All Collections
Embedding and Sharing
Wistia and Social Sharing
Wistia and Social Sharing

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be used to spread business messages effectively if delivered in a way that’s easy to consume and share.

Caroline F avatar
Written by Caroline F
Updated over a week ago

Social Media can drive some serious ROI if done right. The best way to do that is with media - it’s perfect for social media attention spans, so it tends to ’travel' better than blocks of text. Now that you’ve got your media uploaded to Wistia, how do you share it and track the performance on Social Media sites? This page will help. The three services we’re focused on here are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you’re not using these platforms (or you are!) and you want to share your media through other methods, such as in an email, you can use Copy Link and Thumbnail to paste the thumbnail of your media. When clicked, viewers will be directly taken to your media in Wistia!

Twitter

Twitter is, frankly, the bee’s knees. Sharing Wistia medias in Twitter is super easy. Check out how below.

Sharing Wistia Content from Your Account With Twitter Cards

Twitter’s Twitter Card functionality is pretty slick - you can play media from accepted sites inside of the Twitter stream. Super useful, as it doesn’t require leaving the Twitter stream to view your media. Well guess who got Twitter Card approval? That’s right. We did!

Inline playback on Twitter

So, you’re asking, how can I take advantage of this awesome-ness? Here we go:

Open up the media in your account that you want to share in your Twitter feed and select “Share.” This will open the “Share Link” tab in the Share modal.

If you don’t have a description for your media yet, you should fill one in before sharing. Descriptions show up on the Twitter cards, which makes them pretty useful for setting context for your viewers and piquing their interest.

Note

If your folder is currently set to Locked, you will be prompted to switch it to Unlocked. This means viewers who click through the link will be able to watch your media.

Share link to twitter

After you click to share, the Twitter modal will appear (you may be asked to login). The default tweet text is the name of the media and the description.

Once you confirm that you want to tweet the link out, check your feed! It’s like Christmas morning, except instead of presents you get your media content in your Twitter feed.

If you have a Turnstile or form on your video, Twitter will not allow viewers to submit the form when viewing the video on their Twitter timeline. They’ll need to click the link and open the Wistia media page to submit the form.

Tip

If this link has not been Tweeted out before, you may want to enter it into the Twitter card validator first. This will force Twitter’s crawlers to pre-cache your media information, so that it pulls in the thumbnail & card details on your first try.

Social Sharing Twitter Card

Keep in mind, a user will have to hit play on the media in their feed, but that magical media treat will play right inline once they do so.

Inline playback on Twitter

Facebook

When you add the link to your Wistia media to Facebook, it will automatically embed a thumbnail for viewers to click. When your followers click on the thumbnail image, it will take them to the media page of your Wistia account.

Facebook to Wistia Media Page view

First, open the media in your account and make sure it has a description! If it doesn’t currently have a description, hover over the title and click “Edit” to get started.

Select “Share,” which will take you to the “Share Link” tab in the Share modal.

Share link to facebook

Copy the URL and enter it in Facebook’s Status Update. The media thumbnail and description will be pulled in and ready to share!

Facebook video status

Once you share the update, the media thumbnail will appear instantly in the Facebook news feed.

Note

Looking to have your Wistia medias play inline on Facebook? Head on over to our Publish to Social page to learn how you can make this happen!

Updating Your Thumbnail or Media Title on Facebook

Sometimes you’re just not happy with the thumbnail that displays for your media, it happens to all of us. So you head to the Customize panel and update that beautiful thumbnail. Super easy, right?

But when you go to Facebook the new information doesn’t show up for your media no matter how many times you reload the page or repost the media. Bummer!

Stay calm, media friend. The good news is that we’ve got a solution: The Facebook Debugger!

The Facebook Debugger allows you to input your media’s URL so that Facebook will re-scrape it for its metadata (like the media thumbnail and title). When you share content on Facebook, the shared page often contains Open Graph tags that tell Facebook which information about your media to display for your post. OG tags include your thumbnail, as well as things like the title and description.

