 3:42 pm

Hello Sara,
No problem, hope it helped!
Marie

Reply
Thomas Stinson August 24, 2019 - 4:57 pm

That was very helpful, thank you.

Reply
Marie September 7, 2019 - 3:58 pm

Hello Thomas, thanks for your comment! Glad I was able to help.
Marie

Reply
Montana September 1, 2019 - 5:43 am

thanks ALOT for this marie 🙂

Reply
Marie September 7, 2019 - 3:58 pm

Hello! No problem at all, glad I could help!
Marie

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Ghybz October 19, 2019 - 3:15 am

I don’t have issues with the individual posts showing the right image. For as long as I set my feature image, I don’t need to upload a new one on Yoast to tell social media what image to use. But whenever I share my blog https://likeseriouzly.com as that, the preview image would always be the feature image of my latest post.

Would you have an idea how to do it for the homepage?

Reply
Marie November 16, 2019 - 9:53 am

Hello,
Well, there’s a section in this blog post that says how to fix the problem for a home page. Did you try that?
Marie

Reply
Vicky November 10, 2019 - 11:35 am

Thank you thank you thank you!! You solved my problem!

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Marie November 16, 2019 - 9:48 am

Awesome! 🙂

Reply
Grisel December 23, 2019 - 9:33 am

This post was really helpful! Thanks so much!

Reply
Marie December 29, 2019 - 10:01 pm

Glad I could help!
Marie

Reply
Vikas Yadav January 7, 2020 - 7:27 am

Hi Marie,

Thanks for the lovey post, I did successfully change the Post sharing image on Facebook and Twitter but when I try to same link on Skype or LinkedIn it shows old image. do you know why?

Here is the link I am talking about: https://spiritgate.com/octave-healing-introduction/

Thanks

Reply
Marie January 7, 2020 - 7:18 pm

Hello Vikas!

Glad I could help for Facebook and Twitter.

I’m not sure what could be done for Skype or LinkedIn. I do find LinkedIn pretty weird when sharing an image with a website. I don’t there we can do anything about that.

Sorry!
Marie

Reply
Gerardo January 14, 2020 - 1:53 pm

Super Helpful, Thank you !

Reply
Francis Jonathan Bunt April 8, 2020 - 2:11 pm

Incredibly helpful, thank you!!!

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Marie April 18, 2020 - 8:54 pm

Glad I was able to help!
Marie

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ershad May 12, 2020 - 9:14 pm

i have all in one seo plugin, not yoast seo

so what to do for solving this?

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Marie June 12, 2020 - 3:23 pm

Hello,
I don’t know, I would suggest doing some research with Google.
Best,
Marie

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Null May 18, 2020 - 10:10 am

Maybe mention that the features are not for free..?

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Marie July 5, 2020 - 10:54 pm

Hello,
So far, most people in the comments that I receive seem to be able to do this regularly for free, but it’s true, I’m not sure if the rules changed recently for the plugin.
Marie

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Samuel May 22, 2020 - 9:40 am

The problem am having is that after publishing a post accomplish with content image ,on sharing it to Twitter it doesn’t display any image at all where as Facebook only display my blog logo instead of the content image .. please what will I do so that the content image will be showing on Facebook and other social media when shared?

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Marie July 5, 2020 - 10:54 pm

Hello! I’m not an expert, it’s been a while since I read about this topic, but I think it might be because of your WordPress theme or like the image is not referred to properly in the code. For example, this is the documentation about how to make a picture appear on Twitter. You can use this Twitter card validator to enter a link and see what is not working properly for Twitter.

If you want to search more about this topic, I suggest you use the words “Twitter Cards image” on Google.

Hope this helps,
Marie

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Helen May 27, 2020 - 6:27 am

Hi! Do I need time to actually see it while sharing on Facebook or should it work right away? I just want to have this mini photo while sharing in the comment the main page and it’s still a cut piece of a logo 🙁

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Marie July 5, 2020 - 10:50 pm

Hello! The only thing I know is that sometimes we have to clear the cache like I explained in a section at the bottom of this blog post.
I hope it worked for you!
Marie

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Heather June 11, 2020 - 12:22 pm

You are a life saver!! I changed my blog title and image in my WordPress “site identity” but it was still popping up with my old title and image when I’d post it to FB. I’ve been searching for solutions for 2 days and I finally found this article. Thank you so much for not only explaining about how to change the info in Yoast SEO but also explaining and the Debugger site and the need to scrape the image. YOU ARE THE BEST!!

Reply
Marie July 5, 2020 - 10:49 pm

Hello Heather, I’m very glad I could help!
Marie

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Rahul Singh July 18, 2020 - 3:02 am

Nice blog and good information shared here.

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Marie July 26, 2020 - 9:48 pm

Thanks! I’m glad it was useful for you 🙂

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Alix August 3, 2020 - 3:49 am

I’m saving this post! it was so helpful! thank you so much! I used to always try to share my website post on Facebook and I would get my white logo on a white background, it was so weird and I couldn’t figure out how to change it. thanks again.

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Marie September 1, 2020 - 11:18 am

Great! Glad I was able to help!! 🙂
I hope it works well now!
Marie

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Dean Winchester October 19, 2020 - 4:59 am

How about changing the thumbnail in text messages?

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Marie November 25, 2020 - 11:17 pm

Hello! I think it should be the same procedure in Yoast.
Best, Marie

Reply
Marie November 25, 2020 - 11:19 pm

Hello! I think it should be the same procedure in Yoast.
Best, Marie

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Shelly December 8, 2020 - 4:07 pm

hello Marie, including mention of the facebook link debugger would be really helpful here too. I use it all the time to manually force the refresh of the share image that facebook uses. It’s especially useful when it’s time sensitive.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

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Marie December 17, 2020 - 5:23 pm

Hello Shelly!
You’re right, I talk about it in the section “Let’s test that our changes have worked”, but might be useful to specify more.
Thanks!
Marie

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Pooran February 4, 2021 - 12:30 am

Thanks a lot! It was so easy and a hell lot helpful!

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Marie June 3, 2021 - 8:20 pm

Hello Pooran! Thank you for your comment. Very happy to know this was helpful 🙂
Marie

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Susan Wiczynski April 22, 2021 - 5:36 pm

HI. I have a new website with a blog section. It is not WordPress. I tried uploading a blog post to FB (the blog has a photo), but it is scraping my site logo (and cutting it in half) rather than finding the proper photo. Any suggestions mighty welcome!

Reply
Marie April 24, 2021 - 7:17 pm

Hello Susan, it’s hard to say. What platform are you using for your blog?

Reply

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