Automatically sending articles to Twitter feed

[mustangj17]

Does anyone know how to do this?

I'm in charge of the social networking at my site and I think this would help increase web hits slightly. I don't know a lot about twitter. If anyone does this and could help me out it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stitch]

twitterfeed.com

 

[mustangj17]

Who woulda thunken?

 

[Cadet]

PM me if you still need help.

 

[Den1983]

That's a pretty good idea, mustang17. I definitely need to try that.

 

[buckweaver]

Auto feeds suck. Hate 'em.

But if you don't have the time/manpower to tweet it yourself, at least it gets your brand out there. And I can't fault any paper for doing that.

 

[thegrifter]

yeah, i'm not a fan of auto feeds on twitter, either. Or papers that have auto feeds on their facebook page. just seems a bit redundant to me.

 

[SF_Express]

OK...I certainly understand the aversion to automated Twitter feeds among the Twitterati. Completely.

But I have one where I simply want our columnists out there whenever they're writing, day or night or weekends, so yes, I have one group on an automated feed.

I don't apologize for it, but I don't particularly expect it to get a million followers, either. It is (sad to say) what it is.

 

[anonymousprick]

I've yet to hear an adequate reason why we're wasting our time on Twitter.

I mean, if you're a major Web site with millions of hits daily, or even a newspaper whose Web site gets considerable traffic, don't you already have a built-in megaphone to broadcast your stuff? Why do you need to go on Twitter and tell a few dozen or hundred or however many people (who are llkely are already plugged in enough to get your RSS feed and have your page bookmarked if they're adding you on Twitter), when you're already on a site with millions of readers? Seems like the tail wagging the dog here.

 

[SF_Express]

I've yet to hear an adequate reason why we're wasting our time on Twitter.

I mean, if you're a major Web site with millions of hits daily, or even a newspaper whose Web site gets considerable traffic, don't you already have a built-in megaphone to broadcast your stuff? Why do you need to go on Twitter and tell a few dozen or hundred or however many people (who are llkely are already plugged in enough to get your RSS feed and have your page bookmarked if they're adding you on Twitter), when you're already on a site with millions of readers? Seems like the tail wagging the dog here.

Well, not really.

If your Twitter feed -- or Facebook page, or whatever -- is really good, you can drag in a LOT more readers that way than you would have.

In other words, it's the difference between 10,000,000 users and 10,200,000 users. Or whatever.

So it can make a difference.

 

[anonymousprick]

I've yet to hear an adequate reason why we're wasting our time on Twitter.

I mean, if you're a major Web site with millions of hits daily, or even a newspaper whose Web site gets considerable traffic, don't you already have a built-in megaphone to broadcast your stuff? Why do you need to go on Twitter and tell a few dozen or hundred or however many people (who are llkely are already plugged in enough to get your RSS feed and have your page bookmarked if they're adding you on Twitter), when you're already on a site with millions of readers? Seems like the tail wagging the dog here.

Well, not really.

If your Twitter feed -- or Facebook page, or whatever -- is really good, you can drag in a LOT more readers that way than you would have.

In other words, it's the difference between 10,000,000 users and 10,200,000 users. Or whatever.

So it can make a difference.

To use the numbers in your hypothetical, I'm more inclined to believe the vast majority of those 200,000 are coming from the 10,000,000 already reading you than they are an additional 200,000 readers.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

The Macarena of social networking, someone called Twitter.

 

[buckweaver]

OK...I certainly understand the aversion to automated Twitter feeds among the Twitterati. Completely.

But I have one where I simply want our columnists out there whenever they're writing, day or night or weekends, so yes, I have one group on an automated feed.

I don't apologize for it, but I don't particularly expect it to get a million followers, either. It is (sad to say) what it is.

Certainly, there are valid exceptions. And that's one of them.

When I say "auto feeds suck," I mean the feeds that many newspapers run where every headline they've got goes up at the top of every hour (or at midnight, or whatever.) And now you've got every local cops brief and council meeting and budget update clogging up your page. It's annoying.

 

[Gomer]

Our Twitter RSS feed gets two or three posts a day — one for news, one for sports and one for the obits.

How do you do the automated things with Facebook? I set up a page for our paper 18 months ago and it's been pretty stagnant, so this could potentially help it get going again.

 

[mustangj17]

I've yet to hear an adequate reason why we're wasting our time on Twitter.

I mean, if you're a major Web site with millions of hits daily, or even a newspaper whose Web site gets considerable traffic, don't you already have a built-in megaphone to broadcast your stuff? Why do you need to go on Twitter and tell a few dozen or hundred or however many people (who are llkely are already plugged in enough to get your RSS feed and have your page bookmarked if they're adding you on Twitter), when you're already on a site with millions of readers? Seems like the tail wagging the dog here.

Well, not really.

If your Twitter feed -- or Facebook page, or whatever -- is really good, you can drag in a LOT more readers that way than you would have.

In other words, it's the difference between 10,000,000 users and 10,200,000 users. Or whatever.

So it can make a difference.

My 17k paper got 3,000 hits one day from links we posted on Facebook. Totally worth it.

 

[mustangj17]

Also, I finally got the Twitter RSS feed set up but it is only sending about two stories per day across the feed. Sorta sucks. Oh well, that's two less stories I have to post to Twitter each day.

 

[Blue_Water]

We haven't had as much luck with Twitter, but Facebook has been a great tool to help drive traffic. It consistently ranks in our Top 10 referring sites.

 

[mustangj17]

We haven't had as much luck with Twitter, but Facebook has been a great tool to help drive traffic. It consistently ranks in our Top 10 referring sites.

Ours is up to our third referring site. We have a significant amount of friends, but so far on Twitter, we only have about 50 followers.

Gotta' start somewhere.

 

[Van Lingle Mungo]

I've yet to hear an adequate reason why we're wasting our time on Twitter.

I mean, if you're a major Web site with millions of hits daily, or even a newspaper whose Web site gets considerable traffic, don't you already have a built-in megaphone to broadcast your stuff? Why do you need to go on Twitter and tell a few dozen or hundred or however many people (who are llkely are already plugged in enough to get your RSS feed and have your page bookmarked if they're adding you on Twitter), when you're already on a site with millions of readers? Seems like the tail wagging the dog here.

More and more people expect news to find them.

I hated Twitter at first, but after I got past the too-cutesy culture (all the tweet puns), I realized that even if Twitter isn't around to stay, the idea behind it will. It's a method of passing information around instantly, and into like-minded communities.

Whether Twitter becomes Facebook-like in ubiquity or something else usurps it, newspapers have to get in the habit of being on top of these channels, even if they don't seem like sure-fire bets at the time. Some will certainly grow too big to ignore at some point, so it's good to be open-minded.

As far as Twitterfeed is concerned, it's OK if it's supplemented by human interaction (like posts, replies and retweets). By itself, it doesn't help much.

 

[Idaho]

We have a couple thousand twitter followers and growing. the links go out to cell phones, blackberries, iPhones, etc. And if the tweet is a good headline it can create an instant click and read.

I've grown to be a big twitter fan. Perhaps too big