The problem with updating your media information is that Facebook will only automatically re-scrape this information every 30 days. When you put your media’s URL into the Facebook Debugger, you are letting Facebook know that it should re-scrape your media’s metadata. This will update its cache for your media and display all your brand new information. 👍

Posting to Facebook from Your Website

Note

Be aware, this is technical territory!

Maybe you want to post your thumbnail to Facebook, but you want the link for it to point back to your website? If so, you can use the Open Graph tags we produce for ’public' medias to accomplish this. Facebook uses the Open Graph tags to specify what content from the website should be posted.

To do this, first embed the media on your website. Make sure your folder is unlocked, and add a description (descriptions are covered in the media above).

View the source on the media page, and look for all of the tags of the form:

<meta property="og:xxxxxx" content="...">

(there should be ~8 of these tags)

Here’s a screenshot:

OG tags

These are the Open Graph tags we have created for your media. You will need to change the og:url tag to be the URL of the page where you have embedded the media (and are putting the OpenGraph tags).

Add these to the head of your website, and then share the URL of that page on Facebook.

You’re good to go!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn currently accepts Wistia link & thumbnail embeds within some areas of its platform, specifically Posts and LinkedIn Pulse Articles. Embedding Wistia medias in profiles is not supported by LinkedIn at this time.

To embed your media on LinkedIn, all you need is the media’s Wistia URL or Social Sharing link. Something like: https://private-sharing.wistia.com/medias/z18mbi6ve1.

Medias embedded in LinkedIn Pulse articles or Posts will embed a thumbnail image with a title, description, and link to your media in Wistia. LinkedIn does not support inline embedding of Wistia-hosted content in Posts or Pulse articles, so medias embedded there will not play inline on the LinkedIn feed.

Tip

Made a change to your media such as updating title or thumbnail, and LinkedIn is still showing the old version? Not to worry, just pop that media URL into the LinkedIn Post Inspector and LI will re-scrape the video for the latest metadata.

Note

Looking to have your Wistia medias play inline on LinkedIn? Head on over to our Publish to Social page to learn how you can make this happen!

Domain Restrictions and LinkedIn

Are you confused about why your domain restricted media won’t play on LinkedIn even though you’ve added linkedin.com to your allowlisted domains in Domain Restrictions?

Don’t worry, we were confused about this for a while too. But we figured it out!

To enable playback on LinkedIn while using Wistia domain restrictions, you’ll need to add cdn.embedly.com to your list of allowed domains on the Account > Settings > Account > Domain Restrictions section in Wistia. This is because LinkedIn uses Embed.ly to enable playback, so their CDN needs to be allowlisted in addition to linkedin.com.

Note

Heads up, there is one caveat to using Embed.ly to bypass domain restrictions for LinkedIn. Adding Embed.ly to the list means that your medias will be able to embedded anywhere that uses Embed.ly to enable embedding.

Link to a Specific Time

Want your media to start a specific time?

To share your media at a specific time navigate to the “Share” modal. In the “Share Link” tab under the URL, you’ll see an option to “Link to a specific time.” Clicking the box will automatically link to wherever you’ve paused the media. You can also manually edit the time stamp.

Copy Link and Thumbnail

Copy Link and Thumbnail allows you to essentially copy the thumbnail of the media itself (along with the play button), and includes a link back to the media’s media page in Wistia. When a viewer clicks to watch the media, they’ll be taken to view it right in Wistia! In order to copy the link and thumbnail of your media, you’ll want to:

  1. Head to your media’s media page in Wistia.

  2. Right-click within the media.

  3. In the Context Menu that pops up, select Copy link and thumbnail.

  4. Paste the code where you would like viewers to see the thumbnail, and you’re all set!

Note

Depending on the platform, you may need to paste the Copy link and thumbnail code into an HTML box for the thumbnail to render correctly.

Sharing Podcast Episodes

You can share your podcast episodes to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites using a direct link. Click here to learn how to share your podcast episode!

Did this answer your question?