Clearing LinkedIn & Facebook Cache

To my fellow marketers out there doing postings on social media all day every day. Have you ever find yourself in a situation when you reuse a piece of content, change the featured image and post it up on LinkedIn and Facebook, only to realize that the featured image pulled by Facebook and LinkedIn is not the updated one? Next, you will go hitting the refresh button several times but the featured image just choose to stay the same. And you'll be like...

Don't worry. I've got your back.

The reason why your featured image stays the same even though you hit the save and publish button on your website article is because Facebook and LinkedIn had already cached the previous featured image of the webpage article that you just updated.

Note* Clearing the cache on your Google Chrome or Firefox will not work

So.. What's the solution?

Facebook Debugger

Use the Facebook Debugger to clear your webpage cache on Facebook.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

1. Go to the Link above and drop in your the URL that you are having issues with
2. Click on debug
3. Facebook Debugger will fetch the cache results and display your old featured image
4. Click on "Scrape again" to recache your URL.
5. TA..DAAAA. your new featured image is now updated on Facebook.

Wait..what about LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Cache Clearing

Unfortunately, there isn't any debugger tool for LinkedIn. But there is still a way out.

The only way to clear the LinkedIn Cache on your article webpage is to trick LinkedIn into believing the webpage that you are trying to post is a new one.

This can be done by adding an additional variable to the link. Fret not, this will not affect your webpage. The additional variable will force the metadata of the webpage to be re-fetched

What you need to do:

Add in variables at the end of the URL. E.g. ?1

Note* If you were to change the featured image again next time you just have to change the number

E.g. ?2 or ?3 or ?4

And...

That's it! Now, your new featured image is up and running, you can now reach better and broader audiences. If you find this post helpful, don't be afraid to hit the like button and share this with your fellow marketers out there.