Another quick video for you today to show you how to add a social sharing image to your author website.
How to build your own author website →
What is a social sharing image?
A social sharing image is the image that automatically appears whenever someone links to a website on social media.
You might have noticed this when you’ve linked to things yourself - that an image pops up alongside your post. That image is the social sharing image.
You can actually set a social sharing image for every single page on your author website. However, this is slight overkill, and most people who link to your author website will link to the homepage.
So while you could set up a social sharing image for every single page, it’s most important that you set the main one which will display whenever anyone (including you!) links to your homepage.
My social sharing image for my author website
Why add a social sharing image to your author website
It’s a good idea to add a social sharing image because if you don’t, whenever anyone links to your website, you’ll find that the image that appears beside the link will be something random that Squarespace pulls through, and it might not be what you want!
It’s a good way to influence how posts that talk about your author website look, and a chance to include something enticing as a picture to encourage people to click on the link and visit your site!
More about social sharing images →
What kind of images to use for your social sharing image
It’s totally up to you what image you’d like to appear when people share links to your author website!
You could have a picture of yourself, or a picture of your books.
When I’m building websites for authors, I usually choose to take a screenshot of the homepage and use this as the social sharing image. This is because the top of the homepage usually has all the most important info about that author’s writing on it, and is beautifully designed too!
But it’s totally up to you. The only thing to remember is it’s best that it’s a landscape image, rather than a portrait one, as for eg, on Twitter, tall images are often cut off.
If you’re not sure what to include on your author website, you can download my Author Website Content Guide here →
How to add a social sharing image to your author website
Luckily, this is easy peasy.
I have recorded a video walk-through below, but if you prefer to read instructions, please scroll down!
Video Tutorial: how to add a social sharing image to your author website
Scroll down if you prefer to read text 😃
Step-by-step instructions
Step 1: Log into Squarespace
Step 2: Go to Settings > Website
Step 3: Scroll down to Social Sharing
Step 4: Click ‘Add a social logo’ and upload the image you’d like to appear from your desktop
Step 5: Make sure to click Save in the top right corner
Step 6: That’s it!
Enjoyed this video tutorial?
If you’d like more of the same to help you build your author website, then the DIY Author Website Kit is just for you! →
More about my author website services…
I have a really fascinating interview for you today, with the founders of shiny new independent publisher, Pellerin Books! I have heard so many good things about Pellerin already and am very supportive of their determination to ‘do publishing differently’… and so I’m super excited to have pinned them down for a long chat to find out more about their plans.