Link previews are a crucial feature when scheduling posts to social media channels with Vista Social. As soon as you create your message, we automatically extract the link from your post and retrieve its details—image, page title, and description. This allows you to preview your post before it is published, helping you avoid any potential posting issues!
Here’s how it works:
- Include Your Link: Start by incorporating the desired link in your message while designing your post.
- Automatic Link Preview Generation: Vista Social will automatically fetch and display the link's image, title, and description for you.
- Review Your Post: Before hitting publish, take a moment to preview the complete post, including the link preview, to ensure everything looks perfect!
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Note When you're publishing from third-party tools like Vista Social, Facebook doesn't create link previews for Facebook.com links, including links to Page posts. Keep this in mind while crafting your fabulous content! |
The not-so-great news: Rare link preview generation issues
In rare situations, some websites won't allow themselves to be inspected, and therefore, we may not be able to generate a link preview. When this occurs, you will see the following message:
The good news: Issues are extremely rare
Out of thousands of link previews that we generate daily, we may once in a blue moon report from a user that there is a website that does not work. Why does it not work? Some site owners just don't like their content to be shared.
The even better news: You can still publish your post
Yes, you read that right! So even though we have not been able to generate a link preview, you can still publish your post, and as long as you are sure that the link you are using is valid, the post will turn out fine.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why is my link preview not being generated during post creation?
A: Some websites don't allow themselves to be inspected, and therefore, we may not be able to generate a link preview. If you believe you're still running into issues, please reach out to support.
Q: Why is my link preview wrong or not appearing properly after posting?
A: If your link preview looks incorrect or doesn’t appear at all after posting, it may be due to how certain elements (i.e., Open Graph (OG) image and metadata) are set up on the source website. Social platforms rely on this metadata to generate previews.
Steps to check:
Verify the OG tags on your website — ensure that the title, description, and image are set up correctly.
Use the platform’s link debugger (e.g., Facebook Sharing Debugger) to see what data is being pulled.
If the preview appears correctly in the debugger but not in your post, please reach out to support so we can help investigate further.
Q: I posted on Instagram with a link in the caption, but it's not active/clickable.
A: Links in Instagram captions aren’t clickable. This is a limitation from Instagram itself. If you want followers to visit a link, you can add it to your bio or use tools like Vista Pages to put links in one place, easily accessible for your audience.
Q: I enabled link shortening when creating my post. Why can’t I see the shortened link preview in the publisher?
A: The shortened link will only appear on the actual published post. Vista Social doesn’t display shortened link previews in the publisher and within the calendar view.
Need further help?
If you have any questions or need additional help, feel free to contact our awesome support team. We are here to assist you! 💙
Related Reading:
Link Shortening (Bitly & other options)
Use your custom domain for white label shortening with Vista Social
White-labeling with Vista Social
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