Question from Gwendolyn: I write a WordPress blog where I talk about women’s issues and I always update LinkedIn with the URL to every post I write.
I’ve been doing this for over two years and LinkedIn has always displayed a photo from the post along with the title and text snippet, but lately it’s been omitting the photo about half the time.
Is there a setting that I might have inadvertently changed to cause the photo not to be displayed on some updates? Am I doing something wrong?
I will really appreciate your help at solving this irritating mystery. Thank you!!
Rick’s answer: You probably haven’t changed a setting or anything Gwendolyn. I’ve received several pleas for help with this issue over the past few days and I’m pretty sure I’ve found a solution.
LinkedIn has apparently started checking each blog post that’s shared on their platform to see if the author bothered to designate a “featured image”. If so, that featured image is pulled in and displayed along with the title and snippet.
But if there is no featured image set for a post, LinkedIn will often skip the photo(s) contained in the post and display just the title and snippet.
If you’ll start designating one of the images contained in your posts as the post’s featured image, LinkedIn should pull that image in and display it as part of your update.
Note: You’ll find a link for setting the featured image in the WordPress Editor.
Just for good measure, I also recommend pasting the post’s URL into LinkedIn’s Post Inspector tool before posting it directly onto LinkedIn.
Bottom line: If you’ll designate one of your post’s images as the default image AND run the URL through the handy Post Inspector tool, LinkedIn should pull in the correct image and add it to the snippet every time.
I hope this helps, Gwendolyn. Good luck!
Update from Gwendolyn: Rick, you’re a lifesaver! I’ve started setting a featured image for every post and LinkedIn hasn’t failed to include a photo in any of the 6 posts I’ve shared on there since then. Thank you so much!