Using a Facebook Referral Page to Inform My Customers of Recent Posts
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When I first created Mabuhay US Veterans (https://mabuhayusveterans.wordpress.com/), my daughter suggested to me, to create a Facebook Referral Page, as to what I posted on my WordPress Blogsite during the past week. On the Facebook Referral Page titled ‘Welcome US Veterans) (https://www.facebook.com/Welcome-US-Veterans-101133265646223), it shows the graphic image of what appears on my Mabuhay US Veterans Blogsite.
Yet, when I recently created Mabuhay Expats (https://mabuhayexpats.wordpress.com/) using the same graphic image (with a different logo), as what is found on Mabuhay US Veterans, on the corresponding Facebook Referral Page title Mabuhay Expats (https://www.facebook.com/Mabuhay-Expats-103817878691923), graphic image with photo next to the Saturday Weekly Posts is missing…just a blank box.
Is there a reason why one Facebook Referral Page has the graphic image with logo from the Mabuhay US Veterans Site, while the other Facebook Referral Page doesn’t have anything appearing on this site? (NOTE: Both WordPress Blogsites are NOT linked to Facebook, thus I don’t understand why one Facebook Referral Page (Welcome US Veterans) has my weekly posts showing with the same graphic image as the Mabuhay US Veterans, while the other doesn’t have anything.)
Your comments will greatly be appreciated.
Thanking you ahead of time.
Philippine Paul
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there!
Looking at those two sites, I noticed that
https://mabuhayexpats.wordpress.comshows all the latest blog posts on the homepage as opposed to showing a static page on the other site. This can affect which image is picked up by social media when you share the link to the homepage.Another thing: When you share a link to social media sites like Facebook, they will fetch the image (link preview) and save it on their end. So when you share the same link again, it will not fetch any new information from your site.
This is important because when you shared the link on Facebook the first time, Facebook didn’t pick up any images for some reason. As a result, subsequent shares on Facebook didn’t include the preview image either.
There’s a way you can force Facebook to fetch the new link preview. Please follow the instructions on this page to use Facebook’s debug tool: https://wordpress.com/support/facebook-image-thumbnail/#image-thumbnail-problems-faq
Basically, you need to do as instructed on that link and use your site’s address (https://mabuhayexpats.wordpress.com) on the Facebook debug tool to “scrape new information.” By doing this, you will be forcing Facebook to fetch the image from your site.
After doing this, the Facebook debug tool will show you the link preview. If it shows the image from your site logo, you’re all set. The image will show up any time you share the link on Facebook again.
Can you please try that and let us know how that goes?
Regards
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Hello Aisajib!
Thanks for the excellent response!
I will try to go ahead and do what you suggested but, just wanted to remind you that neither the Mabuhay US Veterans nor the Mabuhay Expats WordPress Blogsites are NOT linked to either the Welcome US Veterans nor Mabuhay Expats Facebook Referral Pages. The reason, for this decision, as whenever I posted anything on either blogsite, it automatically showed on the Facebook Referral Page and, that wasn’t the reason for creating the Facebook Referral Page, as I notified my customers every Saturday of what I have posted during the past week, with a message. My customers all know to visit my Facebook Referral Page every Saturday once they receive a notification from myself.
So, I hope what you suggest will work and I will give it a try. If, I have any problems, I will get back with you.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Aisajib!
Ok, I followed your instructions and immediately got this response: “Facebook URLs cannot be crawled.” Of course there is no explanation as to what this means and, maybe you might be able to tell me what this means, as I am totally puzzled!
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Aisajib!
I did some further checking at my end and found this piece of information and, I quote: “Does Facebook allow crawling? Facebook warns at the very beginning of their robots file: “Crawling Facebook is prohibited unless you have express written permission.” (dated 12 Aug 2021). So, I did some further research and came to this website (https://www.octoparse.com/blog/5-things-you-need-to-know-before-scraping-data-from-facebook), that mentioned the same thing.
Thus, if you know something than from what I have read this morning, I would be willing to hear back from you, either way.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hi there,
Ok, I followed your instructions and immediately got this response: “Facebook URLs cannot be crawled.”
Are you getting that in Facebook’s debugger tool? What link did you paste into that tool?
Make sure that you’re using that to check the URL for your WordPress.com site, not the URL for your Facebook page. In other words, you’ll want to paste
https://mabuhayexpats.wordpress.cominto the debugger for Facebook to rescrape.By the way, did you know that you can set up your site to automatically share new posts to your Facebook page the moment you publish them? If that sounds like something you’ll be interested in, you can find more details here:
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Hello Kokkieh!
Thanks for your response, as you’ve been extremely helpful to me in the past, when I had issues with either of my two WordPress Blogsites!
Thanks for letting me know that it’s NOT the Facebook URL that I need to enter but, the Mabuhay Expats URL that I need to enter! So, I will immediately try this.
(NOTE: As mentioned in my original post, I am fully aware that I can set up my Facebook Accounts to automatically share to my Facebook Referral Page, but in doing so, I noticed that I didn’t really care to see “EVERYTHING” that was being posted to either of my two WordPress Blogsites on the Facebook Referral Pages, as up to this point in time, I preferred listing a separate notice on each Facebook Referral Page every Saturday, as to what I have written during the past week. However, thinking back to what you said, I believe what you suggested will be much easier for me, then to prepare a separate notification for the two Facebook Referral Pages and, I will give that a try!)
