Using Twitterfeed to update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Promote Your Writing

But utilising Twitterfeed to schedule postings of your growing portfolio of goodies, outside of your working hours, and at a time most of your followers are on social media, seems to me to be a great way to keep those followers involved with your brand.

Do the personal stuff yourself. Interact with your following as you would with any customer. Let Twitterfeed take the strain out of the mundane tasks that need to be done, but you don't have enough time to undertake in a professional and complete manner, manually.

And remember: you can enhance your reputation, in the niche you target, by supplying a steady flow of material that is not yours, but does show you care about your followers, and know what it is they are looking for.

Before I start I have a warning and an apology for you.

Warning: This information, if used judiciously, could seriously increase your wealth.

Apology: This article has grown to become somewhat longer than I had anticipated. I did not realize how much information I had available, that was relevant to Twitterfeed. That said, I now point you back to the warning.

It's pretty obvious that, in order to use Twitterfeed, you are gonna need to sign-up (register). Just go to twitterfeed.com and you will see the screen above (the number will have moved on, but otherwise....). Registering is dead easy,. All you need is an e-mail account, any e-mail account: even a free one from Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail (it does not even have to be confirmed!).

But one little tip here: sign up with the e-mail address that is linked to your Twitter account. Why? You'll see later.

Where do you sign up?

Go to the top of the page. The first words on the right hand side, at the top, are sign-up. Click that, and you will end up on the 'create account' screen (as below).

Another little tip here:(by the way this is not all going to be about sending feeds to Twitter) you can create multiple accounts at Twitterfeed, so you can push different RSS feeds to different Twitter accounts. First get a new e-mail address; then set up forwarding to your main account; then set up a new Twitter account with that new e-mail address; then return to Twitterfeed to set up the feed. [I am assuming at this point that you have an RSS feed to push, if not, see me later].

Fill out the form, with the e-mail address that is linked to your Twitter (or Facebook, LinkedIn etc) account; your password; check the box if you want e-mail updates (check it: it will tell you if there is anything wrong on the account); enter the CAPTCHA and press 'Create Account'.

Or, use your OpenID account to sign up (but only if that is linked to the e-mail address linked to your.......you got it!

Your new Twitterfeed account will be set up immediately. No hassle. No going to look at your inbox, and then confirm this address - why? 'cos that's already been done when you set up your Twitter account, and you will be linked with that address later on in the process. 

Now to log in.

As you hit the 'create Account' button you will be back at the log in screen again. Scroll down the page. Below the fold, you will find the log in area (as below). Enter the e-mail address you signed up with and your password and hey presto!, you're in.

That's it. You've created your account. Now to 'Add your feeds'.

What I would like to bring to your attention here is that the title is a little misleading. My take on the way to use Twitterfeed removes the need for the word 'your', unless it is the Royal 'your'. 'Add feeds to Twitterfeed' is much better if you have any interest whatsoever in building your reputation with your followers, rather than making them think you are only interested in your own benefit.

The mastery of social media is achieved when you open up the doors and windows and offer your followers what you see around you, that is of interest to you, and therefore, by association, because they follow you, of interest to them also.

Sorry for that aside, but it is relevant to how you utilise the facilities Twitterfeed offers you.

[See an offer you cannot refuse, at the end of this article.]

Once you have entered Twitterfeed for real you will note, at the top of the screen: account, blog and careers. The last two are of interest only if they are of interest. 'Account' is of no interest as all it gives is 'change password', 'change e-mail address' and 'delete account' - you don't want to do any of those, considering you have just set up the account.

On the other hand 'help' is useful, if this article is not helpful enough. 'Sign out' allows you to do just that. Which brings us to 'dashboard': that is the baby that you will be coming back to again and again. Press it - go on, it won't hurt.

If you have previously set up some feeds you will get a listing of them, but that is not for this article. What we are interested in, at this point, is setting up a feed (a 'new feed' to be precise). Press 'Create New Feed' and you will get the screen below.

The first part of the process to add a new feed to Twitterfeed is standard and dead easy.

