Whether you want to automatically post to Twitter or Facebook from your or anyone else’s blog, IFTTT, or If This, Then That, makes it really simple. IFTTT (rhymes with gift) is the ultimate automation app that you can use to connect and play with various online platforms. It’s one of the neatest aggregate uses of APIs I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been using it for a couple of years now for all sorts of things.
Here are instructions for automatically tweeting to your Twitter account whenever a post is made to any blog that has an RSS or Atom feed. Instructions for posting to Facebook are pretty much the same:
Sign up for and confirm your IFTTT account
Go to ‘My Recipes‘ in the main menu
Click on the Create Recipe button
Click on the highlighted ‘This’ to get started
Choose ‘Feed’ as a trigger channel
Select ‘New feed item’, and enter an Atom or RSS feed URL, e.g., http://feeds.feedburner.com/mtlseo (The Springboard SEO Blog RSS feed), then click on ‘Create Trigger”. If you can’t find a blog’s feed URL, a quick way to find it is to view page source on any page of the blog, and CTRL-F for either RSS or Atom. To find the feed URL of a YouTube Channel, go to the channel, or any video on the channel, and CTRL-F for the the attribute that precedes the id: data-channel-external-id. The YouTube channel’s feed URL will be in the form https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=XXXX
A new window will appear that shows you’ve set a new feed item from http://feeds.feedburner.com/mtlseo as your “this” – now click on the highlighted “That”
Choose Twitter as your action channel, and click on ‘Connect’
In the window that appears, grant access to your Twitter account, and continue to the next step
Choose ‘Post a Tweet’ as an action
Add optional text to the ‘Complete Action Field’, e.g., ‘New post from @SpringboardSEO’ and click on ‘Create Action’
The next window with present you with your recipe:
If new feed item from http://feeds.feedburner.com/mtlseo, then post a tweet to @YourTwitterAccount
Add any optional hashtags, e.g., #SEO
Click on ‘Create Recipe’
Your new recipe will be added to your ‘IF’ recipes, and will tweet new blog posts from the RSS or Atom feed to your Twitter account until you edit, pause, or delete it.
One of the many cool features in IFTTT is that you aren’t limited to playing with social media. Far from it. You can trigger actions between over 200 channels.
What tools do you use to automate posts to Twitter and Facebook? Let me know in the comments!
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