How to Set Up NetworkedBlogs with Your Facebook Fan Page
One of the best things I ever did for my business was connect my blog with Facebook. I’ve had a lot of customers find me that way, and it’s a great way to keep in touch with them without them having to go out of their way to check my blog.
Fortunately it’s pretty easy to do. You’ll be using a Facebook app called NetworkedBlogs. In this tutorial I’m assuming that you already have your blog set up and that you’re already on Facebook. Once you’ve got that much done, here’s what you do next:
Go to the Networked Blogs app and sign up for it.
It may ask you to select blogs to follow — you should be able to scroll down to the ‘skip’ button, or go out to another page and then back again to skip this. When your page looks like the one below, click on the ‘Register a Blog’ button.
You’ll get a form to fill out. Choose good, search-worthy tags, and write your description carefully — this is how people will find your blog on Facebook.
When you’re done, click ‘Next’.
Facebook will ask you if you’re the author of this blog. Click on ‘Yes’.
This is where things get a little complicated — because this is where you verify ownership of your blog. If you know anything about coding, you can choose ‘Use our widget’; it’s faster, but you do have to know a little about how blogs work in the background. I’m not going to go into that here, because it’s different for different blog hosts.
Facebook will give you a listing of your friends — choose several people who know that you’re really the author of your blog, and who’ll be willing to vouch for you. It will ask them to verify you (which is easy for them to do). It’s always a good idea to pick several more people than the number listed, because you’ll get verified a lot more quickly that way.
Verification doesn’t mean as much in NetworkedBlogs as it used to — without it you can’t delete your blog from Networked Blogs once you’ve entered it, you can’t add more authors, and there are a few other small things, but I still think it’s a good idea to get verified so you have more control over how your blog shows up on Facebook.
Once you’re done picking people to verify you, Facebook will take you to a page where you can, in effect, edit your blog’s profile:
From here, you can invite people to read your blog, edit the tags and description you put in earlier, and (once you’re verified) see where most of your blog’s followers are from.
Right now, though, you want to make sure that your blog is syndicated correctly. Click on ‘Set up Syndication’, right there at the top of the page.
From here you can syndicate your blog to your own Facebook profile, to any Facebook pages you have, and also to your Twitter profile. Click on ‘Add Facebook Target’.
This will show you your profile and a listing of your pages. Click ‘Add’ to syndicate your blog on each page.
When you’re done, click on ‘close’.
Might as well syndicate to Twitter while you’re at it — click on ‘Add Twitter Target’. It’ll pop up a window asking you to authorize NetworkedBlogs to use your Twitter account. Click ‘Authorize app’ (logging in to Twitter if necessary), and it’ll redirect you to the syndication page.
Now your posts will automatically post to whatever pages and profiles you chose, so people can see and comment on them:
And there you have it! Simple, but broad exposure for your blog. I’ve gotten a lot of attention using NetworkedBlogs — I hope it’ll work as well for you, too.
2 Comments
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Hi Kate,
I’ve got two quick questions…
1. So when you put the tags in on the networked blog profile page…is that attracting people somehow who are not already connected to you as a friend or who have already “liked” your fan page? I ask because I never find new blogs via facebook and I wonder if I’ll be able to recruit new readers or if I’ll just be making it easier for those who have already expressed an interest in my page to keep up with my blog..
2. I like how FB shows the first few sentences and then offers a link to read the rest. Does that link open your blog in a new window, so essentially you’re driving traffic off Facebook and encouraging them to rummage around your blog, or does it give the reader the full article on Facebook?
Heya Diana! Sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been away on business and just got back…
1) As far as I can tell the people who are following my blog via Networked Blogs are mostly people who know me or my business, but I _have_ gone looking for blogs using tags before, so it might be useful. In my case, at least, it’s just making it easier for people who are already interested to keep up with things.
2) It gives them the article with a Facebook header, like following a StumbleUpon or HootSuite link these days. The header’s pretty unobtrusive, at least to my eyes.
Hope this helps!