If you don’t use a social media management service such as Buffer or Hootsuite, you may have noticed that Facebook doesn’t always select the correct share preview for the content you wish to post. Why does this happen? Why doesn’t it show the latest content? It has to do with the metadata. Facebook stores (caches) data that is used to identify every page. Facebook will remove titles and descriptions for any open graph meta tags that haven’t been defined.
This can be extremely frustrating because it is important that the information corresponds to the website shared. It is especially crucial for those marketing valuable content to their audience. Your post should include a thumbnail, title and description to make your audience intrigued to learn more. So what do you do if you encounter this problem?
Thankfully Facebook offers a tool to debug this pesky problem by forcing the newest information to your Facebook. You can find Facebook’s debugger tool under tools and support on the official developer page.
Upon arriving to the debugging page, simply enter the URL you wish to fetch and press the debug button.
You will then need to select the button that reads, “Fetch new scrape information.”
The next page will give you the latest version of the page’s data you wanted to share on Facebook. You will also be provided with additional information such as anything that needs to be fixed.
Facebook is constantly updating and changing. However, shared link thumbnails haven’t changed. It is recommended that your images are at least 1200 x 640 pixels. Images that are of this size or larger will display thumbnails best. The thumbnails will display at their full width within the constrains of the post box. Smaller images (anything less than 600 x 315 pixels) will not display the full width. These are typically shown on the left side with your description of your link post on the right. The absolute minimum size of images that can be posted without errors is 200 x 200 pixels.
The Facebook debugging tool is a great place to start for understanding how the share preview functions on your page. More importantly, it should help lower stress and improve the appearance of your Facebook posts.
