Posting your blog posts to Facebook automatically

You can use your blog’s RSS feed to automatically add new blog posts to your Facebook Fan Pages. Matt Wildman, LSE Careers Service, explains the options.
There are several applications you can use to feed blog posts to Facebook.  Each one displays the posts on your page’s wall, so that everyone that ‘likes’ your page will also see your posts in their newsfeed.  Some tools provide the option to create a separate ‘Blog’ tab on your page and some allow people to subscribe to your blog and give you user statistics.

Why should I add my blog posts to Facebook?

1. Increase your readership. Facebook will increase the number of people who see your blog posts.
2. Maximise your effort. Automating the process saves you time.
3. Adds more content to your Facebook Fan Page.

Before You Begin

Some considerations before setting up:

• Will you be sending too much content to your Facebook page? Having too much automated content can look lazy and might cause people to ‘unlike’ your page if you crop up too much in their newsfeed. If you publish blog posts frequently (3 times a day or more) then think about this next point.
• What kinds of blog posts do you want to appear on Facebook? It can sometimes make your page look less appealing if all the information on your wall has come from one place. Instead, you could choose to tag certain blog posts with a ‘Facebook’ tag and just send the feed for that tag to your Facebook page. You could use this alongside Facebook’s link, video and event sharing features so not all content comes from your blog.
• How much of your blog posts do you want to show on Facebook? If you want to direct readers away from Facebook to your actual blog then you don’t really want them to be able to view complete posts within Facebook; perhaps just a title and a snippet of text.

Applications for Adding Your Blog Posts to Facebook

1) Facebook Notes
Facebook’s in-house blogging application. Works reliably with no branding/marketing but does display the posts in their entirety. Generates an RSS feed which people can subscribe to outside of Facebook. No stats on subscribers but interactions with Notes within Facebook is reported via Facebook Insights. Probably the biggest downside is that you can only import one RSS feed into Facebook notes.

• Log in as your page (Account > Use Facebook as page)
• Go to www.facebook.com/notes.php
• Click ‘Edit import settings’
• Type in full URL of blog RSS feed

2) Networked Blogs
One of the applications we currently use on the LSE Careers Facebook page.  Getting it set up is a fairly complex process but once this is done it seems to work really well. Allows people to subscribe both within Facebook and externally and provides stats on subscribers. Creates a ‘Blog’ tab on your page but doesn’t display full posts – all links take users to your blog itself.  Option to post blog to Twitter too. Facebook posts contain some branding.
Whilst all of these applications display one image included in your blog post, Networked Blogs can display a small screenshot of your blog with any posts that don’t contain images which can ensure your blog posts always look a bit more appealing and eye-catching.

• Visit apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/
• Click ‘Register a blog’ and follow the on screen instructions carefully
• It helps if you are the author/owner of the blog (otherwise you have to request permission the register it)
• Repeat for each blog you want to post on Facebook

3) RSS Graffiti
Similar to Networked Blogs in that you can feed more than one blog (or other RSS sources such as social bookmark feeds) to your wall with some branding and just a snippet of each post. However there’s no option for users to subscribe directly and getting set up is fairly complicated.
The ‘Wallpaper’ tab it creates is a nice idea and can be used as an effective Welcome page or landing tab. It groups and displays your statuses, shared links, featured blog posts and friends’ updates, but it can be glitchy and isn’t particularly well designed.

• Visit apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/ and follow the instructions

4) Social RSS
Similar to Networked Blogs and RSS Graffiti but benefiting from a quicker and easier set up and subscription options. However, posts are very long and contain lots of unnecessary ‘meta-data’ (publish date, source of feed etc.) and promotion of Social RSS’s other services.
There can sometimes be a significant delay between posting on your blog and the post appearing on Facebook. However this app is stable enough to be a good beginner’s option.

• Visit apps.facebook.com/social-rss/tabsettings.php
• Select your Facebook page in the ‘Quick Select’ menu
• Fill out the online form with your feeds and desired settings

5) Involver
The third party application developer Involver make a wide range of free Facebook applications including an RSS app which you can use to feed your blog to Facebook, a Twitter app which displays your Twitterfeed in a separate tab, a Flickr app, document viewer which lets you display PDFs, Word Docs and spreadsheets on Facebook and Youtube app. Well worth checking out.