When you add a website address to a LinkedIn post, a clickable image-link is provided. But often it looks terrible! It’s a fuzzy logo, a generic banner that doesn’t match the topic, or nothing appears at all.  If your article does this on LinkedIn, it is almost certainly doing the same of Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

Here are some steps to fix it.

Not showing at all

This is a setting on your website, and it’s often linked to your SEO (or search engine optimization). Look for a setting called a “Facebook or Twitter image”. You may see no image (just a description) or a huge, pixelated logo, or your websites banner. Your goal is to show a featured image directly related to that page’s content.

Most social media platforms use Open Graph (OG) tags to determine how to display link previews. Make sure that the correct OG tags are present in the HTML of the page you’re sharing. Specifically, you need to make sure that the og:image tag points to the correct image URL you want to appear as the featured image.

If you are using WordPress, I recommend an SEO plugin called SEOPress for clients, because it’s easy to use and links to Google Analytics. I specifically don’t recommend AIOSEO. On my own website I use Smart Crawl, which has extra settings for writers and allows me to decide per post. Look under Social Media for OG settings.

Shows the wrong image

If your featured image is too small, some social media accounts won’t display it. LinkedIn prefers images that are 1200 pixels wide by 630 pixels tall.

Check for Redirects: My intouch24-7.com domain name redirects to intouch24-7.ca. Some social media platforms might not follow the redirect and fetch information from the final URL. Make sure that the OG tags and image are correctly set on the final destination URL, and use the correct URL in your link.

Cached old images: If you recently changed the featured image you need to clear the cache on your website.

Tricking LinkedIn to refresh their cache

Social media platforms often cache the images to speed up page loading. When writing the post, you can trick LinkedIn into refreshing the Featured Image.

1. 1. Push the X on the link to remove the image (you don’t need to delete the link).
   2. Fix your website’s featured image.
   3. Use this link to LInkedIn’s Post inspector to test. Keep refreshing until it changes.
   4. Go back and add the link to the post again.