The information below is current as of this publication, but may have changed by the time you read this.
Share Text Character Limits
- Twitter - 256 characters
- Our platform restricts “suggested Share Text for Twitter” to 256 characters. This is because the remaining characters are reserved for the shortened URL in the share text. Any text in excess of this limit will be truncated.
- LinkedIn - 210 characters
- The maximum character limit is 700, but the share text will truncate after 210 characters and display a ‘See More’ option.
- Mentions (@mentions) to other LinkedIn users are not currently supported.
- Facebook - 483 characters
- The maximum character limit is 63,000, but the share text will truncate after 483 characters and display a ‘See More’ option
- Because of Facebook's change to "native sharing", disclosures added to Facebook Share Text are displayed to the Member and can be modified or deleted before posting. Please train your Members about the importance of disclosure text and caution against changing or removing it.
Link and Image Behavior
You have less control over how content is presented on Facebook and LinkedIn today. The default behavior is for the networks to import the link, and retrieve a suitable image from the permalink, and display that along with the permalink itself as the "source" (LinkedIn goes a step further and displays the link to your community as the permalink). This means that if you have curated a different image for your social media post than is found at the source link, that image will not be displayed by the network when the content is shared.
These social networks handle shares this way in order to combat bad actors (i.e. "fake news") that show their content in a way inconsistent with what is at the actual link. This is a requirement of any company using the social media APIs to submit content.
This behavior can be overridden, but for each of these networks, there is a "cost" associated with the change, usually resulting in transparency regarding how it was posted.
- For Facebook, you can change the behavior so that the image from the post is used when shared. However, the permalink that Facebook will display will be that of your community.
- For LinkedIn, you can change the behavior so that the URL and image from the original post is used when shared. However, you will no longer receive any data / metrics around clickthrough or reactions on LinkedIn shares coming from the LinkedIn mobile app.
See below articles for further information regarding LinkedIn sharing specifications:
Why is the URL not passing into my LinkedIn share from my share text?
Why is my share to LinkedIn showing a bit.ly URL instead of my community domain URL?
If you would like to change either of these settings, please contact our Support team or your Customer Success Manager.
Image Sizes and Presentation
For an image to be displayed full-width on LinkedIn & Twitter, the image must be a minimum of 570 pixels wide.
| LinkedIn Example | Twitter Example | |
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Please see the following article for the pixel size required for Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/image/facebook-feed/post-engagement
All three networks display or crop images differently, and there is no way to specify different images for different networks when sharing an image. Make sure any important image data falls within the middle-third of the picture to ensure no loss of important information.
Social Media Display Guide
- Share text and share disclosure will appear above the post preview
- For an optimized image (when the image is scaled to 570px and above), the image, title and description (if the title does not extend beyond 63 characters with spaces on the first line) and the permalink of the source of the article will display
- When the image is below the optimized size of 570px wide, the Facebook post card will reduce in size and display the two lines in the title and three lines for the description (if applicable)
- Share text and share disclosure will appear above the post preview.
- For an optimized image (when the image is scaled to 570px and above), the image, title and your program URL will appear.
- When the image is below the optimized size of 570px wide, the LinkedIn post card will reduce in size and display the image, title and your program URL
- The reduce LinkedIn post card will only display a maximum of two lines, which is a total of 84 characters with spaces
- Share text, share disclosure and bit.ly url of the post will appear above the post image
- For an optimized image (when the image is scaled to 570px and above), the image will only appear
- When the image is below the optimized size, the image will only continue to appear but in a reduced size
Social Media Display of YouTube Video
As mentioned earlier, the social media networks scan your permalinks to determine the kind of content being displayed, and use that information to determine how to handle the content. As such, content posted via their APIs is often displayed differently than content posted natively by a user through their respective applications. Video from YouTube is an example of how the content can be treated very differently.
When posted natively via the their applications, a YouTube link will be parsed as video, and usually displayed in a playable window. This is not 100% consistent, and can vary somewhat. The same link, when wrapped in a short URL and posted via the API, will usually be displayed as a static image, with a link to the video source. This is how video is handled when shared from the Dynamic Signal platform. (LinkedIn will currently display the content as a playable video, even when a short URL is used.)
Sharing GIFs to Social Media
At this time, GIFs are not supported through Facebook from the community. You are able to send GIFs to Twitter via share, but the post must be set to "Submit an image along with a Tweet..." in order to post the GIF.
To change that setting, click "Edit" on the post page in the manager platform, go to the Sharing tab, then scroll down to the setting on the Sharing tab page.
Sharing GIFs to LinkedIn is now supported however the “Share Image Only” advanced setting should be disabled to do so.