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Challenge Stage: Social Share

Overview

The article provides a comprehensive guide on how to use the Social Share stage to encourage advocates to share content across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and how to track these activities through program goals. It details the process of setting up the stage, creating default sharing text with character limits, adding URL links and images for social posts, and utilizing network-specific previews to ensure posts are optimized for each platform.

 

Information

The Social Share stage type is a simple way to allow advocates to share content across three major social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

You can track the number of social shares originating from this stage type on your administrator dashboard - under the Program Goals heading. To track posts from the Social Share stage, use these goals: Facebook Posts , LinkedIn Posts , and Twitter Posts .

Read this article to learn more about setting up program goals.

 

  1. Social Share Challenge Stage
  2. Create a Social Post
    1. Default Text
    2. Link
    3. Image
    4. Network Selection
    5. Share Preview
  3. Advocate View

 

 

Social Share challenge stage

Once you have selected the Social Share stage (highlighted in blue, above), add the Stage Description and set the points for the stage.

Please note that advocates will receive points for each social network that they share the content to. For example, if you set 5 points for this stage and the user shared the content on two of their social networks (Twitter and Facebook), they will receive 10 points.

 

 

Create a Social Post for Members to Share

A. Add Default Sharing Text

On the Text area, you can setup the following pieces:

  1. Default Share Text : This is the text that the users will see when they open the challenge. You can leave this box blank if you would like your users to customize their own message (be sure to set the character limit if you decide to do this to avoid empty shares). We will add a custom link for you once you've published the challenge. This is what it will look like for the user:


    Note that on Facebook's most recent policy changes ( here ), they no longer allow more than one singular hashtag.

  2. Setting Minimum Character Count required to share. You can mark the checkbox and set the minimum characters. If there are no minimum characters, you can unmark the checkbox.


    If the users have not typed a text according to the set limit, they will not be allowed to share on their Social and will get the following warning:

  3. The information of the character limit from each Social Media platform will be displayed at the bottom of the text box. This will only appear once you choose the social media under Network Selection.

    Twitter has a maximum of 280 characters to post a tweet. You will notice that there are 26 characters taken already and this is because up to a maximum of 26 characters will be taken up by the infl.tv share link entered under Default Share Link. The link can be as short as infl.tv/2c93 or as long as infl.tv/2c9m40a2 ( as examples). This URL format is used to track the statistics that you can find in the Social Influence Report.

    Using emojis? Emojis are counted as characters and depending on the emojis you choose, they will include different characters limit.

  • Add the URL link of the webpage that you'd like the users to share as a part of their social share.
  • Click on Update Preview button to see what the URL link will appear when the users shares this on their social. See the Share Preview area .
  • You can leave this field blank if you'd like your users to paste their own individual custom links (e.g. personal referral link).

Please note that Facebook does not allow text-only shares. You will need to add an image or a URL link

C. Add an Image Preview

Here you can choose the image to go along with the text and URL link. This will show as an image preview when the users shares the post on their Social Media.

Attaching an image overrides the image preview that is automatically pulled from your URL link website. You can also upload your own image or search the image on the web.

Look to Share Preview area to preview what this looks like when shared to the Social platforms.

D. Network Selection

Select the social media platform that you would like your users to share to. Reminder that the points set for this stage, will be awarded to each Social share that the Hub member shared to.

E. Share Preview

When creating or editing a post, the Stage composer displays a preview of your post, for each social network you've selected. As you add to your post, each preview displays updates in real-time so you can see what your audience will see.

While previews are as accurate as possible, some elements only get finalized by the social network when a post is published. This can result in minor differences between the preview and final post.

 

Preview Links

Link previews, for example, generate automatically, but each social network pulls link preview information differently from the link’s website. This means that the resulting link preview for a given link may not be the same on each social network.
Twitter
Twitter only displays link previews in tweets when the link’s website has Twitter Cards enabled. To verify the site you’re linking to has a Twitter Card, enter the link into Twitter’s Card validator .
To guarantee that your tweet contains an image, you can attach your own image. Attaching an image overrides the preview if the link has a Twitter Card. The published tweet will contain a clickable link and a separate, uploaded image.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn posts generate link previews based on the data that LinkedIn extracts from each website.
Enter a link into LinkedIn's Post Inspector to see how LinkedIn will read and process it. The tool helps you identify any missing data on the page and what you need to add to improve the preview.
Facebook
Facebook posts generate link previews based on the open graph meta tags (for example, og:image) that Facebook’s link scraper extracts from each website. If these tags are missing or incomplete, the link preview will be incomplete. Note that when publishing links to these sites using Facebook, Facebook tries to fill in the blanks with the data available, so link preview results may differ.
Enter a link into Facebook's Debugger to preview how it will look when published to Facebook. The tool flags missing meta tags and anything else you need to fix.
Visit the Facebook article A guide to sharing on Facebook to check to see if your website is set up to generate optimal link previews.
If the URL was only recently published, Facebook may not have extracted the data for the link you’re trying to share. Wait and try your post again.
 

Preview Images

Images can also publish with different results depending on the social network.
Maximum file size (5MB, and 3MB for Twitter) are the only requirements for image files. Besides these, social networks accommodate image uploads in a wide range of dimensions and resolutions. This is because each social network applies its own optimization algorithms to images.
Images are optimized to look their best on each platform. Adjustments are made to best support fitting the allotted space, rendering the image in multiple sizes, and displaying it optimally on all devices and screens.
Social network platforms are constantly testing new optimization methods including image resizing, reformatting, scaling, and cropping. Because of this automatic image optimization, we recommend that you not place any overlaid text near the edges of your images.
If your image is published with unwanted adjustments, refer to the image upload recommendations from each social network:

Advocate View

Below you can see how the challenge will appear to advocates. They have the option to share to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at the same time if they are connected.

When they click to share to any of the social platform, they now can preview their post before sharing it to their networks.

When users click Edit to edit the post text, they will see the character count on the top right of the box.

Linkedin

Facebook

Twitter

 

FAQ

How can administrators track the number of social shares from the Social Share stage?

Administrators can track the number of social shares by monitoring the Program Goals section on the dashboard, looking for goals such as Facebook Posts, LinkedIn Posts, and Twitter Posts.

What happens if an advocate shares content on more than one social network?

Advocates earn points for each social network they share content on. For example, if the stage is worth 5 points and the user shares the content on two networks, they will receive a total of 10 points.

Are there any character limits or restrictions for the default share text?

Yes, there are character limits for each social media platform, and a minimum character count can be set for shares. Emojis count as characters, and due to Facebook's policy updates, the use of more than one singular hashtag is not permitted.

How can I ensure that the image preview appears correctly when sharing a post on social media?

You can attach a custom image to override the default image preview generated from the linked website. Each social network has specific image upload recommendations to avoid issues with automatic optimization, such as resizing or cropping.

What tools can be used to check how a link or image will appear in a social media post preview?

For Twitter, you can use Twitter’s Card validator, for LinkedIn, LinkedIn's Post Inspector, and for Facebook, Facebook's Debugger. These tools help you see how the respective platforms process a link and identify any missing data or issues with image previews.

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  1. Priyanka Bhotika

  2. Posted
  3. Updated

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