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.
- In the left pane on your WordPress dashboard, click on “SEO,” then ‘Social.”
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- Click on Save
- 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!
- Edit the article that causes you problem
- At the very writing section, go to the section for Yoast.
- Click on the social media sharing icon, framed in blue below
- You can now add the title you want Facebook to use, a description as well as the image you want to use!
- Save the changes to your article, and voila!
- 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
- Go to the Sharing Debugger of Facebook
- 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!
- 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?
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:
- We will have to resize your image to make 1200×630 pixels, the recommended dimensions!
- If you have a Mac, you can double-click on your image; select Tool > Adjust Size…
- 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.
- 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!
74 comments
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!
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
Hello, Shahzan!
Thank you for your comments, I’m glad you enjoy my blog! 🙂
Marie
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.
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!
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??
Never mind! Finally got it. Thanks!
Hello again Donald,
Oh yes, how did you do it? 🙂 I’d love to know.
Marie
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
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
Also works for Twitter
Hello Iain,
Yes, it’s connected to the same tags!
Marie
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
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….
Hello Iain,
Well, that’s good to know! Haha! Thanks!
Marie
Helpful post.
Happy I could help!
Marie
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.
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
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.
Thanks! this is extremely helpful!
Hello Naama!
Thanks for your comment, I’m happy I was able to help!
Marie
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?
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
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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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.
Hello Jennifer,
No, I don’t know. The only procedure I’m aware of is listed on this blog post!
Marie
How do you change the preview image when you share a Wordpress site in LinkedIn?
Hello Nan,
I did a Google search and here’s what I found on LinkedIn.
Best,
Marie
Very helpful thank you for taking the time to explain how to fix this problem! -Sara at Embolden Adventures
Hello Sara,
No problem, hope it helped!
Marie
That was very helpful, thank you.
Hello Thomas, thanks for your comment! Glad I was able to help.
Marie
thanks ALOT for this marie 🙂
Hello! No problem at all, glad I could help!
Marie
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?
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
Thank you thank you thank you!! You solved my problem!
Awesome! 🙂
This post was really helpful! Thanks so much!
Glad I could help!
Marie
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
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
Super Helpful, Thank you !
Incredibly helpful, thank you!!!
Glad I was able to help!
Marie
i have all in one seo plugin, not yoast seo
so what to do for solving this?
Hello,
I don’t know, I would suggest doing some research with Google.
Best,
Marie
Maybe mention that the features are not for free..?
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
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?
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
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 🙁
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
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!!
Hello Heather, I’m very glad I could help!
Marie
Nice blog and good information shared here.
Thanks! I’m glad it was useful for you 🙂
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.
Great! Glad I was able to help!! 🙂
I hope it works well now!
Marie
How about changing the thumbnail in text messages?
Hello! I think it should be the same procedure in Yoast.
Best, Marie
Hello! I think it should be the same procedure in Yoast.
Best, Marie
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/
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
Thanks a lot! It was so easy and a hell lot helpful!
Hello Pooran! Thank you for your comment. Very happy to know this was helpful 🙂
Marie
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!
Hello Susan, it’s hard to say. What platform are you using for your blog?