1. Think of a name for the feed
   It can be anything. It does not have to be the name the feed has internally, i.e. the <Title>. It could be 'qwgcbwd' for all Twitterfeed cares. But it must be unique for the set of feeds you may be entering. As this is the first feed you are entering it cannot other than be unique.
2. Enter the Blog URL or RSS Feed URL
   Panic!
   Don't panic!
   If you have your own blog or website, and have an RSS feed set up, then Twitterfeed can find it if you enter your site URL.
   If you have an account at a free article site you can find your RSS feed by going to your profile page and clicking on that strange little orange button (as seen at the beginning of the Twitterfeed 'Blog URL.......' entry panel) that has RSS, Atom, or whatever next to it, or it may be a small oblong box with RSS inside it.
   If you can't find it, go to the forum and ask 'a stupid question' or search for the answer to the question 'Where do I find my RSS feed?'.
   Once you find it, click on it. Oh dear, what's all this code? Don't worry, it is just the feed being parsed. That is, checked that it works OK by your browser. All you are interested in is the URL that is displayed in the URL entry panel at the top of the screen. It will take many formats, different for each blog platform or article site, so I'm not going to give examples here. Just copy it to the clipboard (ctrl C will suffice). Now return to Twitterfeed and paste it into the entry section.

That is the entry phase complete.

Well almost. If you have followed the instructions above, the feed will be active, as it parsed OK. If, however, you are setting up this feed before you have made your RSS live, then uncheck the 'active' box.

Now, and always do this, test the RSS feed by clicking the 'test RSS feed' button. Why, because you will not always be setting up a feed exactly as above. It is better to know the feed works now, than find out later that you have wasted time expecting the feed to send tweets or whatever, and finding that it is not happening.

If it is OK then you will get a message saying:

 Feed parsed OK

otherwise, you may get:

 Your feed might be empty or missing publish dates or GUIDs. A feed needs to contain publish dates or GUIDs in order to work with twitterfeed, see help

In this case, first check that you have typed the URL correctly. Double check.

If it is correct, and it is your code, go and check the URL parses, by copying it to the URL entry bar at the top of the screen, and hitting the 'enter' key. This will return the code up to the point at which a failure occurs. Adjust the code and try again. Rinse and repeat.

If it is correct, and it is not your code, let the team at the place you got it from know. Wait for a good version to be returned.

Note the words in the failure notice. It mentions 'publish dates' and 'GUIDs'. These are of use to you in the next section.

                                        DO NOT PRESS 'Continue to Step 2' YET

The settings available to you there, are of great importance to how the feed will function. And there are certain aspects of which are worth taking advantage.

So, press on! Press on the 'advanced settings'.

The screen opens up to show:

The first section you will encounter is 'Update Frequency'. There are two boxes to accept:

1. 'Check for new posts'
   The options are: every 30 minutes, every hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours. See below for the reasons to choose a particular frequency.
2. 'And post up to ....'
   Your choices are 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. Again see below for reasons for opting for a particular number.

How often the feed is checked can be determined by the frequency that the feed is updated, and the number of items in the feed to begin with.

1. If this is a new feed with less than 10 items in it, and it is only ever likely to have a maximum of 1 new post a day, then choose '24 hours'. Set the 'post up to' to 1.
2. If it is a feed that has more than 10 items, that has not been through a Twitterfeed feed process previously, and the feed will be updated less than once daily: I suggest that you set the frequency to 'every 3 hours' or 'every 6 hours'. Set the 'post up to' to 1 for the 3 hourly schedule; set it to 2 for the 6 hourly schedule.
   Once the feed items no longer get sent on this schedule (the feed items already present in the feed at the start having been sent), you may adjust the frequency to '24 hours' and the quantity to 1..
3. If it is a feed with tens or hundreds of current items, then the frequency should be set to a frequency at which you feel your followers, on the social media platform at which you are aiming the feed, will not be over-burdened. My own view on this is that LinkedIn can cope with a maximum of 2 feed items per day; Facebook, similar; Twitter, only limited by your considered opinion and their maximum of 1,000 tweets per day.
   I know, a single feed pushing out 5 items every half hour will only produce about 250 tweets per day, but what you might consider is creating and sending feed items from several large RSS feeds (not necessarily your own, but as I said above, I will cover that at the end of this article). That is achievable with Twitterfeed.
   In this scenario I suggest that a reasonable frequency of every 2 hours with 3 items posted each time, will give maximum exposure whilst allowing for a different set of tweep's to see posts from the feed, at different  times of day. In addition, it leaves open the possibility of multiple feeds.
   The reason for 3 posts in succession for Twitter is that this scenario seems to attract the most click-through's. The last of the three posts gaining the most clicks [no evidence to support, just experience and experimentation].
4. Any other scenario, you will have to experiment with, as I have no experience or advice.

