In an endless field of cool things to do with my website, how do I choose just one? And which tulip is the right tulip for me?
The wonderful thing about the internet is that there are so many things you can do!
The terrible thing about the internet is that there are so many things you can do.
Which things are worth my time?
Learning how all of this is going to help me sell my self published book is a massive time-sink, so I have to be very sure that doing something is worth it.
Based on my research, my observations, my workshop attendances, my groups, my mentors, my website classes, and my habit of listening in on Starbucks conversations – having your posts show up on your Facebook page is worth it.
Posting regularly to my blog – (which is the same as my website)… is worth it. And making sure those posts show up on my Facebook page (page, not profile – tho I could do both) is worth it, because I can make the Facebook page updates happen automatically. I can include automatic tweets with the same process, so that’s worth it too.
You can set up your Facebook page to have your blog posts flow automatically each time you post fresh material using the Networked Blogs app, done through Facebook. The same app will push the posts to your Twitter account.
I first set up HootSuite to do this, one of many free services that will do it automatically. But HootSuite would not let thumbnails of my post images show on my Facebook page and that was a deal breaker for me. I think people are more likely to click through if the picture shows, so I switched to Networked Blogs. I’d gone with HootSuite first because I’d read that Networked Blogs would count my click traffic as their own… but in the end, the thumbnails issue was more urgent.
Any specific details on how these services function goes out of date super fast, because everything is so dynamic on the web. Most of the tutorials I viewed about how to set up Networked Blogs were using the old Facebook interface – although they all still worked. The screenshots were out of date. So the info in the paragraph above may no longer be an issue by the time you are reading this post… but regardless, pick one and move forward so that your posts flow to both your Facebook page and your Twitter account.
Google “How to setup Networked Blogs” or “How to post blogs to my Facebook page” and follow through. Then keep posting regularly, because the heart of all the “How to use a website for Self Publishing” advice is to keep posting regularly, and then make those posts work for you.
If I’m wrong about Hootsuite, let me know! (And if it would take a massive HTML hack to make it show thumbnails… that doesn’t count.)
