Social Network Share Tools
- Michael Kalnicki
- Joe Aldrich
- Sam Louk
You can use the page builder’s social network tools to insert buttons into your campaign page that allow your supporters to share your campaign content via Facebook, Bluesky, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and X.
When first adding social share buttons to a page, they may not display unless you’ve updated the settings.
Adding social share functionality to your page
The content your supporters will share using the social share buttons is set on the page. To add or update your content, open the toolbar, select Social details and click Settings.
Managing your social share settings
Once you’ve clicked settings, you’ll be shown a new screen where you can begin editing the social share settings.
Social Share Settings - General
Under general settings, you can update the page's share title, description and add a campaign image.
These details appear when the content is shared on social media using the social share function on your page or autoresponder email, and when the page URL is shared in another application.
Facebook Social share example: | Bluesky social share example: | WhatsApp link sharing example: |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Social share settings - URLs
These settings allow you to set the shared page, add custom URLS and create unique tracking parameters for social sharing.
Choosing the page you want to share
The social share function allows you to choose between sharing the current page or an alternate page.
By default, the setting is set to share the page you’re working on. However, by answering No to - Is this the page you wish to share with your social networks - you’ll be asked to choose between sharing:
Another Engaging Networks Page (from a drop-down menu)
An external URL (by typing the URL into the field).
Provide a custom URL
This function is designed to help reduce the character count by allowing you to use a shortened custom URL for Bluesky, WhatsApp and X by selecting the appropriate radio button.
A third-party link shortening service will be needed to create a shortened URL.
Once enabled, you can enter a custom URL or copy the existing page URL with the corresponding channel parameter added to use on a link shortening service.
Channel parameters added to URL by default:
Bluesky: ?en_chan=bs
WhatsApp: ?en_chan=wa
X: ?en_chan=tw
You can’t use custom URLs or tracking parameters, and marketing channels together.
Tracking Parameters and Marketing Channels
This function enables the tracking and channels functionality within your social share buttons.
This function can be used instead of custom URLS by selecting the tracking parameter from the dropdown menu. If the parameter is associated with a Marketing Channel, that column will automatically populate or show as “Unavailable”. If the Marketing Channel is available, you can copy UTM parameters from the marketing channel by clicking on the orange button in the UTM parameters column.
UTM parameters will add UTM medium and source as defined in pages > component > marketing channels, and the UTM Content will be the page name.
Social share setting - Facebook
When using the Facebook social share button, whether creating or updating content, it’s always recommended to use the Facebook Debug function, which is available under this social share setting.
How to use debug via Facebook:
Select debug via Facebook
In Facebook’s Developer Tools, select debug and fetch new information:
If successful, Facebook Developer tools will show a preview of your post:
Social Share Setting - Bluesky
This setting allows you to create custom content for your Bluesky sharing posts. This works in conjunction with any URL settings you’ve added.
Bluesky example post using Custom URL and custom content: | Bluesky example post using Tracking parameters and custom content: |
|---|---|
|  |
Social Share Setting - WhatsApp
This setting allows you to create custom content for your WhatsApp sharing posts. This works in conjunction with any URL settings you’ve added.
WhatsApp example post using Custom URL and custom content: | WhatsApp example post using Tracking parameters and custom content: |
|---|---|
|  |
Social share setting - LinkedIn
When using the LinkedIn social share button, whether creating or updating content, it’s recommended to use the Preview via LinkedIn function, which is available under this social share setting.
How to use Preview via LinkedIn:
Select Preview via LinkedIn
If successful LinkedIn Post Inspector Tool will display your post
If you select a share image, your LinkedIn post will not appear with the share description.
LinkedIn post without a share image: | LinkedIn post with a share image: |
|---|---|
| 
|
Social Share Setting - X
This setting allows you to create your post content to accompany the page URL on X or to turn your post into an X card.
X post without X card enabled | X post with X card enabled: |
|---|---|
| 
|
To create a post without an X card, to accompany your page URL, type the content into the textarea box. Alternatively, to create an X card, add in the copy for your post and then select Enable X card settings.
Once you’ve enabled X Cards, you can complete the following:
X site: Add your organisation’s X handle in here, eg @YourCharity
Card title: This is the title and will go across the card image
Card description: X no longer requires this; instead, add copy into the Post textbox
Card image: Upload an image to be displayed in the Post
Card image alt text: Type alt text to describe the image
When using X cards for social share buttons, whether creating or updating content, it’s recommended to use the Preview via X tool to ensure your X card functions correctly.
