If you bumped on this post then you’re probably wondering, the same question like the other thousands of web-publishers had before,“How to automatically update your blog’s feed to all your social-networking sites?”. FREE!
Technically you can do this piece by piece, meaning you can go to your social-networking site (e.g, Twitter) then use a twitter-application to sync-in your blog’s feed to your twitter account. However, that automation only works for Twitter.
How ‘bout if you have other personal sites like Facebook, Hi5, Multiply, Plurk etc? You will soon realize that doing the method above is really painstaking and eats your precious time.
For the past years, there are numerous application that claims to do the job. Although, some still requires manual-assistance. The closest tool we have seen so far and also the most popular is Ping.fm. Currently, It can manage up to 40 plus social-networking sites (including Facebook fan page’s wall updates as well)
However, Ping.fm alone is not enough, as we said earlier this post will teach you how to sync your blog feeds “automatically” to all your social networking sites. Obviously, there’s a missing piece to the puzzle. So the other ingredient to make this automation work flawlessly is to use “Twitterfeed”.
Wait a minute, I thought Twitterfeed only works for Twitter?
We thought so too, until the September update of Twitterfeed. Actually as of January 2009, they already implement the syncing of twitterfeed to ping.fm but it proves to give some hiccups with users so it wasn’t that successful. Today, we used the new feature and its works like a charm!
Anyway here are the basic-steps to do the automation. (If this is not simple enough then we don’t know what to say anymore :roll: ) Just click the pictures to enlarge.
1. First of all you need to create your Ping.fm account. Just do what you do best! Fill in the needed details and you will receive an email to activate your account. (immediately)
2. After logging-in, you should be able to see the ping.fm dashboard. If you will look at left corner, you can see the option “Add more networks”. Click that and you will see the tremendous list of social-network you can add. Choose the one what your heart desires.
Note: Today (October 17, 2009) Ping.fm added a sweet option for you to update your Facebook Fan-Page Wall Updates. If you have been using FB’s fan page, you probably been whining about updating your fan-pages wall updates automatically. Well, now you can. Just wait when the tutorial finished.
There are also instances that when you add a network, ping.fm gives you option on what to update on your network (e.g, Status updates or Microblogging Updates) In our experience, you can choose both or only one. Though the result for the automation will still be the same, so its all good.
3. Now that you finished adding your networks and configuring them, its time to do a “test of faith”. Go back to your ping.fm dashboard, and look at the Big Message Box at the right. Now all you have to do is type a simple message like “Hey Joe!” and set the option to default. Then press PING IT!
What are we looking for this test?
All the services you have added in your ping.fm must have received that “Hey Joe” message and appears on their status/wall updates. So try to check it out.
if your configuration is really correct, this portion will not really bother you at all.
***Hooray!** Now that we are all done for the ping.fm tutorial, the next part will be the tutorial for Twitterfeed synchronization to Ping.fm (so you can finally sync your blog feeds to ping.fm automatically)
1. Now, you need to register on twitterfeed. If you have an “openid” then there’s no more need for signing-up. Also you don’t need to confirm your email for this one.
2. After logging-in, you should be able to see the twitterfeed dashboard. At the right-corner select “Create New Feed”. You should see twitterfeed’s new linking-workspace.
3. Please select the “Show more service” below and select ping.fm option. By doing so, twitterfeed will prompt you to type-in your ping.fm application key. Which can be easily found on this link. (just make sure you logged on to your ping.fm okiez?)
After copy-pasting your app-key, press “Get available methods” and you will be prompt to choose either to update your “microblog” or “status”. I say, just pick microblogging though you could use status option too. In our experience, both does the job pretty well. Press “Continue To Step 2”.
4. Now, you just need to type-in the feed name of your blog (anything will do but make it at least sensible alright?). Then the most important part, your blog’s RSS FEED URL. You can use your native feed url in your blog or you can use external feed sites like (feedburner, feedblitz etc) Make sure you type-in the correct URL.
