Attaching images, videos, and other media to your posts
When scheduling posts, the options for including media will vary depending on the social network you're sharing to. The table below outlines the types of media you can include for each network, as well as how many images you're able to include.
| Link preview | Suggested media | Image upload | Video upload | GIF upload | |
| ✓ | ✓ (*10) | ✓ (*10) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | |
| ✓ (*10) | ✓ (*10) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | ||
| X/Twitter | ✓ | ✓ (4) | ✓ (4) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) |
| ✓ | ✓ (9) | ✓ (9) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | |
| ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | ||
| TikTok | ✓ (1) | ||||
| Google Business | ✓ (1) | ✓ (1) | |||
| Mastodon | ✓ | ✓ | ✓(4) | ✓(1) | ✓(1) |
| YouTube | ✓ (1) |
* When scheduling to both Facebook or Instagram and another social channel via Buffer's Omnibox, you can upload up to 10 images but when you click the Customize for each network button, only the number of images permitted for that social channel will populate. For instance, if you're scheduling to both Facebook and LinkedIn and you upload 10 images, when you click Customize for each network, you'll see that only 9 of your images show within your LinkedIn composer while all 10 show up within your Facebook composer. This is because it's only possible to publish 9 images at a time through LinkedIn.
- It's only possible to upload one type of media at a time. For example, if you upload a video, you won't be able to upload images to that same post.
- Did you know you can also copy/paste images into the web composer? Try it out!
This article contains the following sections:
Video walkthrough
In the video below, Katie, from our Customer Advocacy team, will walk you through the steps to schedule media content such as links, images and videos, within your posts.
Link previews
If you've included a link in your post, a link preview will be automatically generated for Facebook and LinkedIn. Link previews mirror what you would see if you were sharing a link natively to those social networks. If you prefer not to have the link displaying in the body of the post, you can remove it from the composer after the link preview has been generated.
For Mastodon, link previews can appear differently based on the way a server/instance is set up (as part of that server's theme settings), and based on your followers viewing preference settings and device. Some mobile clients have previews disabled by default, for example.
📝 Facebook only allows customization of link previews if you are sharing a link to your own blog or website and you have set up Domain Verification through Facebook. This means that if you are sharing a link to somebody else's blog or website, you will not be able to customize the link preview. Learn more about how to set up Facebook Domain Verification here.
Link previews generated for LinkedIn can be customized, meaning you're able to modify the title, description, and image if you wish.
Suggested media
If you would prefer not to use the link preview, you can click Replace link preview with image or video. We will then scrape the link you've included and pull in any images found on the page. You're then able to click on any of those images to include with your post.
Revisit the table at the top of this article to see how many suggested media images you're able to add to each of your posts.
📝 Notes
- If you decide to replace the link preview, you'll want to make sure the URL is physically showing in the composer's textbox so that your followers can access it. The image or video you replace the link preview with will not be hyperlinked.
- Please keep in mind when using the Suggested Media Feature that you are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary licenses, rights, consent, and permissions to authorize Buffer to distribute your user content. For more information please see the User Content section of our Terms of Use.
Image, video, and GIF uploads
You can upload images, videos, or GIFs from your computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, as well as certain files from Canva. We have full guides on each of these integrations here:
📝 Attached media can also take up character space in your post. If the character count goes down when you add an image, video, or GIF (as it does for X/Twitter and LinkedIn), this is a social network that factors images into your character count allotment.
Images
To see how many images you're able to upload for each social network, revisit the table at the top of this article.
We currently support JPG, PNG, HEIC, and WebP image files for all social networks, and additionally GIF files for Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, Mastodon, and Pinterest. Alt-text is available for images posted to LinkedIn. Image size requirements and resizing information for each social network can be found in this guide: Ideal image sizes and formats for your posts.
If you would like to enhance the look of or resize your images using the simple editing functionality right within the Buffer composer, kindly follow this guide: Editing your images in Buffer
📝 You can publish a post with up to 9 images in a single LinkedIn post, however, due to API limitations, we aren't able to publish LinkedIn Carousel posts (which are done using PDF).
Using hosted images
Learn more about uploading images from Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Photos, and OneDrive here.
Using Unsplash images
Want to add an image but don't have a good one in your own photo library? Our Unsplash integration lets you access thousands of free images to use in your post. Here's where to find it:
Search for an image, select the one you want and we'll add it right to your post, like this:
Video
Video size, length, and file requirements, along with choosing a thumbnail and other important details for each social network can be found in this guide: Uploading and sharing links to videos.
GIF
At the moment, we support GIFs (up to 8MB) for posts scheduled to Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Pinterest.
📝 For Instagram, GIF files will be automatically converted to a video file as long as the GIF is between 3-60 seconds.
If you don't have a GIF of your own, feel free to use our Giphy integration. You can access Giphy files by choosing Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest in the composer and then clicking the paper icon near the bottom of your composer.
If you'd like to add separate GIFs for each of your social networks, select all of the Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest channels you'd like to post to, then customize each of their composers to include the GIF of your choice.
