RSS Graffiti in use by Pilot New Media
When we held our Social Media Forum at the Pastoral Center in February 2012, one of the tools we highlighted to help with bringing your content to your Facebook Page from your website was an app called RSS Graffiti. Since then the app has received an upgrade to version 2.0 (which is technically listed as beta, but has proven to work well for us.)
To recap, RSS Graffiti lets a Facebook Page admininistrator automatically send new content from his website to the Page as long as your website is running a content management system like Radius Webtools, WordPress, or Drupal with an RSS feed. (How do you know if your website is on a content management system? Usually, if you make updates to your site by going to a webpage in your browser–Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer– as opposed to using a standalone application, like Dreamweaver, then you’re using a content management system.) RSS Graffiti monitors your website for new content, checking in at a pre-determined interval, and then posts a brief blurb and link on your Page.
That essential function hasn’t changed in the new 2.0 version. Instead, they’ve polished the interface and made it all a lot easier to setup. We won’t go through the whole process since RSS Graffiti provides a good Getting Started Guide. (And if parishes and ministries in the Archdiocese of Boston need additional help, we’re happy to help. Just contact us for assistance.)
We have provided a screenshot of our own setup for the various Facebook Pages we administer up above to give you an idea of how you could use it. One tidbit to keep in mind is that the feeds that post to your Page doesn’t have to be from your own website, although we recommend that in light of best practices that you use this sparingly. But let’s say you wanted to post every article from The Pilot on your Page, just go to the Pilot’s website, and look for the RSS symbol. Right-click on it and copy the link, then paste it into RSS Graffiti, as the Getting Started Guide tells you.
Finding the RSS link on The Pilot website
Automatically posted content shouldn’t be the only content on your Facebook Page because the point of social media is to be “social”, that is foster a relationship based on dialogue between your parish/ministry and followers or among your followers. But this content provides a good basis for such conversations as well as being useful for those who want to be connected to you.
