5 Free Options for Synchronising Your RSS Feed to Twitter

 

5 Free Options for Synchronising Your RSS Feed to Twitter

Do you have endless amount of time to allocate to Social Media?
We know your answer!
Automation of social media can be very bad for your business but some automation tasks make perfect sense.  When you create a blog post you’re going to want to tell your fans on twitter about it so why not automate the creation of this tweet?  It saves a small amount of time but it’s one less thing to do.
Here are 5 tools to consider for this.

 

1 – TwitterFeed – Limited Functionality but works well

Despite it’s name, TwitterFeed supports automatic distribution of blog content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  I have previously used this functionality for about 6 months and it was always reliable.

 

Twitterfeed is simple to set up with basic but useful features.

Here are some of the high level features of TwitterFeed:

• Supports automatic distribution of content to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

• Shortens the URL using a variety of URL Shorteners e.g. Bit.ly, awe.sm,  custom URL Shorteners etc.

• Can check for new posts at regular intervals (e.g. every 30 minutes or longer intervals if required).

• Automatic thumbnails can be included in Facebook posts.

• You can automatically add words to the start or the end of any tweet sent

• Automatically takes a new blog, shortens the website address (using bit.ly or another supported shortening tool) and sends it out via Twitter.

• You can set up a filter to include or exclude posts with specific keywords in them.

 

2. Dlivr.it – Comprehensive Functionality

Considering it is free, Dlvr.it contains a lot of functionality.  It’s easy to setup and good support is provided.  Here is some of the useful functionality:

• Supports Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Status.net

• You can filter to include or exclude posts with specific keywords.  The filter options allow you to filter on items other than content.  For example, you may not want to automatically post content that are from writers other than you.

 

 

Configuration for dlvr.it 

• Integration with Google Analytics and Omniture (paid for analytics service) is supported so it means you can view statistics related to links sent out using Google Analytics.

• You can use a variety of URL shorteners but if you use the one from DVLR.it then statistics are recorded.  Statistics are not shown for any other shortener.

• Some great statistics provided, such as. popular posts, clicks on posts, and so on.

• There is a dlvr.it widget which you can embed on your website that will show your visitors the most popular posts.

• There are some great options to schedule.  For example, you can specify that your posts only go out on certain days and during specific times irrespective of the time that the blog post is published.

 

Options for scheduling delivery of updates via dlvr.it

 

3. IFTTT – It does one thing but does it really well

IFTTT (IF This Then That) is an automation tool that let’s you set up simple statements that define,  if something happens (this) then do something (that). 
So for example, you can set up an automation task that posts a tweet when a new blog post is created. These statements are referred to as recipes and consist of a trigger and an action.  The trigger (on the left) is what kicks off the action.  So in this case, when there is a new feed item (blog post) this then triggers an action – post a tweet.

 

Create a trigger (left) which kicks off a process for IFTTT resulting in an action(right) being carried out

 

4. Feedburner – Only relevant if you are using Feedburner for your blog

If you are using Feedburner to manage your blog feeds you can take advantage of the ‘Socialise’ option under the Publicize menu.

 

Setting up Feedburner to distribute content to Twitter

Some of the features include the following:

• The content can be shortened automatically to include room for a retweet.

• Automatically set up hash tags based on categories that the blog post is in.  For example, if you write a blog post under the category SEO then a hash tag with SEO in it will be added to the post sent out.

• Keywords filters are available so you can restrict posting of items if certain keywords are included in the post.

 

5. WP to Twitter – Useful if you have a WordPress Blog

WP to Twitter is a WordPress plugin so only relevant if you are using WordPress. Users.  With the free edition you get functionality such as:

• Use tags created for your blog posts as hashtags for your post to twitter
• Integration with Google analytics
• When you are generating the tweet you have a lot of flexibility regarding what is included in the tweet using short codes.  These are codes that you use that will be replaced with actual values when the tweet is sent out.  For example, #date# is a shortcode that gets replaced with the actual date when the tweet is sent.

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And the winner is..

Well that depends on what’s most important to you.  If you want to set up the easiest option possible then TwitterFeed is the simplest to set up, whereas, if you want the best functionality then DVLR.it is the best.
What are you currently using?  Please submit your comments below, we would love to hear from you.