Have you ever gone to share a link on your shelter or rescue group’s Facebook page, and had it come up without an image? Yes, there really is something you can do about that!

First, some background.

Facebook posts that share a link with a nice, in-focus, full-column-wide image do better than posts that show without an image, or with a thumbnail. (Note: this is about sharing links on Facebook, not actual uploaded photos.)

Sometimes, however, no image displays when you go to share a post. What can you do about that?

First, close your Facebook page on your browser. Then go to the Facebook debugger at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/.

Enter the URL of the link you’re trying to share.

Click “Debug.”

Here, you can scroll down and see the error messages that prevented the image from displaying. If this is your organization’s website, make sure whoever manages your website sees them so they can be fixed.

If it’s not your website, or after you’ve copied the messages, go back up and click “Fetch new scrape information.” It should now display the post with an image.

If it doesn’t, click the scrape button a few more times. If it still displays no image, you can go back to your page and attempt to post it again, then click on the “plus” symbol under the link and upload your own image to accompany the post, which will make it more share-worthy and ensuring more people will interact with and see the post. (Note: You used to be able to do this even if the link did display an image, but Facebook removed that option.)