Applying a social image for your website on TIME Sites is a very simple and quick process.
The 'Social Image' allows you to control which image is displayed when your website is shared on a social network. By default, platforms such as Facebook will scrape the first image of your homepage to display when a default social image is not selected.
While working on your site, you might run into the situation where you change your social media image but social sites are still showing the old image! Most social networks cache specific data about your posts when they are first shared to the platform, and usually store this information for around 7-30 days (although this can vary).
Luckily, you can follow these steps to clear your social media cache with these main social networks:
Enter your url and click on Debug. This will give you a snapshot of what exactly Facebook sees for that URL - the title, image, link, and much more.
To force Facebook to recrawl your page for updated information, click on the Scrape Again button. Facebook will then recrawl your page, and you should see your updated data (like images and titles) being reflected.
Now try sharing your url on Facebook again
Enter your url and click on Inspect, You will see the updated preview image
Now try sharing your url on LinkedIn again
Enter your url and click on Validate. You will see the updated preview image.
Now try sharing your url on Pinterest again
Twitter has the Twitter Card Validator. Use this tool to clear Twitter's link cache and re-acquire the data from your page, showing the most up-to-date information based on your current twitter:card meta tags.
Enter your url and click on Preview Card. You will see the updated preview image.
Now try sharing your url on Twitter again