Friday, June 4, 2010

9 Places to Share Your Blog Feed to Automatically Update Your Social Media Contacts

Most of us are active at a number of social media sites. And I bet, we all have a blog (or several blogs). You are very likely to be eager to share what you blog about with your social media friends.
This post outlines the ways to automate that sharing. Someone may frown upon the “automation” part here (after all, social media sites are all about live conversation, automation is not what we want from our social media contacts.) But in this case, this is a so-to-say “whitehat” automation: we share news from our own blogs. This news are meant for our friends and we would share it anyway, so why not make the process faster?
You are probably aware of most of these ways, but this post should serve as a checklist: be sure to drop your blog feed URL everywhere.

1. Facebook

1. RSS connect application offers to add a blog or any RSS feed to your wall or boxes tab or create a fully customizable tab dedicated to your feeds.
You will be able to :
  1. Add a box to your profile wall;
  2. Add a box to your boxes tab;
  3. Create a customizable tab for your feed.
Visibility: Visible to your Facebook friends.
RSS connect application
More ways to share your content on Facebook can be found here.
2. Facebook Notes:
  • Click the Import a blog link;
  • Enter the URL of your blog (RSS) into the text box, and check the box underneath that states that you agree to our Terms of Use.
  • To complete the process, click on “Save Settings.” Once you do this, your previous posts will appear as notes and any new posts you make will automatically display.
Visibility: Visible to your Facebook friends.
Note: This way will allow your friends to keep track of your blog updates but there won’t be a link back to your actual post on your blog:
Facebook notes - import blog

2. Facebook Fan Pages

1. Simply RSS allows to automatically update your fan page wall with your blog RSS
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “nofollow).
2. Fan page notes: Go: “Edit page“, find “Notes” under “Application” and click “Edit“, then “Edit import settings” and at last provide your feed URL.
Promote Facebook fan page: import blog feed
Visibility: visible to everyone (with no actual link back to your post).
Note: Many people prefer to share links on Facebook manually for many reasons (one mentioned in #2), here’s a well-reason post on the drawbacks of autos-sharing.

3. LinkedIn

1. Blog Link is a LinkedIn Application that imports your recent posts to your full LinkedIn profile.
Visibility: visible to LinkedIn registered users.
2. WordPress is another one for Wordpress-driven blogs.
Wordpres application for LinkedIn
Visibility: visible to LinkedIn registered users.

4. LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn allows to submit news feeds to automatically post your blog updates to the group. You can manage your feeds from your group “News” tab:
Add news feed
Visibility: visible to LinkedIn registered users.
See this page for more ways to manage your LinkedIn group.

5. Twitter

There are a few tools that automatically update your Twitter stream with links from the provided RSS feed. I’ve been traditionally using Twitter Feed.
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “nofollow”).
Note: Make sure to take advantage of Twitterfeed “Advanced settings” (i.e. “Post content” and post prefix):
Twitterfeed settings

6. Friendfeed

While being primarily a tool for aggregating your social media life, Friendfeed can be used to share your blog updates as well. Go:
Settings -> Services add/edit -> (Miscellaneous) Custom RSS/Atom.
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “nofollow”).
Friendfeed share rss

7. Any Ning-Powered Community

There are plenty of semi-popular websites powered by Ning (Twitter Moms and Doterati are two widely-known examples). To share your blog updates on your profile page:
When logged in, go to your profile page and in the sidebar look for “Add RSS” link (normally under the list of your friends).
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “follow” but go to your feed posts). However if you have “Related posts” enabled in your RSS and choose “Details” when setting up your feed at Ning, you’ll end up with “follow” links to the deep pages:
Ning-community: Share RSS

8. Naymz

At your Naymz account page, scroll down and find “Add link”. Click the link and provide your blog RSS:
Naymz share RSS
Your recent posts will appear under “Recent activity” heading:
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “follow” but go to your feed posts). However if you have “Related posts” enabled in your RSS and choose “Details” when setting up your feed at Ning, you’ll end up with “follow” links to the deep pages:
Naymz share RSS

9. Zimbio

Head straight to “Blogs” tab and add your blog URL. The articles will be automatically imported to Zimbio and linked back to the original.
Visibility: visible to everyone (links are “follow”).
Zimbio Share RSS
Any other social media sites to promote your blog feed?

Written By:

PG

Ann Smarty | @seosmarty

Ann Smarty is the Director of Media at Search & Social where she serves as the Editor of Search Engine Journal. Ann's expertise in blogging and tools serve as a base for her writing, tutorials and her guest blogging project, MyGuestBlog.

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