After the process, just press “Test RSS Feed” and if it says “you’re okay”. Then we are all good buddy!
5. You have the choice to select “advance settings” and by that, you will see the intimidating-looking options. Anyway, if you will read the label, you can see that its really self-explanatory.
Remember: Post-Prefix is the first word you can insert on your feed.
Example: if your Post-Prefix is Joe, then all your feed updates will have a starting word of Joe.
The same sample goes to Post-Suffix only this time, the word Joe will be on the end of your feed updates. This is great for hashtagging or for other sorting purposes.
6. Then just press Update Feed. and voila! we are finished!
Notes:
Usually twitterfeed updates every 2 hours, so when you post a blog you expect to see a feed-update after that given duration.
All you have to do now is sit and create a post with your blog and drink your favorite latte’ for awhile. Return after 2 hours and behold! all your social-networking wall/status updates has your blog’s feed in it!
How sweet :)
Reminder:
There are some instances (seldom) that twitterfeed takes about 12 hours to updates your feeds especially if there’s a lot of traffic going on. I say, patience is a virtue.
The reason why we are sharing this tip, is because nowadays, there are some so-called proclaimed “seo gurus” that charges people for a hefty amount of cash (over 50 USD) just to post someone’s feed-updates on their social-networking accounts. Now, you know there’s a simple, FREE solution!
Oh by the way, feel free to repost this one just link the source to us. And feel free to subscribe on our feed (or mailing feed) for future updates. Enjoy!
(sources: twitterfeed, ping.fm)
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Tags: automatic updates to social networking site, blog feed updating facebook fan page, how to update your facebook fanpage wall?, twitterfeed advantages, twitterfeed and ping.fm combo, update social networking site with your blog free
Man, this tutorial is really nice! thanks for the post
I saw your post about this on DP, but got so excited – I went to do it immediately. Can’t find that thread anymore, so there was no way to thank you. Thought I would thank you here, and I’m also becoming a subscriber of your blog. That idea was mad scientist good. I hope it works. I signed up to about 8 sites, then hooked everything together, and I can add more later. I’m too lazy now to make a new blog post for testing, but I guess I’ll find out how it works tomorrow. Thanks again.
@CoCo thank you very much for the feedback Man. DP, is a little bit strict to posting tips like this one. that’s why a lot of users are jumping to another forums.
Anyway, we are glad you followed this tutorial. I must say Twitterfeed really rocks today!
thanks for subscribing :D
Very clear tutorial, thank you will use this tommorow:)
Hey,
I’m a novice to the whole RSS feed into social media concept. Does this method create a link to your blog in Twitter? Or does it just truncate your blog copy after 140 characters? How will the feed appear in Twitter or Facebook status?
Good Day,
Yes this makes a copy of your blog’s post to twitter . 1 post = 1 feed = 1 twitter link.
Example the title of a post is: Automatically post feed-update to 40 social networking sites
The twitter post will be: Automatically post feed-update to 40 social networking sites http://bit.ly/xxxx
* For your feed to appear on twitter/facebook – you’re going to use ping.fm – Just follow the steps and you should be fine :)
The good news is that http://www.postling.com/ makes even easier than the method above.
I am confused. I have several blogs on my WordPress account. Will Ping.Fm send RSS feed I establish to all my blogs? How can I ask Ping to send to just one?
Hi, sure does this will work. If you have read the post, you can put as many feed links inside the twitter feed. (e.g: If you have 5 blogs inside your WP account, you can register 5 feeds inside your 1 twitter feed account) Once you do, everytime you update those blogs, ping.fm will tweet those feeds to your social networking sites.
Thank you, but I do not believe I made my question clear. I have a Ning blog that I want to RSS to a particular blog on my WP account.
I set up a Twitterfeed for my blog and it pointed it to Ping.fm. In Ping I am only allowed to set up one WP feed not several so do I need several Ping.fm accounts?