Publicize

Publicize makes it easy to share your site’s posts on several social media networks automatically when you publish a new post. Our Premium and Professional plan users can also share content that has already been published, and schedule their posts to be shared at a specific time.

To enable Publicize:

• Go to Jetpack → Settings → Sharing in your site’s WP Admin.
• Click the toggle to activate Automatically share your posts to social networks.

Connecting to Social Networks

You can connect your site to any of your social network profiles by following these steps:

1. Log in to https://wordpress.com, and from the My Sites menu item at the top of the page, select the Jetpack-connected site you want to connect your social media accounts to. Note: you may need to click on ‘Switch Sites’ to find the site you want to manage Publicize on.

2. Navigate to Tools → Marketing → Connections.

3. Click Connect next to the Social Network you want to connect to.

4. Log in to that Social Network site and authorize the connection.

Need more detail for connecting to a specific Social Network?

• Facebook Pages
• Twitter
• Tumblr
• LinkedIn

Sharing New Posts

To configure the Publicize options when writing a new post, click the green Jetpack icon at top right of the edit screen:

You’ll then see the Publicize options under the Share this post section, where you can toggle social media connections, connect new services, and write a custom message to be used when your post is shared.

Note: if you have Pre-publish checks enabled in your editor settings, you’ll also see the Publicize options after clicking the Publish… button.

Publicize in the Classic Editor

If you’re using the Classic Editor, the Publicize options will look slightly different. You’ll find them in the Publish box on your post edit screen when writing a new post.

If you want to toggle any of the Publicize services for a specific post, click Edit next to the list of connected publicize accounts. You can then uncheck the services you do not want to use for this post and add a custom sharing message.

How to add custom excerpts

There are a few different ways to set up different messages when your post is shared to your Social Media account. The easiest is to use the Custom Message option in the publishing options box prior to publishing your post.

To add a custom message, you can follow the steps under Sharing New Posts and Publicize in the Classic Editor.

You can also use excerpts to add a brief summary of the post which will be used in place of the post content when shared. Excerpts are also used in a few other places around WordPress. You can find more information about excerpts here.

Re-sharing your content

This feature is for sites with a Premium or Professional plan.

With Publicize, you can re-share your previously published and shared content on social media sites.

To re-share your content, go to My Sites (on WordPress.com), select your site, then go to Site → Posts and look for the post you want to share. Click the 3 dots icon next to the post, then click Share.

Click the toggle next to the connected accounts to which you’d like to share your post. That will activate the text box where you can write a custom message for your social media audience.

If you don’t want to write a custom message, you can use the default sharing message (the title of the post). When you are happy with your message, click Preview to see a preview of how it will appear once shared, or click Share post to publish it.

By selecting connected services for each Publicize action, you can craft your message according to your audiences, or use different messages for each of your accounts.

Please note that this feature is not currently supported for Custom Post Types.

Scheduling your shares

This feature is for sites with a Premium or Professional plan.

With Publicize, you are able to schedule shares or re-shares of your content for specific dates and times in the future.

To schedule shares of your content, go to My Sites (on WordPress.com), select your site, then go to Site → Posts and look for the post you want to share. Click the 3 dots icon next to the post, then click Share.

At the bottom left you will see a Share post button. Click the calendar icon beside this button to choose a date and time that you would like your content to be shared.

When you are happy with your message, click Preview to see a preview of how it will appear once shared, or Schedule to schedule the share for the date and time you have selected.

By selecting different connected services for scheduled shares, you can craft your messages for different networks, audiences, or time zones.

Please note that this feature is not currently supported for Custom Post Types.

Further Reading

 

Additional Information

• Saving a post as a Draft will not publicize it.
• Static pages will not be publicized.
• Scheduled posts do get publicized – at the time they’re scheduled to publish.
• If you use a plugin to clone or duplicate existing posts, it will also duplicate its status. If the original post is already published, Publicize won’t be triggered for the cloned post.
• Publicize works for Administrator, Editor, or Author user roles. If you’re a Contributor for a blog, you cannot use Publicize.
• When you add new connections, you have the option to decide whether it will be available to just your account or all of the other users on the blog as well. To make the connection available to everyone, just check the prompt for that at the time you add the connection.
• When making a connection available to all users of a blog, the only thing any other user on your site can do is post to the social network. They do not have access to do anything else such as getting access to the social network account directly.

Images in Publicize

Facebook and Twitter Publicize select images that are at least 200 x 200 pixels in the following order:

1. Featured image
2. An image attached to the post and inserted
3. Any other image in the post (not attached but perhaps linked)

Tumblr Publicize will display an image if your post is an image post format or if there is an image embedded within the first 256 characters of the post.

How to use Publicize with your Custom Post Types

By default, Publicize is only triggered when you publish a new post. You can, however, extend this to other Custom Post Types. You have 2 options to add Publicize Support to a Custom Post Type:

1. You can add Publicize support to an existing post type thanks to the add_post_type_support() function. To do so, add the following code to a functionality plugin:

   add_action('init', 'my_custom_init');function my_custom_init() {
       add_post_type_support( 'product', 'publicize' );
   }
   

   You’ll need to replace “product” with your Custom Post Type name.

2. You can add Publicize support when registering the post type:
   

   // Register Custom Post Type
   function jetpackme_custom_post_type() {
   
   
       $labels = array(
           'name'      => _x( 'Products', 'Post Type General Name', 'text_domain' ),
       );
       $args = array(
           'label'     => __( 'product', 'text_domain' ),
           'supports'  => array( 'title', 'editor', 'publicize', 'wpcom-markdown' ),
       );
       register_post_type( 'product', $args );
   
   }
   // Hook into the 'init' action
   add_action( 'init', 'jetpackme_custom_post_type', 0 );
   

How to customize Publicize

Publicize also includes filters to allow you to customize the default behavior with additional plugins, or via a simple addition to your theme’s functions.php, like removing Publicize options from the New Post screen.

Troubleshooting Publicize

If you are having trouble with Publicize, take a look at our Troubleshooting page, or feel free to contact us.

Privacy Information

This feature is de-activated by default. It can be activated at any time by toggling the Automatically share your posts to social networks setting in the Publicize connections section from Jetpack — Settings — Sharing in your WP Admin.

More information about the data usage on your site

Data Used
Site Owners / Users In order to process cross-service sharing of new blog content, the following information is utilized by the Jetpack codebase: WordPress site URL, site owner’s local user ID, WordPress.com-connected site ID, two automatically-generated WordPress.com secret access tokens (and the expiration timestamp of those tokens), and the post data that is to be shared (ID, excerpt, content, permalink, etc.). Service-specific access tokens (only for connected services) are also used.Additionally, for activity tracking (detailed below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.	Site Visitors None.
Activity Tracked
Site Owners / Users We track when, and by which user, the feature is activated and deactivated. We track when, and which, configuration settings are modified (and by which user). Additionally, we track a usage event when a site owner adds a new service connection.	Site Visitors None.
Data Synced (Read More)
Site Owners / Users We sync options that identify whether or not the feature is activated and how its available settings are configured, including the necessary connection data for specific services.	Site Visitors None.