A social preview of a video is the thumbnail that the recipients see when an experience is shared with them via a social messenger
When creating/ editing a video template, you can customise the social preview under Meta Data. To learn how to create a social preview, please refer to the linked article.
Through this hack we will demonstrate how you can use a personalised image template in the social preview for a video. Not only will your preview text be personalised, but so will your video thumbnail!
Please note: When creating/ selecting your Image template, you must ensure that the variables used in the image template are a subset of the variables used in the video template that you are setting up the social preview for.
For Example-
Our Video template employs 2 variables :
USERNAME
DOMAIN
Our Image template employs only 1 variable:
USERNAME
If we add any other variables, besides DOMAIN to the Image template, we will also need to add those variables to our Video template via the Enlist Variables tab.
Let us now walk you through how you can use a personalised Image in the social preview:
1. Start by selecting your image template. You can use any Image template from the Public or My template libraries.
You can also create a new Image template should you wish to.
2. From within the template library, click on the menu against the selected image template and select Use.
3. Next, enter a name for the campaign and launch a Quick campaign for this template.
The Quick Campaign will generate an embed code and a URL for the image
The Experience URL generated will be something like:
https://images.indusved.com/FxLvt722O
4. Append this URL and modify it with the following syntax:
https://images.indusved.com/FxLvt722O?type=it&USERNAME=Nexweaver
Where USERNAME is the variable employed in the template and Nexweaver is it’s placeholder value. You can replace these with the variable and placeholder used at your end
Please note: The URL is modified so that the values for the variables used in the Image can be manipulated and modified when it is used as a social preview
5. If you have multiple variables in your image template, your URL will be modified as:
https://images.indusved.com/FxLvt722O?type=it&VARIABLE1=placeholder1&VARIABLE2=placeholder2
And so on
Where VARIABLE1, VARIABLE2 etc are the variables used in your template
And placeholder1, placeholder2 etc are their respective placeholder values.
6. Now, proceed to edit the social preview for a video template. You can choose to Edit any of your existing videos, or create a new video template
7. From within the video editor, navigate to the Define Meta tab. Create/ Edit the social preview title and description. You can learn more about doing so here
8. To use a personalised image template as the social preview image, copy the URL as extracted and modified above (in steps 3-5) and paste it within the Image URL input box under Social Preview
9. Then, replace the placeholder values in the URL with the variables used in the Video template. This can be achieved with the following steps:
Copy the desired variable from the variable list on the top left of the social preview
Paste it in the URL after “VARIABLE=”, replacing the placeholder
In our demonstration, the Image URL becomes:
https://images.indusved.com/FxLvt722O?type=it&USERNAME=[USERNAME]
Your Social preview will now be set to a one-of-a-kind personalised image template! Every recipient receives a unique and customised video with a personalised thumbnail just for them!