How to connect your Facebook & Twitter accounts for Cross-Posting

We get asked a lot by our friends, contacts, Social Media clients, and a group of combination of all three, as to how one can connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts to cross-post. Cross-posting between Twitter & Facebook accounts means that if you tweet something on Twitter, it will get posted as a status on Facebook, and if you publish something on Facebook, it will get tweeted to your Twitter profile. So here we go. we will today outline the steps and several options available to allow you to cross-post between Facebook and Twitter.

The first and second sections focus on allowing you to post directly from Facebook or Twitter, to the other, without ever leaving either of those two sites. In the third section we will tell you about an external service that you can setup once, and then automatically have it send your Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets to the other service. In that third section, you only have to setup your account outside of Facebook or Twitter once, and then you never have to leave either Facebook or Twitter. For the final fourth section, we will list for you several applications that you can use, outside of Facebook and Twitter, to post to both websites without ever logging into Twitter or Facebook directly.

One thing to keep in mind about Facebook profiles and Facebook Pages: Since April, 2010, Facebook is aiming at having two types of Facebook profiles. One is your regular Facebook profile, the one you log into when you go to Facebook. These are referred to asdefault Facebook profiles, Facebook account, Facebook personal profile, or simply the Facebook profile. The other type is a sub-type of the main Facebook Profile, called Facebook Pages. A Facebook Page is a separate Facebook entity that you create within your main Facebook profile that aims to create an identity for some product or idea that you have or support. Facebook Pages can have followers, who are called “Fans” or “People who Like” or “People who Recommend” by Facebook. An example of a Facebook Page is the Infura Page on Facebook.

1 : Posting from Facebook to Twitter

Posting from Facebook to Twitter is both easy and tricky at the moment, and possible in three ways. Posting from Facebook Page to Twitter is very easy, while posting from Facebook Profile to Twitter is tricky.

From Facebook Page to Twitter: As mentioned already, posting from your Facebook Page to your Twitter account is fast and easy! To post your Facebook Page updates to your Twitter profile, you can use the official Facebook Page to Twitter app, developed by Facebook itself. This allows you to install the app and automatically tweet, to your Twitter account, any Facebook Page statuses, links, photos, notes and events that get posted to your Facebook Page.

From Facebook Profile to Twitter: Posting from any Facebook Profile to Twitter directly, without the involvement of any non-Facebook App, is very tricky. It is still a mystery as to why Facebook has not developed an official application to allow people to post their Facebook profile statuses to Twitter, or way Facebook has not talked or discussed such an idea on any big scale.

Here are two existing Facebook to Twitter apps on Facebook that others have used before. Their reliability, however, is not guaranteed, as many users post that the Apps do not work for them. If you have any feedback about them, please let us and others know by leaving a comment below.

1. Official Twitter App for Facebook – by Twitter
2. Tweet (Formally Twitter Updater)

2 : Tweeting from Twitter to Facebook

Since Facebook has two different types of profiles, called Facebook profile and Facebook Page, we will separate each of them below.

1. Twitter to Facebook Profile Option A: Posting from Twitter to Facebook, or tweeting, is also very easy. Twitter itself has made an Official Twitter Application for Facebook. This is the same app listed above for the “Posting from Facebook to Twitter” section, though in terms of posting from Twitter to Facebook, it is rock solid and so far, works perfectly in our own tests also. Once you install this app into your Facebook profile, it will start posting any new tweets from your account into your Facebook profile as status updates. This will post as a Facebook status everything you tweet on your Twitter account, from RT’s to @ replies to new tweets.
2. Twitter to Facebook Profile Option B: Another alternative, in the form of a Facebook App, is to use the Selective Twitter App on Facebook. What it does is to allow you to selectively post certain tweets to Facebook as status updates, and not everything you tweet. This is acheived by installing the Selective Twitter App on Facebook, and then putting #fb at the end of any tweet you want your Selective Twitter App to post as a Facebook status.
3. Twitter to Facebook Profile or Facebook Pages Option C: A third Facebook app, RSS Graffiti, allows you to post anything to your Facebook profile or Facebook Page, including your new tweets. What it does is to get any RSS Feed, including your Twitter RSS Feed, and plug it into the RSS Graffiti app. Then you simply tell the RSS Graffiti App which Facebook profile or Facebook Page to post to. RSS Graffiti will then check the RSS feed on a regular basis and post any new updates directly to your Facebook profile or Facebook Page. If you wish, you can also find out what RSS means and what it is

Remember: it is best to use only one of the above three Facebook apps at the same time, unless you use RSS Graffiti to post to your Facebook Pages and use either of the other two apps to post to your Facebook Profile. Using more than one of the above Facebook apps at the same time will most probably result in duplicate tweets, because if more than two of the apps are active at the same time on your Facebook account, they will both get your Twitter tweets or RSS updates and post them, separately on their own, to your Facebook account as status updates. This will result in the same single tweet to be posted twice, once each through each of the installed app.

