Fix Facebook Thumbnail – Go Viral in Style

Let’s face it, you want amazing viral results, but having the default flat icon and share details is cramping your style. Or, you’ve just tested your Facebook ad campaign for your viral list building offer and you need to make the images match.

Well, keep reading! I’ll unpack three steps to make this change for any campaign you’ve got.

(If You want to know why you have to jump through these hoops, then you’ll want to read the “How Facebook Decides Which Image to Choose for my Link” at the end of this article – click here).

Step One: Set You Facebook Thumbnail

I’ll use UpViral’s screens as an example here. But, all viral tools and most landing page builders use a similar approach.

Step Two: Use Facebook’s Debugging Tool to Update Facebook Thumbnail

When you’re ready to set or update your Facebook thumbnail, go to Facebook’s Debugging tool (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/). From the debugger, you’ll put your page’s url in the box and click the debug button.

Step Three: Confirm You’ve Fixed Your Facebook Thumbnail

Scroll down the page and look to see if your newest image is set as the thumbnail like the example below.

HINT: If you don’t see the latest image, then you’ll want to click the “scrape again” button.

Now you’ve figured out how to fix your Facebook thumbnail, let me give you a quick explanation of why this works.

Fix Facebook Thumbnail: How Facebook Decides Which Image to Choose for my Link

When you add a link to a Facebook post for the first time, Facebook’s app fetches special information from the source web page. As you can see from Facebook’s developer’s site, the information (called metadata) they fetch includes:

Feature	Tag	Example
URL – the link to the article	og:url	<meta property=”og:url“ content=”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/arts/international/when-great-minds-dont-think-alike.html“/> 
Type – the type of media of your article	og:type	<meta property=”og:type”        content=”article” />
Title – the title of your article	og:title	<meta property=”og:title”  content=”When Great Minds Don’t Think Alike” />
Description – The information that ‘s included under your post	og:description	<meta property=”og:description”    content=”How much does culture influence creative thinking?” />
Image – The Facebook thumbnail that you’ve been fixing as part of this article	og:image	<meta property=”og:image”       content=”http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/19/arts/international/19iht-btnumbers19A/19iht-btnumbers19A-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg” />

Why You Need to Use Facebook’s Debug Tool

Since Facebook processes millions of links each day and they want their site to be fast, they have store the metadata from above in their own database. With this information stored, they don’t have to fetch a new version every time someone shares your link. But, when you want a different image or title, you need to refresh the saved version.

When you use Facebook’s debug tool, you are replacing the information Facebook has in their database with new information.

TAKING YOUR CAMPAIGNS FURTHER!

It’s no secret that viral lead campaigns generate amazing leads for your business. To get more information about how you can build a world class viral campaign for your business, take a look at our “Viral Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (2019).”