Facebook has made thumbnail images for shared links far bigger. This is an incredible opportunity for marketers who want to drive website traffic. But it also creates new hassles.
[NOTE: For more on the various new ad image sizes, make sure to read this post.]
Going forward, you should make sure that your article’s featured image has a 1.91:1 aspect ratio (mine are now 700×366 pixels). This is an easy fix.
But what if you want to reshare old posts? Even if you change the image sizes associated with those articles, you’ll notice a problem.
[Tweet “Is Facebook pulling the wrong thumbnail image? This may fix your problem…”]
The Problem with Updating Image Sizes
Let’s take this blog post as an example.
I published it prior to Facebook’s change, so it utilized a 600×571 pixel featured image. At that time, I really didn’t care about the thumbnail dimensions since it didn’t matter a whole lot.
But now, it’s important that it’s bigger and has approximately the right dimensions to take advantage of that new added real estate. If you aren’t careful, Facebook will drop you back down to a small, square thumbnail.
So in the example above, I went ahead and created a new featured image that is 700×366 pixels. Here’s that image…
So now when I go and share that blog post to Facebook, it should pull the new image, right? Well, let’s see…
Nope, that’s still the old image!
Even though that image no longer exists on my blog post, Facebook continues to pull it.
The Solution
What we need to do is clear Facebook’s cache. We do that with the Facebook Debugger — also known as the Facebook Delinter.
Simply enter the URL of your blog post at the top and click the “Debug” button…
The result? Now when I share that link to Facebook, the associated thumbnail is my new image!
Piece of cake!
More on the Debugger Tool
This is a tool you need to get to know. If you manage a website, Debugger will tell you what specifically is wrong when articles aren’t being shared appropriately.
I’ve found that oftentimes all I need to do is debug a link to fix it. It’s saved me from what has otherwise been hours of headaches!