There are 3 scenario's:

1. If the feed items are to be posted to Facebook, use the default 'title and description'.
2. If they are to be posted to LinkedIn then use the same.
3. If they are to be posted to Twitter, then use 'Title only' ALL the time.
   The reason for this is the limitation on characters available for each post. With a description added, the whole allocation of characters will be used up. So what? Well, what happens if the post is retweeted? The likelihood is that something significant will be cut off from the end of the post. That will either be a portion of the URL being linked to, or, if you are using the suffix function (see below), then some of that will be lost, and this could be a significant issue with regard to your promotional activities from utilizing that function. 

The second portion of this section is to do with the URL link shortener to be used. There are many and varied URL shortening services available: the best for most situations and reasons are: bit.ly, goo.gl, ow.ly, is.gd, snipurl and tinyurl - I could tell you why, but then I would have to shoot you (actually, it is a subject of another article to come).

For the purposes of Twitterfeed, the best, and default, is bitly. Unless you have a particular favorite and good reason I suggest you stick with bitly, for the good reason that Twitterfeed will only show you statistics and analysis of feed performance if you use bitly - good enough reason? 

I also suggest, although I do not think it is necessary to use it here on Twitterfeed, that you sign up for the bitly URL shortening service. It has other advantages - but that is for a future article.

I think there would be an advantage updating these details, as the bitly shortened URL generated for the URL's in a feed may be posted back and linked to each other, at bitly. This could have advantages.

I am not going to go into a diatribe about this - 'thankfully' you say! I am just going to quote exactly what Twitterfeed states:

'If "title & description" is selected above, we post a wall post with an automatic thumbnail.
If "title only" or "description only" is selected, we post a status update with no images.
If you want to post a full wall post, but without the automatic thumbnail, you can un-check the checkbox below.'

If this feed is for Facebook, do what you think best. At writing sites a Facebook posting will normally have a thumbnail attached to it. It's possible that would fit with leaving the option checked.

And yes it is Twitter for which this soooooper goodie is particularly powerful.

There are two options available for you with regard to 'Post content: include':

1. 'pubdate'
   For the run of the mill, single post per day feed, just use the default 'pubdate'. 
2. 'GUID' (see Wiki below)
   If, when you parsed the feed at the beginning of this process, you were told that the feed had no 'pubdate' associated with each item, then set the 'include' field to 'GUID'.
   For all other circumstances, set it to 'GUID'. 

Why?

Because the other circumstances are:

• that, if your feed has more than 10 items, the 'pubdate' will not pick up on, or post,  any of the feed items beyond 10.
• that, if you create more than one entry in a day, when the posting schedule is daily, the feed post may not be delivered to Twitter.

Using the GUID setting means that, whatever the circumstances of the RSS feed, ALL, yes I said ALL, the feed items will have their GUID checked. If they have not as yet been processed by Twitterfeed, they WILL be posted at an appropriate time and date, until such time as there are no other feed items in the RSS feed that have not been posted.

