Wix blogs are fun and easy to use with just a few tips
If you have a Wix blog, you have a tonne of graphic, layout and design tools you can use for free! And I think it's one of the most enjoyable platforms to work with when you want to be creative. It's a fun platform to use and I'd like to make it as easy as possible for you to get straight to the fun stuff.
The following tips are important to understand for your work to shine in the online world.
Image sizes for Wix blogs
I often recommend that you choose an image size that displays well on social media, at least for the social share image and often this image is the first image you place on your blog post at the top of the page.
In the video above I used the current recommended Facebook size as my blog image size here which currently is 1200 x 630 pixels, but 940 x 726 works well too. If you want to create a Canva template for your Wix blog images all you have to do is create a template with "custom dimensions".
After you click "Custom dimentions" you just enter in the width and height of the image you want to create.
NOTE - when you pick an image straight from the Wix Free Image Repository within Wix, you don't have to resize the image as Wix does a nice job of that for you if you don't make it smaller after you place the image on your blog.
More from WIX here:
Adding video to your Wix blog
Adding video is easy with Wix.
If you want to add a video you uploaded to your YouTube channel all you have to do is paste the share link into your post after clicking on the video icon. Furthermore, if you want to upload a video to WIX directly from your computer, you can do that too. Just click the video icon and upload the video as you would an image and add that where you want it to appear on your blog.
Beware, Wix allows a limited amount of video uploads per plan.
The paid Combo Plan is what most new service-based entrepreneurs have and it's the most affordable paid plan that Wix offers. It's perfect for most things in my opinion but if you want to upload a lot of video to your Wix site you will need to upgrade. This is another reason why I recommend that you upload your videos to YouTube where you can take advantage of the free storage and any social traffic back to your website.
So, with the Combo plan, you can upload up to 30 minutes of video (10 minutes maximum per video) and that's it. And you can increase this limit by upgrading your plan. Additionally, I've got a link here with more info direct from Wix:https://support.wix.com/en/article/increasing-your-video-hours-in-wix-video
The social media share image for each Wix blog: AKA the cover image
The social share image is the image people see in social media when your blog is shared. In a Wix blog, your blog cover Image will be used when your blog is shared. You can edit your cover image in the Wix blog "Post Settings":
If you don't specify a cover image in the Post Settings, Wix will just use the 1st image in your Wix blog post.
Wix also uses the Cover image as the thumbnail image on your blog landing page.
What if you change your cover Image after you publish your blog?
This can happen.
If you add text to your cover image you might notice a type-o or maybe you want to change the image from one to another after you publish your blog. You can do this, however, the Social Share image attached to this post might not update across social media and when the next person shares your blog post, the old image might still be used.
Here's how to fix that!
Take the link for blog post and pop it into the following tools to see how social media will display the post. You can do this before you publish if you want to double check that your image looks okay.
This is particularly helpful when you decide to include text on your image. But you can do this after you publish your post as well if you change the original image after the blog is published.
Social media debugging tools
Each social media debug tool is a little different and some offer more detail than others.
You want to check that your blog post is pulling the most up to date information for the description, title and image you created for it. Some of these tools will show some or all of this information. After you paste your blog link into the tool you may have to refresh the tool until you see the updated information.
These tools will "clear the cache" and that just means you are telling them that you've changed information and that they can't use what they have "on file" for you. You are telling them to fetch the updated info ;-)
Other things to be aware of when dealing with Blog images
And this is something you will notice when you test your blog post links in the social media debuggers above.
If you decide to place text on your image, and that text is the title of your blog post:
- Also, create a text version of the title for the post
- Leave lots of room around the text so it won't get cut off when shared
- Look at the image on your mobile device and if it's too small to read, consider changing the text or removing it
That's it!
If you have a Wix blog -congrats. They are pretty easy to use and give you lots of fun features. With a few tips, you can get down to creating your posts and sharing your expertise in no time.
