How to use post templates for social media posts?

Post templates allow you to create automatically customized social media posts with a unique structure by defining the sequence of variables for the title, excerpt, content, and keywords as hashtags.

The post templates help you to turn your social media posts automatically into tailored posts for each network and community by customizing your default post layouts with a unique structure. The post templates can also contain static words and hashtags.  

How to edit the default post template for each social media network

Please click on "Networks" in your Blog2Social menu. Here you can edit your post template for each of your networks by clicking on "Edit Post Template".

Please note that you can edit the post templates for each of your connected platforms as well as for profiles, pages, and groups and that these settings are WordPress user-based which means that these settings can be defined for each WordPress user individually.

Available variables

You can then edit the content of your post by simply moving the variables via drag and drop into the corresponding field. To delete elements in the content field, you can click on "clear".
WordPress post/page-based variables:

• Title: The title of your post.
• Content: The content of your post.
• Excerpt: The summary of your post (you define it in the side menu of your WordPress post).
• Keywords: The tags you have set in your WordPress post will be converted into hashtags.
• Author: The author of the post.

Define the character limit for the variables "Content" and "Excerpt" individually. Your text will be shortened after the last comma, period, or space character within your character limit.

An "Excerpt" will only be added to your social media post if you have added a manual excerpt in the excerpt editing box of the Gutenberg side menu (document settings) of your post.

"Titles" and "Hashtags" are not shortened. If you select the "Title" and "Hashtags" variables for your social media posts, the character limits you define for the "Excerpt" and/or "Content" variables will be applied within the remaining available character limit of the social network.

To reset your changes, click "Load default settings". All settings will be reset to the default settings of Blog2Social. If you are happy with your settings, you can click on "save".

To check your settings, a dynamic preview will show you how your posts will look if shared with the new customized template. The preview of your posting template changes in real-time, when you change the settings of your post template.

Blog2Social will also display the content of your latest post in the preview as an example to show how your post will look with your customized settings inside the network-specific post-template configuration overlay.

WooCommerce variable

Price: WooCommerce product price (prices from the WooCommerce shop can be selected as a variable in the posting templates. This requires an active WooCommerce installation in your WordPress environment.)

With the price variable enabled, you will see the product price as a digit in your post preview. In order to show a currency next to the price, you can enter a static currency character such as “$” or “€” following the variable.
For example:
{PRICE}$ - {TITLE}
{CONTENT}

Post templates for social media networks with specific settings

Facebook

Please start by selecting the Facebook account type for which you want to define your templates:
Profile, Page or Group

Now you can select the post format for your content:
Link or Image

When choosing "Image" format there will be a box that you can tick to add your link at the end of your image post. This way your followers are also guided to your website when sharing image posts.

If you use varnish caching or another kind of caching on your website, make sure to "Activate Instant Caching". This will make sure that Facebook processes the current metadata of your blog post defined for the link-post format. To ensure this, Blog2Social will add a "no-cache=1" parameter to the post URL when instant caching is activated.

Instagram

The format affects the way how your images are displayed in your Instagram feed:
Image with frame or Image cut out

If you choose "Image with frame" your images will be scaled or cropped proportionally. Vertical images will default to white borders on the sides of the picture. Alternatively, you can use the "Frame colour" picker to select a different colour for the frame.
If you choose "Image cut out"  Blog2Social displays your image in your feed as a square.

By ticking the check-box "Add a link-URL to the end of my Instagram posts" a link to your website will be added to your post.
Please note: Instagram does not support clickable links.

You can activate the Instagram hashtag shuffle by clicking the box "Hashtag shuffle".
Each post will be then shared with a random order of hashtags.  Randomization of hashtags will increase the reach of your posts.
Please note: The hashtags have to be defined in the text field above.

Twitter

You can select the post format for your content:
Link or Image

When choosing "Image" format there will be a box that you can tick to add your link at the end of your image post. This way your followers are also guided to your website when sharing image posts.

By ticking the box "Use Twitter threads..." you can activate the threads-option for your Twitter posts with more than 280 characters.
A thread on Twitter is a series of connected Tweets from one person. With a thread you can provide additional context, an update, or an extended point by connecting multiple Tweets together.

LinkedIn

Please start by selecting the LinkedIn account type for which you want to define your templates:
Profile or Page

On LinkedIn your link will be added automatically at the end of the post no matter which post format you're choosing.

Find more options for customizing your social media posts and messages

• How do I customize my social media posts individually? 
• How do I select the image I want to share on social media? 
• Social Media Post Formats - The differences between Image Post and Link Post 
• How do I set my own time setting to post on social media? 
• How do I schedule the posting of not yet published blog posts in advance?