One of the easiest ways to automate your social media is to take an RSS feed and plug it into your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles. RSS feeds can be made from just about any kind of dynamic content: From blogs to news sources to video channels.
This technique can save a lot of time, but should also be used with a bit of caution. Avoid spamming your feed with RSS content. If you want to build a real audience, it helps to mix in a bit of automated content with hand-written content.
Start by identifying the feed(s) that you want to push to your social media accounts. You can use your own feed, or you can use any feed from anywhere on the internet. Make sure that if you’re using someone else’s feed, you check your Tweets regularly to make sure that you really feel good about what’s going out in your name.
Here are four of the best services to use for RSS to social media automation.
Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is one of the original RSS to social media services on the web. They support Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
To get started, create an account, then click
Fill in the details about the RSS feed you want to add.
Click “Advanced Settings” to specify more details about how you want Twitterfeed to use your RSS feed.
Select which social network you want to post your RSS feed to.
Then authenticate the account you want to post to.
It’s that easy! Twitterfeed is 100% free, so just about anyone can use it to automate their RSS to social media postings.
ConvertSocial
ConvertSocial is a social media integration, automation and management suite with a wide range of different features. They have a 30 day free trial account, after which you’ll have to pick one of their paid plans.
To get started with automating your social media posting, create an account, then click “Add/Edit Services.”
Go to the RSS tab, then click “Add” next to “RSS Auto Poster.”
You’ll then be able to adjust your feed settings. Note that automating your social media is a paid feature. You won’t be able to access the settings screen until you’ve subscribed.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the largest social media integration sites on the web. They also have a special feature that allows you to post an RSS feed to your social media sites.
To add an RSS feed, log into your Hootsuite account. Then go the launch menu on the left, click the Settings icon and then RSS/Atom.
Click the “+” button next to your RSS feed screen.
Then specify how you want your feed to be setup. You can add the feed URL, specify the account to post to, specify how often to check for update, specify how many posts to post at each time and pre-append text to the tweets.
If social media integration is important to you, using Hootsuite for both your automation and your integration will make managing your whole social media strategy much easier.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it is a very basic service that allows you to quickly and easily post your RSS feed to Twitter and Facebook. There aren’t a whole lot of advanced features. You get the social media automation, quickly, no more and no less.
Start by creating an account. It’s a simple process: Just enter your email and password.
Then type in the URL of the feed you want to add.
Choose which social media site you want to add your feed to.
Then authorize Dlvr.it to post to that website.
Social media automation allows you to constantly update the content of your website, without always having to put in many hours of work.
Make sure you create a coherent strategy that’ll allow you to keep your users engaged, while mixing in a bit of automated content that your readers will still love.
great post Nicole! I’ve found ifttt and zapier to be very helpful tools to perform these functions as well.
Thanks Jim! I had not seen Zapier before… THANKS!
Thank you for sharing this! I use hootsuite as part of my social media strategy and was actually looking at using the rss function earlier today but dismissed it. Now I have a reason to go back and try it for my leadership blog, http://www.empoweringthe80percent.com. Thanks again!
Thanks Ellory! And I LOVE the picture on the home page of your site!
Thank you! I choose every one to fit the theme of the article. I’m glad it made a positive impression.