![]() While you may expect the platform to pull an image from within the article, it will sometimes pull an image from a completely unrelated part of the page. Picking an appropriate image can often feel like a game of Russian roulette. Twitter’s character limit can also cause a truncation that can either change the meaning or not accurately describe the page. Sometimes it will pull the wrong description or give up and show nothing at all. In general, getting the title of the page is a no-brainer, but the description can be messed up in a variety of ways. Traditionally, when you share a link to the social media outlets, each platform does its best job to scrape the page’s HTML and try to extract the pertinent details. And if you really want to take a deep dive, here’s a comprehensive overview on Wikipedia. ![]() If you’d like to get a very quick overview, here is a basic tutorial to get started. If you’ve never built a website before, it’s unlikely that you’ve peaked under the hood to see the guts of an HTML page. In short, posting an adorable picture of my two and a half-year-old daughter is encouraged on Facebook, arguably not something I would do on Twitter, and something I would never, ever do on LinkedIn. It’s possible to create a piece of content that is useful to share across all 3 platforms at the same time, but it’s unlikely that it’s appropriate to present the content in the same way due to the different audiences and expectations on each platform. ![]() Twitter is based on real-time communication and information sharing. Facebook started primarily as a way to connect with friends but has rapidly evolved into a mix that depends greatly on how you’ve been using it and what types of connections you already have. Typically, Linkedin is geared towards conversations relating to careers, networking, business opportunities, and etc. While the following is an overly simplistic breakdown of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, it will reinforce the need to tailor the messaging to each platform. Similar to the dinner party analogy, there are a variety of factors that you need to consider when deciding on what to communicate. Part 1: Creating Your Sharing Strategyīefore we discuss the mechanics, it’s important to review your goals for each social media platform. We now need to apply those same principles for your content as it is interacted with on different social media platforms. In short, different people get different answers based on what will best support the conversation with that person or audience. Here you are more likely to give a generic answer, which is why I simply tell my mom “I work with computers” and that’s sufficient to keep the conversation going. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you might overwhelm someone that has no frame of reference. If you had an inkling that the person worked in a similar industry or knows of the company you work for, you might provide a somewhat detailed answer going into specific nuances that they might understand and appreciate. Such a simple question, but you probably have anywhere from 2-5 canned responses to pick from depending on the background of the person that asks. Inevitably, the other person asks you “so, what do you do for a living?” You look around and discover that you don’t know anyone there! You keep scanning the unfamiliar faces when someone bumps into you and strikes a conversation. The solution to this is to leverage HTML meta tags to tell and tailor your story to each social media platform. Worse, your audience is unlikely to take the time to make those same adjustments when they are sharing your content. Not only is this sloppy, but it relies on users to manually correct that information (if the particular social media platform even allows for that flexibility). It is disheartening to see what can happen when a link is shared on Facebook without proper meta tags, which often results in the wrong image or description being displayed. Once they are on board, they begin to realize that creating great content isn’t always easy and can take a lot of time and effort. However, we often find ourselves spending a lot of time to convince clients that creating compelling content is a critical component of finding and growing a highly engaged audience. We are thrilled when clients seek us out to create beautifully designed and highly functional websites.
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