Let me give you an example that will blow your socks off:

say, someone like me has a large site, with hundreds or thousands of pages, each one set in an RSS feed, and that have not, as yet, found their way to my Twitter account. If I process it using Twitterfeed and set 'Post sorting' to 'post new items according to' 'pubdate' the only feed items that will be posted are the ten at the top of the RSS feed, the 'newest items' that are seen utilising the 'pubdate' information.
If, however, I utilise 'GUID', every single feed item, all n thousand of them, will be posted according to the schedule I set at the outset of setting 'advanced settings'.
Think for a moment what that could mean...................................................
OK, times up!
What it means is that I can 'set and go' an RSS feed with an undefined number of feed entries, that potentially were produced years ago (the extreme scenario), and every single one of them would be posted to my Twitter account, at the specified time, and according to the schedule. No more interference from me, ever. Except: when the feed items run out, and you reschedule the process using a different Twitterfeed 'feed name'.
Note I do not say different Twitterfeed account, or different Twitter account. The only thing that needs to be different to 'rinse and repeat' this process is to set up the same criteria against another 'feed name'.

But don't go running off and creating several of the same process with different 'feed name', to run at the same time. Similarly, do not set the same process to run on several different Twitter accounts, as this is likely to get your account(s) suspended. Use this wisely and it will pay you dividends.

See "bbll bbll" for a full explanation.

One last thing to do to get this powerful process working. You will see to the right of the 'Post new items.....' box a blurb that reads:

'If checked, assumes new items appear at the top of your feed - if unchecked, will scan entire feed for new items to post'

As you will have gleaned from above, you DO want it to scan the entire feed for new posts - this does not mean recently included posts, it means posts that have not yet been delivered to Twitter.

So make absolutely sure that there is no 

in the 'feed is sorted' box.

Uncheck the box so that it is empty.

After the previous bombshell, here is another pair of super-dooper Twitterfeed facilities. If you think about how Twitter functions, and how the RSS feed works, you will understand that the contents of a feed, the title (and description), although useful as they stand when posted with the shortened URL, do not lend themselves to the full functionality one might utilize when making a tweet yourself.

There is no likelihood (if the RSS feed was produced for it's primary function as a syndication of content, to be used by an individual or a website to know when, and the general content of, a new item of interest), that it would contain #hashtags (see Katiem2 hashtag article, 'What is a hashtag') or any URL other than that for the feed item.

Two uses of 'Post Prefix' and / or 'Post suffix':

1. Add #hashtags that relate to the set of feed items that will be sent to Twitter.
   For instance: add #home and / or #beauty if all the items relate to that category, especially if most of the feed items do not have those category names in their title. You have 20 characters of prefix and 20 characters of suffix, so there is plenty of room for manoeuvre. 
2. If all of the feed items are from other than your output, i.e. someone other than you owns the feed or the entries, then why not give yourself a promotional pat on the back and add a shortened URL as a suffix, that points to your profile, your website or maybe even the sign-up page for new article writers (maybe read 'Wizzley', instead of article).

Sorry, not going to write anything about this, as I have never used it. If anyone actually wants information as to how this can be used I will do the research and add it in. However, until I am asked, nicely, I shall leave it at that.

                                      Now you can press the 'Continue to Step 2' button!

This may have been a long arduous read, but I think it was necessary to underline that this service can be an extremely powerful tool, especially if you have an established portfolio of offerings that can be, or are, 'housed' in various RSS feeds. The more you have the more powerful it gets.

Even if you are just starting out and have very little to show, as yet, Twitterfeed can be an excellent way to bolster your reputation with your followers. If you are also new to the social media scene, then using content to attract, and keep, followers is a good way to start. And it doesn't have to be your content. Promoting content from others that fits with the niche you are targeting, shows you to be much better than the majority, who only tweet their own stuff. You will stand out from the crowd. It will be appreciated. 

My main Twitter account is @Humagaia

If you send me your twitter username, I will follow you so I can see what you feed me, and retweet when the content matches the demographic profile of my followers. If you follow back, and / or retweet me, and send me the URL of the RSS feed you would like promoted, I will add it to one of my Twitterfeed accounts and post your articles to my Twitter account.

I have a number of accounts each aimed at a different demographic, so your content is likely to fit the profile of at least one of them. If not, I can always set up another account, to accommodate your target market within the Twitter populace. 

If the Editor gets to this point, I humbly request that there be an option for RSS feeds to be produced that are sub-sets of my total output at Wizzley. I can then utilise each RSS feed to market the niche articles I have in those sub-sets, by utilizing Twitterfeed to post entries to different targeted Twitter accounts. Pretty please!