Social Cards for Every Page, So Links Look Right on Every Platform
Paste a link to your actor website into a message, a post or an email and the platform builds a little preview card: an image, a title, a line of text. You can now decide what goes on that card, page by page.
Why the default was letting you down
When a page does not say what its preview should be, the platform guesses. The guess is typically the first image it can find, which on an actor site is often a logo, a background texture or a navigation icon, paired with whatever text happens to be near the top.
The result is a link that looks broken. Not dramatically broken, just slightly off, in the way that makes people scroll past. Given that you are usually sharing your site at the exact moment somebody has agreed to look at it, that is an expensive moment to look careless.
What you control now
- The image. Per page. Your reel page can show a still from the reel. Your photos page can show your best headshot. Your home page can show whatever you want a stranger to see first.
- The title. Independent of the page heading and of the search title, because a social audience and a search audience are not the same people.
- The description. One sentence. Written for somebody scrolling.
Leave any of them blank and we fall back sensibly: your headshot, your page title, your short bio. The fallback is now a good deal better than the old guess even if you never touch this screen.
Image sizing, without the tedium
Social cards want a wide image, roughly 1200 by 630. Your headshot is portrait. Rather than making you crop things, we generate a correctly proportioned card from whatever you upload, keeping your face in frame. If you want precise control, upload a wide image yourself and it is used as-is.
The related feature for in-site thumbnails is covered in uploading a thumbnail for any page.
Where this pays off
Anywhere a link travels without you attached to it. A producer forwarding your site to a director. A friend posting about your show. Your own email signature. A message on a casting platform. In each case the card is doing the introduction, and a good one buys you a few extra seconds of attention.
It also tightens up the rest of your social media presence, where consistency between what people see on a platform and what they see when they click through is most of the battle. Our piece on maintaining a consistent online presence makes the wider case.
Check yours
Send yourself a link to your home page in any messaging app and look at what appears. If the image is wrong, fix it now: it takes a minute and you will be sharing that link for years. Nothing to share yet? Create your free actor website and it will have a proper card from day one.
