Social media post preview

Why preview a post before you schedule it#

Most people read a post in the feed, not on its own page. What they see there is a cut version: the first lines of the caption, a cropped image and a more link. A post that reads well in a text editor can lose its point at the fold or its headline at the crop. Seeing the feed card first lets you fix that before the post goes out.

What each card shows#

Each card counts the caption against that network's limit, with the same counting rules as the character counter, and turns red when the text is too long. It cuts the text where the feed usually folds and keeps your line breaks. Instagram crops the image to the ratio you choose. X, LinkedIn and Facebook show it at its own shape within a range and crop only very tall or very wide images, from the centre.

The networks do not publish their fold positions. The folds here are approximations from published measurements, which differ by device and layout, so leave some room around them.

Write for the fold#

Put the hook in the first line, before the fold, and keep the first lines short. Hashtags and links belong after it. On Instagram the name comes first in the caption line, so the first words of the caption have even less room.

Mockups for approval#

Download PNG saves a card as an image you can send to a client or teammate for approval. To publish the post to every network at once, schedule it with PostBoost.