Sometimes you want to direct someone to a specific Facebook Post. Perhaps you’ve shared some information that you want to promote on a different network, or maybe there’s a conversation going on within a post and comments that you want to email one or more other people and direct them to that post. While you could simply share your Facebook Page URL and tell someone where to go on the page, it’s far more efficient to send them directly to the post you want them to see. While it’s actually really easy to do, it’s not immediately obvious just by looking at a post where to go.
What we’re about to review works regardless of whether the Facebook Post is text, a link, an image or even video. With the proliferation of Facebook Live video, sharing links to those videos is growing in importance!
We’ll also cover linking to Facebook posts on desktop vs. mobile, as it’s currently a different process, and recently updated! Facebook Notes are covered as well.
How to Link to Facebook Posts On Desktop
Each time you add a new post to your Facebook wall, it will look something like this:
This was a post to our Facebook Page that we shared. As you can see, under our name and logo, it says that we shared it “about an hour ago.” That is the Post Timestamp. If you mouseover the timestamp, it will display a hover-tip with the full date and time of the post. Like this:
Clicking on the timestamp will take you to a page just for that post, with a permanent URL that you can copy and paste. It should look something like this and is located in your browser’s address bar:
Be sure to highlight and copy (Ctrl-C) the entire URL to be able to link to that Facebook Post. You can now paste the link (Ctrl-V) into your email or status update.
This will work for any post in anyone’s timeline.
To save time, you can also right mouse click on the Post Timestamp of the Facebook post and click on Copy Link Address. This will put the link to the Facebook post into your clipboard which you can then paste anywhere you need it. Like this:
This is a great trick particularly if you have an important post on Facebook that you want to direct people to from other platforms. With the link to that Facebook Post in hand, you can send out a tweet, share it to Google+, or include it in an email or blog post.
How To Embed Facebook Posts From Desktop
Sometimes it’s not enough to link to a Facebook post, sometimes you want to embed it in content, like this one:
That’s a Facebook Live interview that I did with Stephanie Liu all about blogging and turning live video into blog content. It would be appropriate to embed in any number of blog posts about video and writing. And it’s easy to do!
In the upper right hand corner of the post, click on the … menu and then click on Embed. A popup window will come up that provides you with a snippet of code. Simply copy that code and paste it into your site’s content. You may need to embed it in Source mode.
Continue to learn how to link to mobile Facebook posts, as well as Notes.
How to Link to Facebook Posts On Mobile
If you’re on a mobile device, like an iPhone or iPad or Android phone, it’s going to be slightly different. That’s because most of us are likely using a dedicated app from Facebook when browsing Facebook posts. And if you’re within the Facebook app, there’s no direct access to the link for a post.
UPDATE! There’s now a way to get the link for a post right from within the Facebook app. I can’t say when this update was baked in since Facebook no longer elaborates on what gets changed with each app iteration. But now, if you’re looking at a post in your Facebook stream, and you want to grab a link to that post, simply tap the Share button and tap the Copy Link option at the end. That will put a link to the post in your clipboard which you can then hold-tap and paste into any other app or email.
Alternatively, you can use the older method of calling up the desktop version of Facebook in a mobile browser, but why would you want to?
Instead, you’ll need to open Facebook using a mobile browser like Safari or Chrome. Log in as normal (and click through the Save Browser question if you get it — a security precaution from Facebook).
Now, before you look for the post you want to link to, open the left menu by clicking on the three bar icon and scroll all the way to the bottom. Tap on the “desktop site” link to re-open Facebook in the normal desktop interface, rather than the reduced mobile version. While, technically, you could still get to individual URLs for specific posts while viewing Facebook’s mobile version, the URLs will indicate that it’s mobile and send recipients to the mobile version, even if they’re on desktop. It’s better to send them to the full desktop URL and allow their browser to detect their device automatically.
The display will likely be terribly small at this point, so you can zoom in if you need to, but you’re now able to link to Facebook Posts using the method outlined above.
Linking to Facebook Notes is next.
How to Link to Facebook Notes
Now that Facebook Notes are seeing a resurgance (see, Facebook Brings Notes Into The Future, And It Is Gorgeous), many of us are going to be composing Notes and wanting to link to them.
First, below the Note you’ll see the normal Facebook share button. You can use this to share to your personal profile, to a page you manage, to a Facebook Group, or even to one or more individuals.
Share Now (Public) will share the post immediately to your personal profile, to your default setting (mine happens to be Public).
Share… will bring up a sharing dialogue where you can write an intro to your personal share, as well as select a Page or Group you have access to.
Send as Message will bring up a sharing dialogue where you can write an intro and then select one or more of your Facebook connections.
So if all you want to do is share a Note to Facebook in some way, the normal Share button should do the trick.
If you want to share the link though, whether in an email or to social media, here’s how you get it.
On Desktop, simply click through to the Note and grab the URL right from your address bar. Each Note receives a unique URL that you can link to from anywhere else. Notes are accessible and viewable whether someone has a Facebook account or not, though there are no meta tags which means that link previews on other social networks will not look attractive. You can also right-mouse click on the date stamp within the Note and copy the link.
On Mobile, it’s a little more complicated, but there is a way. Unfortunately, it requires that you have already shared the Note to your profile, and then grabbing that link. There’s currently no way within the mobile Facebook app to get the link to a note directly. Once you’ve shared the Note, you can then go to that post in your timeline and tap the Share button and then Copy Link, just as we mentioned above.
And that’s it! You now know the secret way to link to Facebook Posts. I will continue to keep this post updated as Facebook updates and changes their app, and the ability to copy a Facebook post link evolves.