How to Preview via X:
Select Preview via X
Enter your page URL and select the preview card.
If successful, all the metadata will be marked in green.
If UNSUCCESSFUL: Due to continual improvements in Engaging Networks site security, X cards are disabled for clients as standard, as the X card security standards do not support the latest certificates. If you require X cards to be reinstated, please contact support@engagingnetworks.community
Also, be aware that X caches the images used on X cards, which can cause issues when duplicating pages.
Adding the social share buttons to your page
Once you’ve updated the page settings, you can add your social share buttons to your page by opening the toolbar and selecting Social details to drag and drop the share button onto the required area on your form.
Share button settings:
Once you’ve added your share buttons to the page, you’ll be able to enable and disable the channels you wish your content to be shared on and select how you want the social channel to open:
Same Tab: Takes supporters away from your page
New Tab: Keeps your page open and moves supporters to a new tab
New Window: Keeps your page open and opens a new version of the supporter's browser.
You can also adjust the stylings and choose between four different styles of button images and one customised option, where you can add your button images by selecting the pencil icon over the logo.
Standard:
Bevel:
Simple:
Black:
Custom (Use pencil icon to upload your custom icons):
Adding social share buttons to your autoresponder emails
As well as adding social share buttons to your page, you can also add them to your autoresponder emails without needing to adjust the social share settings.
To add social share buttons to your email, select Insert social share button:
Then insert the appropriate buttons:
Testing and troubleshooting
Always test your social sharing buttons in both demo and live mode before sharing a page publicly, to ensure that all the correct content is being posted..
Demo mode vs live mode
When the page is in demo mode, you are sharing the “demo” URL of the page. This isn’t the live URL, Facebook will consider it an entirely different page. Therefore, you may want to test that the live URL is also generating the correct post. To do this you can submit the live pages as if you were a supporter, or if you want to “skip” to the thank you page you can adjust the live URL to force that page to show (by changing the last number 1 to the page number of the thank you page, e.g. 2).
Facebook caches URLs, which means that once a URL is processed it will semi-permanently store a post against a URL. This is to speed up its software. But, if you go on to change your social settings, Facebook will not immediately pick this up and might show your old post. Therefore you need to tell Facebook to re-cache it, so it takes another look. Most issues with Facebook can be fixed by completing the debug process as outlined above.
If you still have issues, it could be that the URL you are re-scraping is not exactly the one being shared. Remember, Facebook treats each variation of a URL differently. If you are using tracking IDs, then ensure you take that into account and scrape them as well.
Also, our sharing tools can add additional tags to the end of the URL, which are similar to this (amend this to use your default locale):
?en_chan=fb&locale=en-GB
Again, this can make the URL unique, and that’s the one you need to scrape.
X Cards
If your X cards aren’t displaying, it’s likely because you are on the latest security certificates for your hostname. By default, Engaging Networks SSL certificates use the latest version of TLS (Transport Layer Security) available, which at this time is TLS 1.3. Unfortunately, X Cards are not compatible with this version of TLS, and for certificates where TLS 1.3 is used, the cards will fail. Clients can request that their hostnames be reverted to TLS version 1.2 to rectify this issue; however, please be advised that this issue is not a long-term fix, as TLS 1.2 is a failover protocol that may well become deprecated in the future.
If your X cards are not displaying correctly, it’s recommended to run the URL displayed in your post through the X Developer Tool https://cards-dev.x.com/validator, following the steps outlined above.
Open graph tags
If you are interested in how our social tools work, they add “open graph” tags to your page. These tags are read by social networks to determine your page’s title, description, associated image and so on.
The following is an example of the types of tags that might be added to the area of your page by the page builder:
code class="html"><meta name="title" content="Tell your MP you want to save the whales"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="Tell your MP you want to save the whales"/>
<meta property="og:description" content="Email your MP and let them know that whales and dolphins need our help"/>
<meta name="description" content="Email your MP and let them know that whales and dolphins need our help"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/whale.png"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://actnow.ca.engagingnetworks.app/page/12345"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="https://actnow.ca.engagingnetworks.app/page/12345"/>
<link rel="image_src" href="http://example.com/whale.png"/>The title is taken from your page’s title, the URL from your page’s URL, but the other tags are inserted by the social tools.
When you post the link to Facebook, for example, it will take the og:title, og:description and og:image tags and use them to construct a post. This is why it is important not to hard-code these into your HTML template yourself.