An effective promotional post would include a sentence or two (call to action) and an image illustrating your message that linked to a spot to read more. But how to do that? Here’s the best I can find TODAY:
- Prepare your link, message, image, and start your post.
- Suggested image size is 560 pixels wide. It will be displayed at full post width, so set the height with that in mind.
- Write your message in its entirety, followed by your link and a space
- The space will trigger a “link preview” (see picture on right)
Editing a Facebook post: options to upload a photo - The link preview appears to take text from the web page’s meta description tag, and let you cycle through a few images from the page. You can’t edit the meta description part of your post.
- If you don’t like any of the pictures or the meta description, you can remove one or both using the tiny faint “X” upper right. That leaves you with the text of your post and an option to UPLOAD a photo.
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Facebook ready to post I don’t see a way to use a photo already existing at your Facebook account. So you must upload from your browser/PC.
- The only way to close the image window is to hit the blue “Post” button lower right.
To the left is the resulting post. My link goes to the URL shown, the photo goes to … not the link, but to some details about the photo.
To summarize, if the page you link to generates a Facebook link preview that you like, visitors may actually click through to your call to action page. If the page you link to doesn’t generate a suitable link, you can upload a photo that may draw visitors’ attention, but only the most dedicated visitor will seek out the tiny text of your URL and click it.
What is your experience creating Facebook posts with links?
I took my screenshots, and described my experience, using Facebook as of April 25, 2017. Have you noticed any improvements since then that you’d like to share?