From Blogosphere to Social Networks: free tools to route content.

Let's assume you have an interest, you want write and collect news about it, you want share this knowledge and you want to route this content via social media.
Now we'll see how to connect some RSS feeds, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account using three good free (or partially free) services.

The aim is to extend this knowledge, create discussion and optimize your time by delegating to machines all repetitive and frustrating parts.

1) Connect your blog, the blogoshpere or any internet resource with a public RSS feed, to your Facebook Page using ifttt.com

ifttt.com is amazing, the name means If This Then That, that's a tipical condition in a flow, the service provides to connect different Internet services when something happens.
The interface is extremely easy to use, just follow instructions and make your own 'recipes' to push any public feed in the Internet towards your Facebook Page.

This is a 'recipe' in ifttt

These are the trigger and the action of the 'recipe'

Then you can set ifttt.com also to push the stream from your Facebook Page to your Twitter account:

TIPS & TRICKS

Case:
You want to follow the site: http://www.examplesi.te
That has an RSS at this link: http://www.examplesi.te/rss
And a twitter account: @examplesi
On the site appears a post: A stairway to heaven, by Mr. X
With this link: http://www.examplesi.te/a_stairway_to_heaven.html

Tip 

If the source with RSS has a Twitter account, set the "RSS to FB" recipe to cite the Twitter name at the beginning of the final message, in this way:

When ifttt.com checks the RSS and finds the posts, publishes on the Facebook Page a message like this:

Remember to set in the "FB to Twitter" recipe one or two hashtags connected to your topic.

Then, when ifttt.com will push the message from the Facebook Page to Twitter the message will begin with the mention for the source and will end with an hashtag: this increases your engagement and your visibility.
. 

2) Schedule your posts with hootsuite.com

Scheduling posts is important, not all your audience will see what you write, so you have to be redundant, and in the same time unobtrusive, is better spreading your activity during the day and setting your best posts for the peak hours.

You can plan posts from your Facebook Page, but the interface is not very user friendly, a good planning interface must have the appearance of ... a calendar, that's a feature well covered by hootsuite.com.

The main view in hootsuite.com

This service is like a fish-eye on your social media accounts, it helps to manage them on the fly by a single consolle, moreover it has a lovely planner to schedule posts and tweets.

A focus on the scheduling panel

The hootsuite interface to manage scheduled content

3) Find other good sources in Twitter, create lists, and Re-Tweet them with roundteam.co

Roundteam.co has no rivals in his field, it's a collaborative RT platform. You can choose to retweet a specific user or an hashtag, you can create lists and RT its members. Settings are very deep and refined, you can set: text filters, the maximum number of hashtags, links or mentions, a maximum number of RT in a time range or the maximum RT per hour.
Creating lists with more or less fifty qualified twitters and setting a minimum interval of 20 min, you can get up to 3 sure RT per hour, setting three lists (the maximum in the free offer) you can have more than two hundred RT per day, that's a good mediation to not be judged as a spammer by the service staff.

4) Here comes the brain.

"First, create amazing content. Think about your audience and what they will find value in. Create content that entertains, informs or otherwise engages your audience. This is a critical piece in boosting engagement and visibility...."

(source: http://www.simpartners.com/facebook-algorithm-update/)

It's a spotless truth, the first tool is your brain and you have to train it constantly.

To create content never end to read, share your opinions, see, hear, visit fine and modern arts musea, share your work, write and ... make a lot of mistakes.

To share content choose your sources carefully: those constantly updated are more valuable, evaluate the quality of writers and followers, prefer those who write posts without misprints, with right references and links; be wary of sources that mainly copy and paste from other sources, favors original content and respect the authorship.

From Blogosphere to Social Networks: free tools to route content. by Alfredo Cosco is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.