How do your direct social media to use another picture when the web site is shared?

[Ron_McCabe]

I set up a web site to raise funds for my nephew(www.helpmatt.org) and social media randomly picks a picture on the share.  Unfortunately this picture is from happier times and sends a different message than we would like to prospective contributors.  Is there a way to set the picture that is used when this web site link is shared on social media?

www.helpmatt.org

[SoleGraphics]

Yes use open graph tags, which is meta data just like a title tag or meta tag for a site

Read more here.

http://davidwalsh.name/facebook-meta-tags

[justin-brock]

You need to use Facebook's Open Graph tags and Twitter's Card tags in the section. That's the best way to define what image gets shared on social media platforms, since Google+, LinkedIn and others will adopt these tags.

A bare bones approach will look something like this:

Facebook OpenGraph

(Note: There are some prerequisites with Facebook, so be sure to follow their instructions)

Twitter Card

[EricaMcGillivray]

The best image size for Twitter is 880x440px and the best size for Facebook is 1200x627px.

If it's not working on Facebook, especially if it's a page you've updated, make sure to run the URL through the Facebook debugger tool.

[Ron_McCabe]

I appreciate everyone's input. This was very very helpful ;)!