What Is A Link Preview?
Changes to Facebook Groups Publishing
Facebook unexpectedly decided to remove Groups API access, preventing any third-party tools, including SmarterQueue, from interacting with your Facebook Groups. After April 22nd, 2024, SmarterQueue will no longer be able to publish directly to groups you manage. You can still schedule posts for these groups, but will receive email notifications for easy manual posting instead. You may also wish to consider transitioning to a Facebook Page for better engagement.
You may have noticed us mention Link Previews a handful of times and been curious exactly what they are. We are here to make sure you are confident with all aspects of using SmarterQueue!
In This Article
- What Is A Link Preview
- Do I Have To Use A Link Preview?
- Can I Use Other Media Instead Of The Link Preview?
What Is A Link Preview?
A Link Preview is a visual review (including a brief description), of the link you type into the Post Editor. In SmarterQueue, when you type a URL (link) into the Post Editor, you will see a preview of how your post will look once published (on the right-hand side of the screen), in what we call the "Preview Pane".
The information you see in the Preview Pane, such as the image, title, description, etc are set by the author of the link you have added inside the Post Editor.
Here are two example screenshots of a Link Preview:
Note: When adding a link to a post, the SmarterQueue Post Editor will generate a link preview. That preview is our attempt to predict what the final post will look like but isn’t always used as the preview for the final post. While LinkedIn receives the preview SmarterQueue generates and uses it when publishing your post, Facebook and Twitter generate their own link previews, using their own link scrapers, which means they can end up with different results.
Do I Have To Use A Link Preview?
Not at all!
You can choose not to use one for each individual Post by going to "Link Settings" and selecting "No Link Preview":
If you want to remove all Facebook Link Previews you can do this from your Link Settings:
If you add your link at the very end of your text post, you might notice that it disappears when published on certain social platforms. We've noticed this happening with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, as they will remove the link from the post text if the link appears at the end of the text and there’s a link preview! This happens when you post natively too.
To avoid this on LinkedIn, SmarterQueue will add a space after your link if it is anywhere in the post text. For Twitter and Facebook, this won't work, so you’ll need to add additional text or special characters after the link to keep it from being removed.
In any case, the link preview will still be displayed, no matter if the link ends up being removed or not.
Can I Use Other Media Instead Of The Link Preview?
Absolutely!
You can replace the automated image used as the link preview with a picture you upload from your computer or bring over from other sources.
Keep in mind that if you attach an image file to the post, it will replace the link preview, but will not be actionable (pressing on it in the published post will not direct you to the website the link is for).