So, I will respond back as soon as I can with what has been accomplished at my end.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Kokkieh!
Well, I tried the Scrapping Tool (aka Debugger) using (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/) for my WordPress Blogsite https://mabuhayexpats.wordpress.com/ and, although it shows that “it has been scraped”, nothing shows as being any different on the Facebook Referral Page https://www.facebook.com/Mabuhay-Expats-103817878691923
So unsure what the issue is. Any further suggestions that you may have, would very much be appreciated.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Ah, okay. It’s important to mention that the change will only be visible on new instances of the link you share. For the links you’ve already shared, the preview has already been generated, and Facebook doesn’t update that after the fact.
You might be able to edit the individual posts on Facebook and refresh the preview there, but I want to remember Facebook has a limit on how long after making a post one can do that.
Sorry if we weren’t clear about this.
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Hello Kokkieh!
Ok, then as I just tried to refresh a post that I made on Facebook 10/09/2021 (which I noticed didn’t change), I edited that post, changing the date and, that too remained the same.
So, here’s what I suggest, that we keep this question open till I get ready to post another article sometime this week and if nothing changes, then I will personally contact you once again.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Kokkieh!
Well, I just learned that I can only link one WordPress Blogsite to a Facebook Referral Page, as it doesn’t allow “both Word Press Blogsites (Mabuhay US Veterans and Mabuhay Expats)” being allowed simultaneously. Thus, since Mabuhay Expats is newer, I elected to link my WordPress Blogsite titled “Mabuhay Expats” to the Facebook Referral Page titled “Mabuhay Expats”.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Kokkieh!
I just posted two new posts on Mabuhay Expats and, still the problem remains on my Facebook Referral Page with the same name and the site is: https://www.facebook.com/Mabuhay-Expats-103817878691923
So, I am quite puzzled as to what the problem is.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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Hello there,
I checked out the site settings and I noticed that there was no site icon uploaded to the site via Appearance > Customize > Site Identity.
I took the liberty of adding the site logo there and it looks like Facebook is picking this up now when re-scraped.
Are you able to check if this now appears when shared to Facebook please?
Many thanks.
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Hello Aleone89!
Thanks for taking the liberty of adding the site logo to my Facebook Referral Page titled Mabuhay Expats.
Yet, I just checked my Mabuhay Expats Facebook Referral Page and still don’t see anything as to what you stated. I even refreshed my Facebook Referral Page multiple times and, still nothing.
Respectfully,
Philippine Paul
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I noticed you shared the link on October 8, before those changes were made.
What happens if you share a link to the page now?
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Hello Supernovia!
I just posted two new articles yesterday , 10/13/2021 and today 10/15/2021 to Mabuhay Expats and when I visited my Facebook Referral Page Mabuhay Expats (https://www.facebook.com/Mabuhay-Expats-103817878691923) and still no changes, unlike what you mentioned.
Is there something additional, that I am missing?
Respectfully,
Philippine Paul
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Hello,
I also forgot to mention that since I linked my WordPress Blogsite with my Facebook Referral Page, I would expect to see automatic postings on my Facebook Referral Page, correct? If so, why don’t they show either. (NOTE: In regards to my previous message, I posted several new posts in the past couple of days and, there is nothing to show on the Facebook Referral Page, as I was led to believe nor is the thumbnail showing in any previous posts too. Does this mean, that I should go back to what I was doing, by manually making an announcement (like I have been doing every Saturday Morning) of the recent posts that I posted in the past week on Mabuhay Expats?)
Thanking You Ahead of Time,
Respectfully,
Philippine Paul
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Hello Paul,
Many thanks for your persistence with this.
Is there something additional, that I am missing?
I can’t see there’s any steps missing here, and I’m not entirely sure why Facebook is not picking that up.
I’ve tested this and this is what I experience here:
I also forgot to mention that since I linked my WordPress Blogsite with my Facebook Referral Page, I would expect to see automatic postings on my Facebook Referral Page, correct? If so, why don’t they show either.
I’ve taken a look at the publicize settings here: https://wordpress.com/marketing/connections/mabuhayexpats.wordpress.com and I can’t see that the site is connected to Facebook.
(NOTE: In regards to my previous message, I posted several new posts in the past couple of days and, there is nothing to show on the Facebook Referral Page, as I was led to believe nor is the thumbnail showing in any previous posts too. Does this mean, that I should go back to what I was doing, by manually making an announcement (like I have been doing every Saturday Morning) of the recent posts that I posted in the past week on Mabuhay Expats?)
I would recommend clearing the browser cache and then reposting the links to see if the thumbnail shows.
I can’t see the links on the Facebook page as you mention.
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Hello Aleone89!
Thanks for your response!
Believe it or not, I did link both the WordPress Blogsite to the Facebook Referral Page a couple of days ago and right up to last night, it showed as being connected and, now when I went back, like as you stated, it shows that it’s NOT connected. Unsure what happened in the past 12- to 15-hours but, I will certainly re-connect Facebook with Mabuhay Expats and see where this leads too, as I never heard of WordPress disconnecting from Facebook in the past, unless it would be my doing…which as I mentioned, it WAS connected.
So, I will get back with you and let you know the results of what happened and, we’ll continue to keep this subject open until I am 100% sure that this issue has been resolved.
Warmest Regards,
Philippine Paul
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