Here is a little tip for Twitter and Facebook users. In this post I’ll show you how you can easily setup an RSS feed to post updates automatically to your Twitter account and Facebook pages or profile.
This is very handy if you want to:
- Instantly post links to your latest blog posts to Twitter or Facebook without even having to think about it.
or - Setup an RSS feeds to automatically post links to your favourite news sources and blogs whenever they are updated.
Twitterfeed Homepage
If you’re anything like me, you use Twitter not only to connect with people, but also to find new interesting articles and websites that people you follow recommend. By linking an quality RSS feed to your Twitter account, you can “give back” some of that goodness and suggest content to your followers, without having to do anything. It’s all done automatically.
Sure, you should only do this with a quality RSS feed that you are certain your followers will find interesting so you don’t overdo it.
Here is how to link an RSS feed to Twitter or Facebook:
1Go to www.twitterfeed.com
2Create your new account and login
3Create New Feed by clicking the button in top right corner of the screen
4Define your source RSS Feed – enter the name and RSS URL.
Setting up a RSS feed
- Post frequency – specifies how often should twitterfeed look for new updates. You can also limit the number of updates posted at a time.
- Post content – defines what will be posted in your updates. Only the post title (with link), Title and Description or Description only. Since Twitter only allows 140 characters in a post, it’s a good idea to limit this to “Title only” when linking an RSS feed to Twitter. If you’re linking the feed to Facebook, you can use the “Title and Description” to give your fans a bit more info about the link.
- Prefix – text that is displayed before the link (ie ”Breaking news” or “Quick tip”).
- Suffix – text displayed after the link and title (ie “Source: Mashable”).
- Keywords – you can limit the posting to titles containing only specific keywords to minimize the about of updates posted to your profile.
Twitterfeed Dashboard
5Go to “Step two” – connect the RSS feed to your services. At the time of writing this article, you can link RSS feeds to Twitter, Facebook, Statusnet and Hellotxt.
6All done. You now have an RSS feed linked to your Twitter or Facebook account and it will post new updates as they come in. You can also check how many people clicked on your links from the Twitterfeed dashboard.
Examples of how I used Twitterfeed service:
Airways Magazine:
Airways Magazine is a great publication about commercial aviation. I setup automatic Twitter updates with industry news from several sources. Now every time new story about aviation breaks out, Airways posts a link to their Twitter account. Their followers love it because they get all the updates from one single source as soon as it is published. Follow @AirwaysMagazine on Twitter.
All About Hawke’s Bay:
All About Hawke’s Bay is a regional website with news and information about Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand for locals and tourists. I helped them setup a Facebook fan page and link local news RSS feed to it. Now all their fans can get local updates straight on Facebook – a website where many users spend most of their online time these days. Visit All About Hawke’s Bay on Facebook
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