Do your posts include visual media by default?

Twitter and other social media use the Open Graph Protocol to construct a preview with title text and a logo or image. This is a proven technique to increase cognition and click through. So why are there so few taking advantage of this free opportunity? Avoid these five pitfalls and see how 2+2 make 5.

Lack of awareness

If you don't know what or why, it's easy to miss this opportunity. Companies and media organisations usually use images with their publicity. When combined, text and images are greater than the sum of their parts.

The Open Graph Protocol: https://ogp.me

Although outside the scope of this article, there are ample resources on the science of Visual Cognition.
https://www.viscog.psychol.cam.ac.uk/

Lack of ability

I'm fortunate in working with great visual artists and designers, by working together we deliver outstanding results.

The best organisations make this easier with documentation.
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/cards/overview/abouts-cards

Lack of testing

There's no excuse for insufficient testing. There are tools to automate testing and offer advice to get it working.
https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

Not supported

Lack of support from an existing tool chain is a tough one that's not easy to fix. There may be add-ons, perhaps requesting and funding a new feature might be an option, or changing tool chain. None are ideal.  YMMV

An abundance of caution

Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. If it's good enough to go on your website, it should be good enough to automatically associate your logo with the article.

Here's my article with examples and links so you can increase your organisations profile every time someone posts a link to your site: https://p-o.co.uk/tech-articles/how-to-add-a-summary-card-with-an-image-and-description-to-twitter-and-social-media-posts/