Introduction

This article describes how to make a post with a video attached shareable to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. After completing the steps outlined below, the following will be possible:

• A member could see a post with an embedded video in it, and play the video from inside the Dynamic Signal app.
• The member could choose to share this video to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn via the Share Dialog.
• Someone who is on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn could see the video and then play it from within the Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn app.

A Slightly Technical Discussion

If you just want to get this set up, then skip down to the next section to get started. However, the steps will make a bit more sense if you read this section first. In order to make this flow work, the video has to be playable on the Dynamic Signal platform, and then it needs to be made playable on the 3rd party platform (or platforms). 

To make the video playable on the Dynamic Signal platform, DySi needs the video file, so that it can be formatted to play correctly on different devices, such as a desktop computer through a browser, Android device, or Apple device. Behind the scenes, when you upload a video, the DySi platform processes the video and prepares separate encodings for playback on these different devices. 

To make the video playable on a 3rd party platform, that platform will also need (just like DySi) a copy of the video file, so that it too can prepare the video to be played on different devices and platforms. To make that happen, you have to upload the file yourself to any or all of the 3rd party platforms (for example by making a Tweet) and then taking the URL of that post / tweet, and inputting into the platform as described below. Once that is done, a copy of the video will be on the DySi platform (for us to play videos in the DySi app for your members) and another copy of the video will be on the 3rd party provider (e.g. Twitter) so that those 3rd party providers can play the video in their apps to their viewers. 

Finally, when a member shares a post with a video attached, the platform will substitute in the URL of the Tweet, LinkedIn Page post, or Facebook Page Story of the uploaded video. In effect, when a member shares a video from the DySi platform onto Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, they are actually sharing a link to the video on those 3rd party platforms. 

First, set up the videos

In order to make video sharing work, the video must be added as a file and not an embedded video from a 3rd party provider. To learn how to do that, visit this article.

In addition, the video needs to be uploaded to whatever social networks you would like to support. In practice, many customers have already uploaded the video (via their external marketing department). If so, then visit those social media posts and copy the URL. 

Second, enable external sharing

First, on the bottom of the Edit Article page, find the checkbox that reads "Share this post externally" and check it. Second, click on "Advanced Settings" then navigate to the "Share Settings" tab.

Third, plug in URLs

The third step is to take the URLs to the 3rd party social networks collected in Step 1, and enter them into the form on the Advanced Settings > Sharing Settings menu. Some notes:

• At most, a video can be shared onto Facebook, Facebook Page, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You may see less of these, depending on which channels are enabled for your community. 
• As of September 2022, you no longer have to specify a URL for Twitter/LinkedIn video sharing within Advanced Settings. This change occurred because of our sharing improvements made last year: https://support.dynamicsignal.com/hc/en-us/articles/8605717185815-Release-Notes-09-01-2022-Platform-2022-O-
• It is possible to fill out some, all, or none of these fields. If a field is filled out, then that sharing option will appear for the member when they open the share dialog.
• There is another way to enable sharing, and that is by a direct connection to a corporate social media account. This approach is not recommended for most communities, but is available if you would like to see if it is right for you. 

Autoplay

Videos uploaded via a URL will not autoplay, but if the video is uploaded natively it will autoplay when shared to LinkedIn or X (Twitter).