Automatically share your latest blog post on 30 social networks and microblogs with twitterfeed and Ping.fm

Given my vocation, it should be clear I’m not a visual thinker. But when it comes to explaining how to share your latest blog post automatically on more than 30 social networks and microblogs, an illustration is better suited (my penmanship notwithstanding).

Website flowchart: From new blog post to twitterfeed to ping.fm to social networks and microblogs to readers

Website flowchart, how to automatically share a new blog post on social networks and microblogs

Website flowchart: How to automatically share a new blog post on social networks and microblogs

Select the chart to make it wicked big.

What you need to do upfront

  1. Have a blog with an RSS feed. Most blogging platforms automatically generate RSS feeds—think of them as the town criers of the digital age, telling potential readers that you have new content. (For a more sophisticated explanation, read Don’t visit this website: Subscribe to this blog via RSS feed or e-mail.)
  2. Sign up for a free account on Ping.fm (three minutes). (For more information about Ping.fm, read my post about it.)
  3. Link your existing social network profiles (such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn) and microblog accounts (such as Twitter) to Ping.fm. (The time required for this step depends on how many accounts you have, how many you wish to create, and how much detail you want to add to your profile. What I did? Over the course of a week I revised my Facebook status to make sure I was happy with it. Then I signed up for an account with every social networking and microblog site that Ping.fm can update, using my Facebook profile as the basis for my profiles. That process took three hours. It probably would have sufficed just to sign up for the more popular ones though.)
  4. Sign up for a free account on twitterfeed (three minutes).
  5. Configure your new twitterfeed account to post your blog updates to your new ping.fm account (five minutes).

How the process works

Now that you’re all set up, here’s how the flow works (all you need to do is step 1):

  1. Publish an update on your blog.
  2. Your RSS feed will tell twitterfeed that your website has a new post.
  3. Twitterfeed will pass along the subject of the post and a link to it to Ping.fm
  4. Like the nasty gossip that it is, Ping.fm will share your new post with your contacts on your social network and microblog accounts.

Caveats

  • You can connect multiple websites to twitterfeed. I have it set up for this website and my budget travel articles for Examiner.com.
  • The process is not instantaneous; if you want to rush your new blog post out to the waiting masses, manually post it to Ping.fm.
  • Sometimes Ping.fm’s connections with social network and microblog accounts breaks.
  • Ping.fm regularly adds new social networs and microblogs to its service, so check back to see if there are any worth signing up for (I do so monthly).

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16 Comments

Lanora Mueller  on June 5th, 2009

Most useful process analysis! Thanks, Zach!

loriwilson23  on June 9th, 2009

Very cool. It takes a good chunk of time to individually post my blogs on each site so this should save me a lot of time once I can get it figured out. Yay for the smarties at Examiner! Thanks!

~Lori Wilson

Zach  on June 9th, 2009

Thanks Lanora and Lori. The process works well with Examiner articles, although there can be a lag time of an hour from post to distribution. So if you’re writing about a breaking news item, you’d be better off posting it on ping.fm manually.

Keddy  on June 22nd, 2009

I just installed ping.fm’s PingPressFM plugin in a self hosted wordpress site. API key, PHP version and CURL module have been verified.

I am stuck at setting the “trigger”. Under the “Current Trigger”, clicking the drop down arrow gives me two choices:

“(Off) undefined (@undefined)”
“—Create New Trigger”

I chose “—Create New Trigger” and checked “Trigger is active” box, accepted the remaining defaults, and clicked “Create Trigger”, and then saved it by clicking “Update Options” button.

Now I get an error that says, “None of your triggers are active!” …

Can any one help me here … please … I tried emailing the developer, but no reply so far.

Please help. Thank you.

Zach Everson  on June 23rd, 2009

Sorry Keddy–I’ve never used the plugin. Have you tried using Twitterfeed to automatically post to ping.fm instead?

Keddy  on June 24th, 2009

Hi Zach,

Thanks for the reply.

I have now given up on PingPressFM plugin. I will give twitterfeed.com a try.

Zach Everson  on June 25th, 2009

Hopefully it works out for you Keddy–please let me know if you have any questions about it though.

Automatically share your latest blog post on 30 social networks and microblogs with twitterfeed and Ping.fm | Zach Everson | Writer. Editor….  on August 20th, 2009

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NextStepRE  on October 10th, 2009

I set this process up months ago. I have yet to get it to work. what are some common places that ping breaks? Thanks for the help :)

Zach  on October 11th, 2009

It doesn’t work 100 percent of the time. It almost always posts to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and some other sites. It’s dicey with Tumblr though.

chris  on November 19th, 2009

Loving this article
It appears from Ping.fm that one doesn’t need twitterfeed anymore.

Is it redundant now?

Zach  on November 19th, 2009

Where on ping.fm did you see that Chris?

mayurtv  on December 22nd, 2009

Cool! I did a video on just this topic at http://mayurtv.com/2009/12/22/how-i-post-videos-online-to-a-dozen-places-in-just-a-few-steps/

Raffi  on January 14th, 2010

Thanks Zach, very useful.. I’m already using twitterfeed but not with ping.fm yet..

Great time saver, thank you again.

kered  on January 15th, 2010

This is very helpful post, just what I was looking for to post to all my social networks etc.

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