Have you ever tried to change your Facebook post thumbnail when posting from WordPress, but it looks strange or doesn't even show up at all?
Trying to decipher the complexities of Facebook can be hard enough, but learning how to change your Facebook thumbnail is a problem that most small business websites run into frequently with no clue how to fix or properly set up. It can be frustrating seeing other Facebook website posts look fantastic while your post image looks distorted or cropped strangely.
Luckily, it’s not difficult to set up and can make your Facebook posts far more appealing and professional.
With these five steps, you can have your Facebook thumbnails looking top-notch in no-time.
Step One - Where the magic happens.
Before you head to a specific post to set it up correctly, let’s make sure you have some sort of SEO plugin installed.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to work magic with the SEO plugin and without. However, it is recommended to use an SEO plugin such as Rankmath or Yoast as setting up your SEO is paramount for website success. (Users of Yoast may find that these features are only accessible with a paid premium plugin.)
You can find easy-to-follow instructions for setting up Rankmath here on their website.
Once you have set up your SEO plugin or if you want to proceed without, then it’s time to edit your post.
Step Two - Create/add your thumbnail image.
For this demonstration, we created a thumbnail image in Photoshop at 1200 pixels x 630 pixels at 72dpi. You can use any photo editing program you like as long as you set your image size to 1200px x 630px. This is Facebook’s preferred thumbnail size and any other ratio/size you will run the risk of a bad crop or Facebook squeezing the image.
Step Three - Edit your post.
Once in your post editor, scroll down until you see RankMath SEO on your post. From here, click the Social link.
This is where you’ll insert the image you want to use as a Facebook thumbnail.
Once you’ve uploaded your image, update your post.
If you are not using an SEO plugin and don’t want to install one at this time you can simply change your featured image. Beware however that this may change the layout of your post. It is advised that you use an SEO plugin so as not to interfere with the operation/design setup in your WordPress theme.
Step Four - Validation
Before linking to your post on Facebook, you need to complete one more step.
Validating and testing your Facebook post ensures that you’ve done everything correctly and that it will properly post.
But how do you do that without posting? Well, Facebook provides a free resource to do just that.
You can either do a quick Google search for Facebook Debugger or click here and you’ll be taken to Facebook’s free validation tool
Once the Facebook Debugger loads, simply input the link to the article you want to post.
If you have never posted your article to Facebook, then it will ask you to Fetch New Information. If you have, when it first loads, there will be a preview of your post. This preview will show the previous thumbnail as Facebook remembers it.
If your post thumbnail does not match the new thumbnail you created and updated, click the Scrape Again link. You may have to do this several times, but usually within one click or two it will load your correct data.
Step Five - Post Away
With your Facebook post link validated you can now feel comfortable posting on your page. Your link will display properly anytime you post. If at any time you want to change your thumbnail image for that same post, just repeat the steps above.
