Facebook Friday: RSS Grafitti

I'm so excited to write this post because I get to talk about my absolute favorite Facebook tool: RSS Grafitti.


See, I'm a busy woman.  I have three daughters (8, 6, and 2) and a husband.  I have one full time-ish job and two part time jobs.  I am working on completing my MBA with a marketing emphasis.  And, when I have a minute, I write books.  So believe me, I know how insane it is to try to manage an image and I look for any tool I can to make the job easier. RSS Graffiti does that for me.  It's the bomb.

What it is:  From the RSS Graffiti page -

RSS Graffiti is meant to take the fuss out of keeping your Facebook friends and fans updated with the latest news from your other sites.

What it does:  Again, from the RSS Graffiti page - 

RSS Graffiti periodically checks the RSS/Atom feeds that you specify and posts any new entries it finds to the Facebook Walls that you specify.

You can get any feed written on any wall (Facebook Profiles, Fan Pages, Groups, Events and Application Profile Pages). In fact, multiple feeds to multiple walls. You choose the combination.

How I use it:  Let me count the ways -

• To automatically post my blog posts to my FB wall.  This can be done on both your profile page and your fan page if you have one.  
• To automatically post your Tweets.  Lots of tools can do this, but RSS Graffiti can post it to several places on FB (your profile and as many fan pages as you like).
• To pull a feed from other cool sites.  
• This is how I use it for clients.  For example: say you work for a local movie theater and you have a fan page.  By using RSS Graffiti, you can pull movie reviews from one of your favorite sites to automatically post whenever they come out.  

This is how you could use it as an author:

• Pull your blog and Twitter feeds automatically.  Technically, you'd never have to physically go on FB and you'd still have wall content.
• Pull info from someone else's blog.  Like your agent, for example.  Or your publisher.  Or your crit partner's blog.  Or someone who always gives amazing writing tips.
• Pull book reviews from a local or national newspaper. 
• To add concept to your fan pages. Say you have a fan page for your YA book which is about a Boston Red Sox fan.  Use RSS Graffiti to automatically bring in the Boston Globe's sports feed.

Really, the possibilities go on and on.  Be creative.

How to get it:  

1. Come here while logged into FB and click the icon that says to "Add RSS Graffiti".  You have to do this individually on each FB page you want the app on.
2. Click Add Feed
3. Enter the RSS feed or blog address that you want to feed to your page
4. Fill in the blank that says Source Name.
5. Click on the tab that says schedule. 
6. Choose how often you want your wall to update and how many posts to pull at one time. 
7. Check out the other tabs and see if there are options you'd like to change.
8. Hit save.
9. Your done!

What happens now? Your wall gets updated with posts from your source based on when you set them to add  and how often the source updates. It's totally awesome. If you want to see an example of it in action, go to my facebook page (www.facebook.com/laaandstuff) and look at my wall.  I have it set to retrieve my blog posts once a day so sometime mid-day you should see this post show up.  Or scroll down and see yesterdays post.  You can set it up to retrieve more often, btw.

Your turn.  How do/will you use RSS Graffiti?  Are there other RSS feeds to FB that you like better?