Putting links to the blog on Facebook is a big part of getting anyone to know about the latest blog activity. When I first started the blog, there wasn’t such a clear way to get an automatic post to Facebook when a new blog post went live. I ended up using a service called Networked Blogs to identify the new posts and automatically put them on Facebook. This worked well. However, it had the same screen capture off the blog that it used each time which meant that, other than the title, no one knew anything about the post.
I wanted to have something more specific so decided to change to the inbuilt functionality in WordPress. This now allows you to link the blog to your Facebook account and automatically post something when new material comes live. I have had mixed results with this. It puts some text from the blog post up on Facebook along with some images. However, sometimes it puts a clear link to the blog itself that anyone can click on to see the post. Other times, it samples the text and images but doesn’t provide a link. That means that no one has access to the rest of the post without having to manually go to the page.
This behavior is erratic so I am having a hard time diagnosing what the cause is. One friend has pointed me at some diagnostic tools in Facebook but they seem to suggest everything should work. For the time being, I have to put up with it. If you ever see something without a link, don’t assume that is all there is. There might be something more detailed lurking just out of sight!