The SECRET KEY To Using HootSuite To Link Your Blog Posts To Facebook

HootSuite is a great social media automation tool that has been recommended by my guru Suria Mohd, and by many bloggers and websites that discuss about social media marketing.

HootSuite has many features and is therefore a very useful for doing marketing in a business context. However, its many features also makes the dashboard or user interface difficult to understand and use. 

That is why the first social automation tool I used is IFTTT and then DLVR.IT. Both are relatively simple and easy to use.

Since I have maximised the free features of IFTTT and DLVR.IT, I have resorted to using HootSuite. I have trouble even setting up a simple linkage between my Blogger posts and my Facebook profile and fan page.

I keep getting the "Cannot detect feed" error when I enter the feedburner URL of my blog.

NOW I KNOW WHY!

It's because I haven't written any post for those new blogs. I've never had such problems when I used IFTTT or DLVR.IT. Both allowed me to define a channel from my blogs to Facebook even when I have not written posts.

So you have to have at least one blog post written on your blog before you can synchronise your blog posts to your Facebook profile or fan page using HootSuite.

I also want to show you step by step how to do up the linkage using HootSuite because, like I mentioned at the beginning, the user interface of HootSuite is very confusing to use.

Step 1: 
Once you are logged in to your HootSuite account, click on the Tools icon (the one that looks like a gear).

Step 2:

A window will pop out. On the left side menu, select RSS/Atom.

Step 3:
Click the + button to define the linkage between your blog and Facebook profile or fanpage.

There are other social media accounts such as Twitter, LinkedIn,, Google+ and Instagram for which you can define the linkage if you wish to link to those instead.

Click the + button to define a feed.

There are five properties you have to define for a feed. Click "Save Feed" button when you are done.

Step 4:
If there's no error such as the "Cannot detect feed" error, you will see your feed being set up properly.

Try writing a new blog post now! You should see that once you publish a post, HootSuite will automatically make a post update in your personal Facebook timeline or on the fan page you have specified.

Have fun using HootSuite!

3 Free and Easy-To-Use Social Media Automation Tools

As I have used up the quota in IFTTT and all five free routes in DLVR.IT to link my blogger posts from five of my blogs to Facebook and Twitter, I need to find another social media automation tool.

But it must be free.

I found one finally. It's HootSuite. But I have trouble getting HootSuite to validate the RSS feeds from my blogs. Maybe the two new blogs that I'm attempting to add are still new. So I think I'm going to try again these few weeks, after the blogs grow a bit "older".