What do you think about your blog feeding into your Facebook Fan Page?
Do you think you’re missing out on people visiting your blog by also posting to Facebook?
Do you use a special setting that encourages people to visit the blog instead of staying and commenting on Facebook?
Does it matter that comments are scattered across different platforms rather than concentrated in one place?
28 thoughts on “Deep Thought Thursday: Your Blog Feed on Facebook”
At b-uncut.com we feed our blog posts to our fan page and our artist community site. It invariably leads to greater readership. Many of our fans at facebook become interested in the blog, community or gallery through our articles and the comments have never been dispersed. It seems to bring us a much wider circle of readership so we don’t reach solely the artist community but also art lovers and collectors.
I use a Facebook widget called Networked Blogs to import my blog feed to facebook. It is NO effort once you get it set up, and having my blog feed on FB has definitely increased my readership. I highly recommend it.
http://artofthebiz.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/networked-blogs/
I use Networked Blogs too, and publish my blog feed on both my own personal profile, and in my fan page. I import the complete feed and not just an excerpt. I think, as a reader, if I had to click once on the feed in facebook, and then click a continue to redirect to my blog, I would be put off with multiple clicks. So I prefer to have the complete feed. Yes, comments get scattered at multiple places, infact FB is the only place I get comments and rarely on the blog. But I guess it helps in reaching out to non artists. When someone sees a notification in their own feed “X commented on Nithya’s photo”, there is a high probability of a click through. Visits to my blog have increased, despite no one commenting there.:)
Does it matter that comments are scattered across different platforms rather than concentrated in one place?
My website is in total disarray at the moment so I may not have a right to comment on this. However, I do work full time doing other peoples websites so as the saying goes I am like the plumber whos own sink leeks.
As a web professionial I have seen the landscape of the web change from a very narrow view to a panaramic one. Being spread out on the web now is like a fisherman that lowers a net to catch a larger number of fish rather than using a single fish hook. So the more spread out you can handle the better. Just don’t make the net so big that you can’t handle it successfully anymore.
I use WordPress and feed to Facebook and Twitter. I use plugins to bring my comments form both into my blog. Once it’s set up it’s automagic and you can still reply to comments via your blog.
Just like the others here, I also have my blog feed directly into FB and twitter. I have it set up in two other ning groups I am a part of as well. I don’t care where people read my content, or where they comment about it, as long as it is getting through to people who find it interesting. If I find a comment on one platform that I think others should read, I can always talk about it on my blog myself. I also use the Networked Blogs widget on FB, and have had a lot of success with it lately when I asked others to join up. I think it’s just important to spread the word and try to find your core audience no matter where they are finding you.
Rhomany: This sounds like a GREAT solution for those of us who use WordPress! Can you tell me which plugin you use? I see there are several of them: WordBook, Wordbooker, WPBook.
Thanks!
I use networked blogs on FB as well and have increased the amount of readers, although comments have gone down over all.
Enzie, I have the same situation. I import my blog through networked blogs and I get comments on fb but almost none on my blog:(
Yes, Rhomany, the way you describe this sounds *perfect* for what I’d like to do. Could you clue us in? And/or Alyson, if you try one out, would you post about it?
Thanks!
Thanks for posing the question Alyson. I have not yet put my blog posts onto my Facebook fan page on a regular basis b/c of those very reasons.
Brenda, love the analogy using fisherman/hook/net!
Rhomany, I’d be interested as well!
Thanks also Alyson for posting the question. I have wondered this as well. 🙂
I think it depends on how you plan to work your social media. Different platforms, in my experience, have different audiences. I have people that read my blog, but don’t venture to read my Twitter feeds, or FB or Myspace (which is still relevant!). I have people, hundreds and hundreds, that follow my posts and comments on Digg, Yelp and similar media that don’t follow me elsewhere. I don’t think it matters about repetition of blog posts. I think what matters is knowing your audience with each network, knowing your intent and projected outcomes, and working each network consistently, authentically and as you would if talking with your peers (personality counts big time!).
Oooh, I’d love to have FB comments fed back to my blog. I use the standalone WordPress and will have to take some time to look for any plugins.
As for Twitter, I don’t have that doing much I’m afraid. How does one feed one’s standalone weblog post to Twitter? Is there a pluging from Twitter or from WordPress players for that?
Sometimes multpile feeds don’t work. For example there’s one recent one from somewhere to my blog and the associated image is not one I would have chosen. I think it was Ping.fm…
Erem… I meant to ask if Networked Blogs had this feedback function because that’s the one I am also using.
Thanks for more clues. 🙂
Rhomany — I’d also love to know which plugin you use! I have a WordPress blog and it would be nice to have my Facebook comments show up on my blog as well.
I saw an almost immediate and noticeable increase in traffic to my blog as soon as I started to use Networked Blogs on Facebook. Count me in on wanting to know what that plug-in is.
My art teaching blog (on Blogger) is showing up on Facebook – and I hadn’t intended it. I’d love to have my painting blog (also on Blogger) show up, and make sure my art teaching blog doesn’t – but I don’t know where to begin. I’d appreciate any advice, or links to instructions – where should I go to straighten this out?
To feed my posts out from my blog to fb/twitter/myspace I use ‘Status Updater’. This feeds optionally to all the above places AND allows you to add fb fan pages – I’ve not seen another feed that allows you to do this. The fb notebook option only works for profiles, not multiple fan pages.
To bring comments back from Facebook I use ‘Facebook Comments TNG’ – though since the latest WP update this has had a few problems. Comments will show up as spam if you’re using Typepad Antispam and require approval.
To bring Twitter comments back to my blog I use ‘Twitoaster – Twitter Conversations’. Any replies to a ‘new post’ notification on your twitter page will bring the comment to your blog. You can choose whether to automatically approve these or not.
Rohmany, Do you know of any plugins for blogger?
Oh, I should mention, Facebook Comments TNG works for coments on notes, not comments on your feeds. I’m still looking for one that will bring ocmments back from my feeds, but the notes one works well for the moment.
Also beware using more than one of any combination together – you can end up with multiple feeds.
Another great resource to use is: http://ping.fm/ – You can not only update your FaceBook profile/pages but ALL your other social networks at once.
Doug
Thank you for the help – I also found another way to do it, in the course of this. You can, in Facebook, go to “Profile,” go to “Notes” down on the left hand side – click to go to “My Notes,” then click on “Notes Settings” on the right hand side of the “My Notes” page.
I was able to disconnect the feed from one blog and connect a feed from the other. Finally! Thank you!
Rhomany: Thanks for this! I’m going to have to try it out before I have an intelligent question to ask. I’ll be curious as to how others find it.
As for importing your blog into your FB fan page, Cynthia Morris wrote these great (recent!) instructions: http://vivelaslink.typepad.com/vive_la_slink/2009/12/how-to-import-a-blog-to-a-facebook-fan-page.html
Thank you Rhomany for the tips and Alyson for the link to Cynthia’s!!
I have people that read my blog, but do not venture to read my Twitter feeds, or FB or Myspace (which is still relevant!). I have people, hundreds and hundreds, that follow my posts and comments on Digg, Yelp and similar media that do not follow me elsewhere.
I have multiple problem with this whole thing. I have different set of “followers” in my regular blog and then at networked blog! Is there anyway to merge them together? Also, people leave comments on FB page and no one on the blog feed! I am new to the blogosphere and getting pretty overwhelmed!
Ishita: Don’t worry about it. The people that comment on FB aren’t your blog readers anyway. Think of them as bonuses.