A new application connects Facebook Page updates to Twitter accounts — and it's a snap.
It might be one small step for social media gurus, but it’s one giant step for the tech-challenged WELD account executive.
What does an English major have to offer a tech-savvy digital ad agency like WELD? Judging by our current employee ratio, with 50% of WELD’s employees holding a Bachelor’s degree in English, I’m thinking I must add some value to this digital, acronym dominated environment (ADE).
“What?” you might be asking.
Well, my most recent contribution to the WELD movement: syncing a client’s Facebook Business Page to its Twitter account. Facebook’s newly released feature allows Fan Pages (often business-related) to be linked to the Twitter account of your choice.
For those of you that don’t spend your days navigating around in social-media-landia: It allows you to post a comment on your sponsored Facebook page, and the application will automatically put the same comment out in Tweet-landia too. Fewer actions = more action! I love it, and it was easy to set up.
So, here it is, step by step:
- Go to the set-up page on Facebook.
- Select from the list of Facebook Pages that you have administrative privileges to edit by clicking the correlating “Link to Twitter” button.
- If you are already logged in to the correct Twitter account, Facebook will know (scary). If you want to use a different one than the account that displays, use the Username/Email and Password for the correct account.
- Click “Allow.”
- Success! When you post on Facebook, you also post on Twitter. Technology isn’t that scary after all.
Now, to all you non-tech-savvy English majors out there: You have my complete permission to bring up this exciting social media development during your next Shakespeare Conference.
Tags: applications, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter
This app doesn’t work for my business page - after step 2 of your instruction set, Facebook always tells me I need to create a personal profile before I can use the feature.
Leah,
Thanks for experimenting and posting your problem.
I haven’t experienced any glitches so far after setting this up for 3-5 different client and personal pages so I can’t speak from personal experience on the glitch. I did do a quick Google search for similar errors/problems and was unable to find anyone else discussing the problem. So, maybe we can narrow it down to what might be different on your account:
I assume you do indeed have a personal FB account, and that said account is also set to be the/a administrator on your FB business page. Yes?
The next obvious possible problem that jumps to my mind is making sure you are dealing with a business page, and not a fan group. Yes?
If you answered yes to both of these, I have to resign my authority on the matter and recommend you post a discussion question to one of these Facebook Forums:
http://www.thefacebookforum.net/ or
http://www.facebookforum.co.uk/
I sure hope this helps. I think it is a neat feature and benefits the user by increasing your message distribution through a second social media channel.
Mariah
Thank you,
very interesting article
Thanks for reading Ostrov!
Thanks for your response, Mariah - somehow it only showed up now on my RSS reader.
It seems the problem is that I do not, in fact, have a Facebook personal profile, and frankly, I don’t want to create one (not even as the business page administrator); to me that is the whole point of having a business page in the first place.
I guess the reason nobody talks about this problem is that everyone assumes you *do* have a profile that’s linked to your business page, in which case it’s no problem at all.
At any rate, I found a decent work-around via Ping.fm. Thanks again for your help.
My (Dutch) page doesn’t show a “link to twitter burron” on it. Nor is it posted on the left upper side. Where can I find it?
Regards, Joop
Sorry for the typing error it’s “button” of course…
Joop: If you’re logged in to your Facebook account, you *should* see the “link to Twitter” buttons by going to http://www.facebook.com/twitter/ — one for every Page you administer. I don’t think the Dutch version of the site would differ in this function. Send us a screenshot if you see something different!
Leah: Ping.fm is a good work-around and integrator for your social media activities. You might also like Hootsuite, which just rolled out v.5. See our blog posts on it at http://www.weldtheweb.com/s/hootsuite.html
How do you link Twitter to Facebook, so that if you post something on twitter, it will appear on facebook?
Jack,
I like to use Hootsuite. Gretchen wrote an article about Hootsuite recently: http://www.weldtheweb.com/how-to-hootsuite-like-a-pro.html#more-831 and I wrote another a few weeks back: http://www.weldtheweb.com/hootsuite-users-celebrate-non-hootsuite-users-convert.html.
Let me know if that doesn’t help.
mariah