You can easily embed a tweet in WordPress by pasting its URL into a new line within the Block editor. This action automatically creates a live and interactive element without the need for shortcodes or plugins. While this same technique works for TikTok, a slightly different (but still easy) method is used for platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
What is a WordPress embed and why use one?
A WordPress embed is a live piece of third-party content rendered inside your post. You paste the URL, WordPress recognises the source, and the link becomes the actual post, tweet, video or Reel sitting in your content.
Readers can like an embed, reply to it, follow the author, or click through to the original post without leaving your site. Counts and replies update over time. If the author deletes the post, your embed disappears too, which is worth knowing.
Embeds serve three jobs in editorial content. They let you quote a source without retyping it. They give the reader social proof they can verify in one click. And they break up long stretches of text with something visually different from an image.
How to embed a tweet in WordPress: three steps
The Block editor handles this with a dedicated Twitter embed block, but you almost never need to insert it manually. Pasting the URL on its own line is enough.
Step 1. Copy the tweet’s URL
On X/Twitter, find the post you want to embed and grab its link. The link you copy will look something like https://x.com/username/status/1234567890.
Step 2. Paste the URL into the Block editor
Open your post in WordPress. Click into a new paragraph block, usually by hitting Enter after your last block, and paste the URL. Don’t wrap it in a hyperlink. Don’t put it in a paragraph with other text. The URL needs to be the only thing in that block.
WordPress will detect the URL, swap the paragraph block for a Twitter embed block, and render the live tweet inside your editor. This takes a second or two. If it doesn’t happen, the URL has probably picked up an extra character along the way. Delete it and paste again.
You can also insert the embed manually. Click the + button to add a block, search for Twitter, and select the Twitter embed block. Paste the URL into the field and click Embed.
Step 3. Save your post
Click Update if the post is already published, or Save draft / Schedule for new content. Preview the post in a new tab before you call it done. Live embeds sometimes render differently on the front end than they do in the editor, particularly if your theme constrains content width.
How to Embed TikTok in WordPress
TikTok supports embeds for any public video. Open the video on tiktok.com, click the Share button, and choose Copy link. Paste the URL into a blank block in WordPress.
TikTok embeds are heavier than the others. They load a video player, the caption, the sound information and engagement counts. Expect one TikTok embed to add noticeable weight to your page. If you’re embedding multiple TikToks in a single post, consider lazy-loading or using a static thumbnail with a click-to-load pattern. Your developer can set that up, or your content management workflow can include it as a standard.
How to embed posts using the Custom HTML Block
Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn need the embed code from the platform itself, dropped into a Custom HTML block.
Meta deprecated the public oEmbed endpoint in 2020, which means pasting an Instagram URL into a blank block in WordPress no longer renders the post reliably. It usually just shows a plain link.
Open the post or Reel on instagram.com in a browser. Click the three-dot menu at the top right of the post and choose Embed. Instagram will open a modal with the embed code. Copy it.
In WordPress, add a Custom HTML block to your post and paste the embed code into it. To see the embed while you’re editing, click the Preview toggle on the block toolbar, and it’ll render right there in the canvas.
Two things to know. Instagram embeds only work for public accounts. Stories can’t be embedded, because they’re temporary. If you embed Instagram content often, the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin handles the developer-side setup and lets you paste URLs again.
Facebook works the same way as Instagram, and for the same reason. URL pasting was the easy method until Meta deprecated the oEmbed endpoint in 2020. Now you need the embed code.
Open the post on Facebook.com. Click the three-dot menu in the top right of the post and choose Embed. Facebook gives you a modal with an iframe code. Copy it.
In WordPress, paste it into a Custom HTML block. Click the Preview toggle on the block toolbar to see it render in the canvas while you work.
Smash Balloon also has a Facebook plugin if you embed FB content regularly and want URL pasting back.
LinkedIn uses the embed code method too, as WordPress doesn’t have a native LinkedIn embed block.
Open the post on LinkedIn. Click the three-dot menu on the top right of the post and choose Embed this post. Copy the iframe code LinkedIn provides.
In WordPress, add a Custom HTML block and paste the iframe code into it. Click the Preview toggle on the block toolbar, and the post renders right there in the canvas while you’re editing.
Common embed issues and how to fix them
Here’s what to look for when embeds break.
The URL renders as a plain link, not an embed. Almost always a paste problem. The URL has text before or after it, or it sits in the same block as other content. Cut it, create a new empty block, paste it on its own. Should fix instantly.
The embed renders in the editor but breaks on the front end. Usually a theme issue. Your theme is constraining the content width too tightly, or it’s stripping iframe attributes for security. Check the post in a different theme to isolate it. If the embed renders correctly elsewhere, the theme needs adjusting.
The embed shows a “Post not available” or similar message. The original has been deleted, set to private, or restricted in some way. Nothing you can do from your end. Remove the embed and either screenshot from your records or rewrite the section without it.
Page is slow to load after adding embeds. Each embed pulls scripts from the source platform. A page with five TikTok embeds is fundamentally heavier than a page with one. Use embeds where they earn the weight, and consider a lazy-load approach for pages with several.
Embed renders, but the styling looks wrong. Some platforms (especially X/Twitter) try to match light or dark mode. If your site uses one and the embed defaults to the other, it can look jarring. Most embeds accept query string parameters to force a mode. Adding ?theme=light or ?theme=dark to the URL is worth a try, though support varies.
If your site is regularly publishing content with embedded social posts and you’re hitting issues, slow pages, broken Instagram embeds, themes that strip iframe attributes, that’s a maintenance and platform issue worth solving properly rather than patching post by post.
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