I was writing a post about the importance of including images in posts with embedded video’s recently and discovered a great little “hack” to hide said images so that only the thumbnail would show up when shared. This post is the result of that discovery, it solved a long standing issue that I had with video only posts. If you also had come across this issue the video tutorial in particular will be very valuable. There is actually a hidden image immediately after this paragraph, view the page source if you want to see it or watch the video to see how it was done.

The problem with embedded video posts

Posts with only embedded video and no pictures do not display as nicely when shared on Facebook, Linked In and other similar sites.  For example, when I share a post without an actual image included, these are my thumbnail choices:

None of these are appropriate in most cases as they do not represent what I am posting about. The thumbnail should represent what the post is about, here is a good example:

In the example above the image represents the 2 Year Anniversary of Waxing Unlyrical (Shonali – that’s 3 days in a row, inside joke sorry readers). With the two candles you really get the gist of what the post is about before reading it, the image ties in perfectly with the title and what the post is about. The example above is clean and professional.

The solution is simple – an appropriate but hidden image, this video will show you how you do it: