** UPDATE: 2/12/19 **
Ping.fm and twitterfeed.com are closed. We recommend using Dlvr.it instead. Visit our most recent Facebook posts category here.
** UPDATE: 1/10/10 **
RSS Graffiti has updated their application, and is now the premier method for sending tweets to Facebook Fan Pages.
Now you can automatically stream your Twitter updates to your Facebook Fan Page!
It is a problem that plagues a lot of Twitter / Facebook Fan Page owners.
People don’t want to be logging in a bunch of different social platforms – they just want to update Twitter and have it automatically update their Facebook Fan Page – and that’s what this tutorials achieves.
The method below is going to use the following services: Ping.fm, TwitterFeed.com, and of course your Twitter profile and your Facebook Fan Page.
The assumption here is that you are an admin to your target Facebook Fan Page – if not, then following the steps below will not work. You must first be an Admin on the Facebook Fan Page you desire to set up.
1) First, create an account at Ping.fm (opens Ping.fm in a separate window)
Add your email, password
2) Next screen, select ADD NETWORK link to the right of “Facebook Fan Pages” (3rd down on left)
3) Click “Connect with Facebook” – this will log you into your Facebook profile.
Read the message on the page to understand more “To set up your Facebook profile and Facebook pages, you must first connect your Facebook account to Ping.fm. You can do this by simply clicking the button below. Once you’ve connected, you will be prompted with more options and settings.”
4) Unclick all of the links on the Facebook Profile side (left side) unless you want to be updating your personal Facebook profile.
5) Then select the FB Fan Page on the right that you want to have your Twitter profile updating.
6) Once you click the fan page, a new facebook Connect box will open – go ahead and click “Allow”.
Make sure the following boxes in the “What messages to you want posted to your Facebook pages?” below your Facebook Fan Page(s) are selected: status updates, Upload and post photos to stream, and Post links to stream
This will ensure that any links you share in your tweets will make it over to your Facebook Fan Page stream.
7) Now hit “Save Settings” at the bottom of the list of your FB Fan Pages and you will then be taken back to the “Service Settings” page.
Look at what’s listed – if you see “Post messages to Facebook” is checked, then uncheck it – unless you want to be updating your personal Facebook profile with your tweets – and then make sure “Post messages to Facebook Pages” is checked.
8) Now click “Update Settings”
9) In a new window or tab, go ahead and open TwitterFeed.com
10) Login to Twitter Feed
If you don’t have a TwitterFeed account, you can create your account, or you can login with OpenID (see the link below the white “Login” button.
I always sign in with my Yahoo sing in credentials, but you can sign in however you like. Sometimes, TwitterFeed is unresponsive – just retype twitterfeed.com into your address bar and hit enter, this always works for me.
11) Once you are logged into Twitter feed, click the “create New Feed” button in the upper right hand corner.
12) Give your feed a name.
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13) Now go to your Twitter profile that you want to have update your FB Fan page and make sure you are logged in.
14) Click “Profile” and look toward the bottom of the right hand side for the RSS feed.
15) Go ahead and click that link (it’s the link next to the organge and white RSS box)
The window that opened is your Twitter profile’s RSS feed.
16) Copy the URL / Address that’s in the address bar (you should be able to just click once in the address bar > it will highlight the entire address > and either right click and click copy, or hit CTRL C to copy.
The URL that you are copying should look something like this:
17) Once you’ve copied your Twitter feed’s URL address, go back to your TwitterFeed profile and paste that URL into the box that says “RSS Feed URL”
18) Click “test rss feed” to make sure your feed is working. You should get a green message with a check box that says “Feed parsed OK”
19) Make sure the “Active” box below your feed is checked.
20) Next click “Advanced Settings” and new section will open up that shows feed settings.
21) In “Update Frequency” select every 30 minutes > for “new updates at a time” select 5 > for “Post Content” select title only > click “Post Link” box > select “biy.ly” as the Shorten link through setting > select “pubDate” for Post Sorting >> and that’s it – leave everything else blank.
** OPTION ** If you don’t want a link in your Fan Page updates that point back to the tweets, then do not click the “Post Link” box. By clicking the “Post Link” box, the updates on your Facebook Fan Page will have a shortened link that if clicked, will open up that particular tweet in your Twitter profile.
22) Now click “continue to Step 2”
Here’s where we are going to link your Ping.fm account.
23) Click the Ping.fm service
24) You now need your Ping.fm Application Key
25) Go back to Ping.fm (you should still be logged into Ping)
26) Click “Dashborad” (upper left hand corner)
27) Once on your Dashboard, find “Application Keys” on the right hand column around the middle of the page and click “Application Keys”
28) You should now be taken to your App Key screen. Go ahead and copy your Web key and then paste it into the box on TwitterFeed that says “Your Ping.fm Appliction Key”
29) Now click the “Get Available Methods” link that’s to the right of the App key.
30) You should get “ping.fm method to update:” drop down menu > make sure “status” is selected.
Don’t worry about the UTM Tags and Optional Tags
31) Now go to the bottom and click “Create Service”
You should get the message “Service updated successfully”
32) Now click “All Done!” at the bottom
You should get the “Congratulations” message
33) Just click on “Go to Dashboard” to be taken back to your list of services on Twitter Feed.
It will take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours for the TwitterFeed settings to update – so now you just need to go grab a cup a coffee and come back to this “How To” in an hour or so!
See you in a little bit!
…..
And we’re back.
34) Go back to your dashboard at TwitterFeed.com.
If you have a green check mark next to your “Feed Name”, then you are ready to start tweeting and having those tweets auto update your Facebook Fan Page.
35) Go to the Twitter profile you used the RSS feed for and start tweeting.
Remember your settings are set for “Every 30 minutes” to update 5 new updates.
This means your tweets will not instantly appear in your Facebook Fan Page > your TwitterFeed will update every 30 minutes and post up to 5 new tweets to your Facebook Fan Page.
Any questions?
CONTACT ME HERE
** Additional Facebook Fan Page Admin Resources:
Automatically Send Twitter to Facebook Fan Pages
How To Make Someone A Facebook Fan Page Admin
How To Create A Facebook Fan Page
Create A Custom Username / URL for Facebook Fan Pages
How To Get Facebook Fan Page Email Notifications
How To Find A Fan Of Your Facebook Fan Page And Make Them Admin
View Comments
Great stuff, Robert. Thank you. Your blog is a well kept secret.
...do you have a "Social Outsourcing Package" within your consulting business?
Hi Mike - thanks so much for visiting and leaving a comment. I appreciate your feedback so much, thank you!!!
Nice, I followed these instructions carefully.
Hi Ryan - were you able to successfully implement these instructions - meaning, did you get it working by following these instructions? Some people have commented to me that they are getting hung on at certain points.
Let me know, and thanks for visiting and commenting!
Robert, thank you so much - I was a little lost at points, but I really appreciate your phone call and walking me through the steps. This is just what I had been looking for!
Hi Eileen - it's my pleasure! Thanks so much for leaving your comment and let me know if you need any more help! Also, feel free to share links in the comments to show us the Twitter profile and the Facebook Fan Page your implementing.
Thanks again...
Thanks so much!!!!!!!!!
For some odd reason my tweets are repeating themselves, I'll tweet it will go to facebook then 30 minutes later it will tweet again but it will repeat some of it and get truncated and keep repeating after another 30 minutes the same message, any ideas?
I think i am suck in an endless loop, someone added something to our facebook fan page in the office that updates twitter with your facebook status instead of vice versa and i see on my twitter stream it says "from facebook" so obviously its sending my latest status which was already sent from twitter back to twitter then recycling it in the feed and reposting it in an endless loop, can't figure out where the application setting is, i deleted the twitter app!!!
I found the culprit, it was a buried setting here: that would send twitter and facebook in an endless loop.
Would still like to be able to remove the NJMonthly part from the tweet, here is what it looks like.
New Jersey Monthly Magazine NJMonthly: There are a lot of Spanish and Portuguese restaurants in the Ironbound section of Newark. So, which ..
Twitter / New Jersey Monthly : There are a lot of Spanish ...
bit.ly
There are a lot of Spanish and Portuguese restaurants in the Ironbound section of Newark. So, which is the best?
hey there - yeah, you are the second person today that has been caught in the vicious loop of content posting back and forth.
Obviously, you need to decide if you want to send content from Facebook to Twitter, or from Twitter to Facebook. And if you've previously installed the Facebook to Twitter app and then followed my directions above (which are for Twitter to Facebook) then the vicious loop will occur.
Unfortunately, there is no way to remove your Twitter profile name from the updates because it is included in the RSS feed.
Hang on, let me correct myself, I (or anyone else) hasn't yet figured out a way to remove the profile name from the RSS feed updates. But that doesn't mean it won't happen... so stay tuned!
For some odd reason my tweets are repeating themselves, I'll tweet it will go to facebook then 30 minutes later it will tweet again but it will repeat some of it and get truncated and keep repeating after another 30 minutes the same message, any ideas?
Thanks for sharing, Robert! One comment - I followed these instructions practically to the letter and ended up setting TwitterFeed to recursively tweet, so that ping.fm and TwitterFeed were sending the same tweets back and forth to each other over and over (and adding appends of my Twitter username.) I'm pretty certain this is because I'd instructed ping and twitterfeed to both broadcast. I also have had some challenges integrating ping to update my fan page on Facebook. Again, a lot of this is user error. I did want to make other readers aware of the dangers of mis-configuration - you could end up with a tweeting Y-combinator!
Hi Brian - thanks so much for sharing your comments! There have been several people now that have had this same issue. Some people had the Twitter application already installed on their Facebook Fan Page so that their Fan Page updates were automatically sent to their Twitter updates. And then with this process implemented, it would send the update right back to their Facebook Fan Page in a vicious cycle of tweeting madness!
One question though - you mentioned that set TwitterFeed to a recursive tweet - can you explain to me what that is / where that setting is in TwitterFeed? I've gone through my accounts and I'm not able to find the recursive tweet setting.
Thanks again Brian for visiting and commenting on this post.
The more people add their insights and experiences with this process, the more everyone (including myself) will be helped!
Thanks again Brian!