There are lots of good reasons to add links to your library's Facebook page, including sharing news from your library website, sharing a website you think will be helpful to your library users, or passing along an interesting article. If you just enter a URL in the post box and click on the Post button, your finished post will be visible to the public and will look like this:

Adding a Link to a Facebook Page (2)

Not bad, but let's start over and see if we can make this look a little better.

Step One: Enter the URL
To begin, key in or copy and paste the URL you want to share into the post box at the top of your page. Facebook will automatically look up the page, and bring in a title, description and (if it can find one) a thumbnail image.

The post now looks like this:

Adding a Link to a Facebook Page (1)

Step Two: Remove the URL
Once Facebook has pulled in the information from the site we're linking to, it doesn't need the URL in the box anymore, so we can remove it. The title will be the link to the article, and the post will be less cluttered.

The post now looks like this:

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Step Three: Edit the Title and Description as Needed
Ideally, Facebook would always bring in an appropriate title and description from the site that you're linking to, but depending on the site, this may not work very well. It doesn't look like you can edit the title or description, but you can. Hover over either the title or the description, and you'll see a yellow background:

Adding a Link to a Facebook Page (4)

Click on it, and you'll see that you can edit the text. Don't be creative here — this spot is generally understood to coming from the content provider, so it's not a good place for your own comments. In this case, Facebook brought in the description of American Libraries itself, and not this article. I am using copy and paste to replace that with the first paragraph of the article.

Note that this works even when the title or description is blank. Just hover over the place where the title or description should be until you find the yellow, click and you'll be able to add the missing element.

Adding a Link to a Facebook Page (5)

Step Four: Add Your Post Text
You may want to add your own message to the link you're sharing. In this case, I was encouraging people to check the library catalog to find books mentioned in the article, so I included the catalog URL at the end of my message.

The post now looks like this:

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Step Five: Check the Thumbnail
Facebook may bring several thumbnails into the post, allowing you to move back and forth to choose the one you want to use for your post. Some may have nothing to do with the page you're linking to — this is especially true with blog posts and news articles, where you might get thumbnails from other articles or advertisements. Choose the thumbnail you want, or, if there's nothing appropriate, check the box for "No thumbnail."

In this case, the only other thumbnail available for this link was just the ALA logo, so I switched back to the original image.

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Step Six: Post
Now click the Post button, and your post will be available to the public. People visiting your page or seeing the link it their newsfeed will be able to click through to the original article, click Like, Comment or Share. If they click Share, they will be posting the link on their own page or profile. The thumbnail, title and description will be passed along but your message will not — they will be able to add their own.

Note that the link to the library catalog that I added to my post is now a blue, clickable link.

Adding a Link to a Facebook Page (8)

Schedule a Post
If you don't want your post to show up immediately, you can click on the clock icon in the lower left of the post box to schedule it to appear at a particular date and time.

Facebook Schedule Post