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Kudos to Alta for (automatically) extending their style to social previews.

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GREGG
BLANCHARD
   

One of the most overlooked aspects of building a website is social preview images. These are the default images that load in those little cards above the title when you share something on social media.

Sometimes it’s a conscious decision to not include support for those images in the scope of that rebuild, but other times it’s just a blind spot that doesn’t make the checklist of requirements.

As such, it’s very common to see social shares that have either:

  • A link with a card, but the preview image is blank
  • A link with no card because the user deleted it before sharing
  • A link with an image (which typically prevents a preview card from showing)

That last approach is really common, but the trick is that it can hurt the click rate of your link. Because when people click on the image, they just see a larger image, not the page you’re hoping they arrive at.

Social preview images and cards combined the best of both worlds: a beautiful image below your post that, when clicked, takes you directly to the link you shared.

That example from Alta is a fantastic one that I think resorts should pay attention to for two additional reasons.

First, it’s on brand.
Their design style of a white, overlaid gradient starting at the bottom corner of grayscale images is one they use as hero images on their website. So that jobs page? The preview image in that card matches perfectly.

alta jobs screenshot

This extends that brand recognition to skiers’ social media feeds and makes for a clean, visual transition between what they click on and what they see after they click.

Second, it’s dynamic.
But the coolest part is that these images are being dynamically generated using Cloudinary’s Programmable Media feature. If you look at the URL of these images, you’ll see references to that white gradient and grayscale filter I referenced earlier:

https://res.cloudinary.com/altaskiarea/image/upload/f_auto,q_90/e_grayscale/e_gradient_fade:25,x_0.4/e_gradient_fade:15,y_0.20/e_gradient_fade:30,y_-0.5/v1692808971/resources/Employment/jobsmarquee2024.jpg

Load that image as is and you’ll get this:
normal photo

But play with the gradient numbers and you’ll get this:
gradient adjusted

Or change the e_grayscale value to e_tint and you’ll get this:
tint adjusted

In other words, all Alta has to do is upload normal, beautiful photos and the site is designed to automatically convert those to perfectly on-brand hero images.

The fact they’ve extended that to their social preview images is icing on the cake.

Love this.


About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.

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