How to Fix Your Post Previews on Twitter After You’ve Published Them

This guide does not encourage you to delete your tweets!

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

So, let’s say you published a post and didn’t correctly set up your featured image for Twitter. But you only discover it after you’ve published the post and instead of seeing your beautiful picture, you see a dull preview with only your title and subtitle.

How do you fix this without deleting the post and perhaps removing valuable engagments like comments and hearts you’ve already received in the short time the post has been on the air?

That’s what we’re discussing today!

Meet The Twitter Card Validator

The twitter card validator allows you to check how your post will look on Twitter before actually publishing your tweets! You can find it here:

https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

You can use the validator before publishing, but that’s not the solution you’re here for today. Keep reading!

Fix Your Post’s Featured Image

If you’re on Ghost, set up the picture you want for Twitter by clicking on the “Twitter Card” option in the righ-side menu in the editor.

If you’re on Wordpress, perhaps fix this by using AIOSEO. They’re great at figuring this stuff out and I think the free version also has this capability. Just scroll all the way down in your editor and then in AIOSEO, choose the featured image for the Twitter card.

If you need help with this, let me know in the comments and I’ll make a YouTube video about it!

Back to the Twitter Card Validator

Here’s where the magic happens! Whenever you use the card validator, you essentially “reset” the appearance of the link on Twitter. It might take some time to propagate to everyone watching the link, but if you fixed the featured image, soon everybody will see the corrected image!

It’s that simple! You just need to remember to do it!

To Recap

1. You have a faulty link preview on twitter.
2. Fix the preview on the blog side (wordpress, ghost, medium, etc.).
3. Go to the Twitter Card Validator and submit the blog link again.
4. If it appears correctly there, you’re done! The change could take a while to propagate throughout Twitter.

I hope this was helpful! Have any questions? Ask them below!

Originally published at https://www.orencohen.co on March 2, 2022.