3 : Posting to Facebook or Twitter from Facebook or Twitter via RSS Feeds in TwitterFeed

There is one popular way to post from your Facebook profile directly to your Twitter account or vice versa. It is what we call the TwitterFeed way. This method allows you to post from either Facebook to Twitter, or Twitter or Facebook. It works on both Facebook profiles and Facebook Pages. Again, if you wish, you can also find out what RSS means and what it is.

TwitterFeed is an online service that allows you to take any public RSS feed from anywhere and post it to either Facebook or Twitter, or both. For this section, we are going to help you post to either your Twitter or Facebook account from either Facebook or Twitter. You need your Facebook Status RSS Feed or Twitter RSS in order to plug it into Twitter Feed so that it can post directly to Twitter. There are three options for this: your Facebook Profile RSS Feed, your Facebook Page RSS Feed, and your Twitter RSS Feed. You can select any of these options depending on where you want to post and from where.

1. Finding your Facebook Profile Status RSS Feed: To find your Facebook Status RSS Feed, log into your Facebook Account, go to your Facebook Notifications Area, and on the right hand side bar, you will see a link called “Your Notifications“, which should look like the image you see to the right [minus our text and yummy arrow]. Right click that “Your Notifications” link and copy paste it into notepad. The link will look like the following:

   http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=AAAAAAAA&viewer=AAAAAAAA&key=AAAAAAAAAA&format=rss20

   Your actual Facebook Notifications link will have the “AAAAAAA” text in the above example replaced with some numbers. The only thing you need to edit in your newly copied link is the word “notifications” with the word “status” – that is it. So for example, if your Facebook Notifications RSS link is:

   http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=12345678&viewer=123456789&key=1234567890&format=rss20

   Your new link, after you change the word “notifications” into “status“, will be:

   http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=12345678&viewer=123456789&key=1234567890&format=rss20

   That will be your Facebook Status RSS Feed link, with the numbers in your actual personal link being different from the above example.

2. Finding your Facebook Page RSS Feed: Finding your Facebook Page RSS Feed is super easy. The link below is Infura’s Facebook Page RSS link. Simply replace the bolded numbers below with your own Facebook Page id, and that will be your own Facebook Page id.
   

   http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=atom10&id=116550975034602

3. Finding your Twitter RSS Feed: Twitter RSS Feed is very easy to find too. On your Twitter profile page, your Twitter RSS Feed link will be listed under the box which shows your followers. For example, the image to the right shows our @Infura RSS feed link.

   We at Infura also found out another super easy, and for us a secret way, to get your Twitter feed url, which is a simpler and a bit different, more personal link than what the Twitter Feed link above will look like for your account. Following is the link to Infura’s Twitter RSS Feed. Simply change the bolded word “Infura” to your own Twitter profile id.

   http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/infura.rss

Add any of the above feeds to Twitter Feed: Now you can use and copy any of the above RSS Feed links into Twitter Feed and tell Twitter Feed to post that feed directly as a tweet into your Twitter account or as a status update into your Facebook profile. Twitter Feed will do the rest.

Tip: Twitter Feed can post to either Facebook or Twitter from any RSS feed, from anywhere online, and not just Facebook or Twitter RSS feeds.

4 : Posting from other applications to both Facebook & Twitter

The above three ways focus mainly on you posting to either Facebook or Twitter without leaving the Facebook or Twitter websites that much, or at all. There is a fourth way to update both Facebook and Twitter at the same time also. A set of applications have cropped up in the last 2 years that allow you to post to many different networks, including Facebook and Twitter, by simply sending a message to those applications. Depending on the application being used, you can send your messages via sms or mms text, e-mail, any instant messaging message, online through a browser, or by downloading the application to your computer or mobile phone.

Following are some of the different apps that allow you to post to more than one social network at the same time. By “Online”, we are referring to using a browser, and by “Downloadable”, we are referring to programs you can or need to download to your computer or your phone and install in order to use that service. Many services below require you to setup a separate account with those specific services, in addition to your already existing Facebook or Twitter accounts. They are described as such below, listed in random order.

• Ping.fm . Online & Downloadable. Requires a free Ping.fm account. Owned by Seesmic, listed below.
• HelloTxt . Online & Downloadable. Requires a free HelloTxt account.
• HootSuite . Online & Downloadable. Requires a free HootSuite account.
• Twhirl : Downloadable App. Allows posting to many different networks at once by having Ping.fm support.
• Tweetdeck : Downloadable App. Free Tweetdeck account optional.
• Twitter Feed : Online. Described in step 3 above. Requires free signup or logging in via any of your existing Google, Yahoo, or several other accounts.
• Seesmic : Online & Downloadable. Free Seesmic account optional. Seesmic owns Ping.fm, listed above .

It is easy to connect your Facebook & Twitter accounts!

As you can see, there are several options to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts for cross-posting. Any of the first three options need to be setup only once. After that, you simply log into Facebook or Twitter and can post statuses or tweets and have the other service be updated automatically. The fourth option, which lists apps to use, allows you to use apps directly instead of logging into Facebook or Twitter that much.

Which method do you prefer? What has worked or not worked for you? What is your opinion on cross-posting between Facebook and Twitter, and maybe even other services like MySpace and LinkedIn? Please let us know.

Thank you.