How to Send RSS Feeds to Twitter and Facebook

The Social Media Guide25 April 2010

462 3 minutes read

TwitterFeed is a service that enables you to send RSS feeds to your Twitter, Facebook and many other accounts.

Table of Contents

You can either use your own website or blog’s RSS feed.. or any other RSS feed.. or both for that matter!

So any new content that you (or others) publish will automatically be pushed out to your Twitter or Facebook streams, via an RSS feed.

You would have seen the ubiquitous RSS icons around the web?

Well, they look like this,

RSS is very simple to understand.. I always use the pizza analogy. You can either go out and get take-away or you can have it home delivered.

Likewise when searching for new content on the internet you can either go out and directly visit a site (eg a news site).. or you can subscribe to a site’s RSS feed and have any new content delivered to you.

That is essentially what RSS is.

You may want to also check out my Really Simple RSS Guide and The Ultimate Google Reader Guide for more information on RSS.

Create Your Account

Getting setup is very quick and easy.. head over to TwitterFeed and sign up for a new account,

Confirm your email address.. then log in.

Add Your RSS Feeds

To add an RSS feed is very simple.

Simply click on <Create New Feed>,

Enter the name of the Feed (I usually just use that website’s name) and the RSS Feed’s URL.

To get the RSS Feed’s URL, just right-click on the link and depending on your browser select either,

Copy link location (Firefox)
Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer)
Copy link address (Chrome)

For more information on getting RSS feeds please check my posts Really Simple RSS Guide and The Ultimate Google Reader Guide.

Enter the RSS Feed URL then click on <test rss feed>,

You should see Feed parsed OK.. or another message advising to use the GUID setting when posting new items..

Advanced Settings

Expand the Advanced Settings section and tailor your settings as necessary.

I usually choose to check new posts every 3 hours and post up to 5 new updates at a time.

For Post Content I usually include the Title only.

You will definitely want to shorten your links.. I have chosen to use bit.ly as my link shortened, as they are currently the most widely used (and accepted) link shortened around.

If you don’t already have a bit.ly account.. go and create one now.. you will see why shortly..

Once you have created your bit.ly account.. log in and click on Account,

Then on the left hand side take note of your API login and API Key details,

Head back to TwitterFeed and select bit.ly as your link shortened.. then enter your bit.ly API login and API Key details.

More often than not the Post Sorting option will be pub Date.. if when you tested the RSS feed prior the message mention GUID, then choose GUID here..

When you are done click on <Continue to Step 2>,

Feed Services

The available services section enables you to publish RSS feeds to these services.

Publishing to Twitter

To publish an RSS feed to Twitter click on <Twitter>,

Click on <Authenticate Twitter>,

Twitter will now open up.. enter your Twitter username and password,

Click on <Create Service>,

Done!

This RSS feed will now be published to your Twitter account,

Publishing to your Facebook Profile

You can publish RSS feeds to Facebook.

To do this click on Facebook,

Now click on <Connect with Facebook>,

When the Facebook login page displays click on <Connect>,

Click on <Allow Access>,

Click on <Allow Publishing>,

Done!

This RSS feed will now be published to your Facebook profile,

Publishing to your Facebook Page

If you want to publish an RSS feed to your Facebook Page, just select your Facebook Page from the drop down list,

Obviously you need to have your Facebook Page already setup. If you haven’t please checkout my post on Creating a Page for your Business on Facebook.

Publishing to Other Services

You can also publish an RSS feed to many other services as well.

(If you want to send your RSS feeds to Ping.fm please checkout my guide on How to use Ping.fm for more information.)

If you have a Ping.fm account you can publish RSS feeds to all of their supported services as well,

To publish to Ping.fm click on Ping.fm,

You will need to enter your Ping.fm Application Key,

To find your Ping.fm Application Key.. login to your Ping.fm account.

Next click on Dashboard.. then Application Keys,

Copy this Application Key and enter it into Twitter Feed,

When you have finished adding the services you want to publish RSS feeds to.. click on <All Done!>,

Congratulations!

You have just configured a feed!

To add additional feeds just repeat this process..

Published RSS Feeds

All new posts, whose RSS feeds you have subscribed to, will be automatically published to the services you have added.. at the frequency you specified during setup.