If you’re a blogger or website owner running your website with the WordPress platform, you no-doubt use plugins to automatically update your content to Facebook and Twitter.
If not, let’s start by mentioning the plugins I use:
- Add Link to Facebook to automatically post your new content to your Facebook profile or Facebook page.
- YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter posts new content to Twitter. By adding a custom contact field to the WordPress user profile page, you can even give credit to the author automatically in the Tweet.
Now, if you run a multi-author website, you most likely want to automate as much of the tedious work as possible and drive traffic to your website while doing so. This means not only automatically updating your website’s Facebook Page and Twitter account, but also automatically updating your own Facebook Status and Twitter status whenever you write a post/article and assisting the other authors of your website in doing the same.
ifttt.com
The most simple method I have come across in a long time comes from the website ifttt.com. What is ifttt? It stands for If This Then This. Simply, the website allows you to set up various conditions or happenings from one website or service or action or specified time, then do something else on another website or service by setting up a “Task.”
Simply put, we are going to tell ifttt to check for our new posts/articles, then publish the new post/article to our personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.
New posts automatically Tweeted
- The first thing you need to do is register on ifttt.com and confirm your email address
- Now, log in
- ifttt makes everything nice an easy for one user to share their “Task” with others, by creating a “Recipe”, made available to the public. This is exactly what I have done for you.
- First, we will set up our new posts to be published to Twitter, using “WordPress author RSS feed to Twitter” recipe.
- Click “Active” for the Twitter channel and allow ifttt access to your Twitter account.
- Lastly, simply change your website address, username and @mention of your website.
- Every time you make a new post, the title and URL will be tweeted to your account!
New posts automatically posted as Facebook status update
- Go to the “WordPress author RSS feed to Facebook status” recipe.
- Again, you will have to activate the Facebook channel and allow ifttt access to your account.
- Now, change your website, username, your name and website URL.
- Every time you make a new post, your Facebook timeline will be updated to include a link to your new article.
A few more useful Recipes for bloggers
- Thank you for the #FF – Send an automatic “Thank you” to everyone who is kind enough to Friday Follow you on Twitter.
- Automatically follow anyone who follows you on Twitter.
- Tweet whenever I post a link on Facebook.
- Automatically post Twitter messages to Facebook Page.
- Tweet starred Google Reader posts – Good bloggers don’t only share their own content, they also share good content relevant to their audience.
- Send a tweet when you upload a new video to YouTube
- Send an automatic recurring tweet
- Automatically add anyone using a specific hashtag to a twitter list of your choice
