Updating Twitter With Your New Articles

[jrichards]

There have been a couple short mentions of how you would be able to automatically have your articles sent to twitter and posted. So I thought I would share a very brief how-to. While I know that 11 steps seems like a lot, many of these steps are pretty easy, so don't get discouraged by the length of the instructions

1. Visit twitterfeed.com and register for an account.
2. Once registered you can select the microblogging service of your choice. In this case we're selecting twitter!
3. Click on "Connect you feed to your Twitter Account" (Note you must do this before you can continue in the process)
4. Enter a Feed Name for your feed
5. Open a new browser window
6. Visit your author profile page.
7. Right click on the "Subscribe to News Feed" Link and select "Copy Link Location"
8. Switch back to the twitterfeed window and Paste that URL into the "RSS Feed URL" box.
9. Click "Test RSS Feed"
10. Click The Advanced Settings and in the Post Prefix section fill out "Article For Sale: " or something similar to let people know what this tweet and link is all about.
11. Then click Save Feed.

That's it when you're next article is approved it'll be included in your tweet stream. Let me know if you have any troubles.

-jrichards
Constant-Content.com

[Lysis]

thank you!

I hate twitter. LOL
This is a great idea though, and now I'm gonna follow the footsteps of twitternerds. Ugh. LOL

I really wish twitter, myspace, and facebook would fall off the planet. LOL

[Celeste Stewart]

Jeff,
Thanks! I'm finding it kind of fun to follow the feed account that I set up the other day.

Is it possible to remove private requests from going out in an author's feed? I feel kind of funny tweeting a link to a private request for a couple of reasons. The main one being that the customer probably wouldn't appreciate it (especially if someone else buys the content).

[jrichards]

Hey Celeste,

Thanks for the heads up. I had already removed articles that we're submitted to a particular request from the feed. But after I had a quick look at your feed. I see what you mean, so I've removed articles that are submitted in the Private Request Category. Have a look at your authors feed and let me know if that solves it!

Thanks!

[Celeste Stewart]

It still lists my private requests. That may be because they were already there? Maybe the new ones won't show up?

[jrichards]

I believe you are right. Once they get sent to twitter, you'd have to login to twitter and delete the update from there. But moving forward there shouldn't be any more articles that are submitted to the Private Request Category going into the feed.

If you look at the feed itself ( http://www.constant-content.com/feeds/a ... uthor=3664 ) The private request articles shouldn't be in the listing any longer.

[Celeste Stewart]

Yeah, I deleted them on Twitter as soon as I saw them.

Right now, when clicking the CC feed you just linked, the private requests still show up. They're probably cached on my computer. You don't see the private requests on your end? At the top, I see the "CS Filetonic Invoice" and a few entries later I see "Decision Making." Can anyone real quick check the feed and ease my mind that those are not showing up? Thanks!

[Celeste Stewart]

Just an update - the articles for private requests no longer go out on the feeds - yea! That was fixed almost immediately. Thanks, Jeff!

I've had some nice feedback from followers about the "articles for sale" tweets I've been tweeting. One lady who I followed because she runs a big media/communications business said something along the lines of "Interesting business model. I'll keep it in mind for future our content needs." Since I'm tweeting general categories rather than just my own articles, it's tough to measure success. I can see click numbers via Bitly's stats but no way of seeing if anyone actually arrives at CC and buys an article as a result of a tweet. It's just a leap of faith No biggie - the tweets go out without any intervention on my part once it's set up though I hope it helps in some small way.

When you set up a feed, keep in mind that you can limit the number of feed-related tweets that go out. So, if you are prolific, you don't have to worry about bombarding your followers. Just set it up for one tweet per day from the feed or something like that.

[MeggieHardy]

Okay, I'm a dunce -- but where is the "Subscribe to News Feed" link? Don't see it anywhere.

[jrichards]

Hey MeggieHardy,

The Subscribe to News Feed Article is on your profile page.

So yours is on http://www.constant-content.com/Author/ ... ails-0.htm
just below where it says "Content by Meggie Hardy"

Hope that helps,
-jrichards