How to Set Up an RSS Feed on Facebook

The popularity of Facebook has skyrocketed over the past few years, making it a valuable tool both for friends and families who want to stay in touch and businesses who want to market their products on social media sites. One great way to do either of these things is to set up an RSS feed on Facebook.

Using these steps, you can have your personal blog post automatically to your Facebook news feed, so your friends and family can keep up with what you are doing. You can even post your Twitter updates to your Facebook wall, and even make your Twitter status become your Facebook status.

For businesses, posting the company blog on Facebook can be a great way to keep customers informed. You can even post an RSS feed to a Facebook fan page. Setting up an RSS feed on Facebook can also do wonders for writers who want to promote their writing on the web.

The first step to setting up an RSS feed on Facebook is to click on Applications on the left-side menu. This will take you to the Facebook applications page.

The application we want probably won't be on one of the default lists, so choose the first category. It doesn't matter which category you choose. We just want to a page where we can search for our application, so choose the first category from the list. I've highlighted the link in the picture.

There are a number of very good RSS feed applications available on Facebook, and any number of them will work fine. For this step-by-step, I've chosen RSS Graffiti. This RSS feed application is simple enough to set up in a few minutes, yet offers enough customization that you can really make your RSS feed appear the way you want it to look.

Some things RSS Graffiti can do:

1) Display your articles with or without the associated images.

2) Append a prefix to your article posts.

3) Display Twitter tweets in a short format.

4) Convert Twitter status updates to Facebook status updates.

In order to install the RSS Graffiti application onto our Facebook page, we must first locate it among the applications. To do so, locate the search box in the upper left-hand corner of Facebook. (I've highlighted it in the picture.) Next, simply type in "RSS Graffiti" and hit the enter key on your keyboard to execute the search.

You should now see RSS Graffiti in the search results. Simply click on RSS Graffiti to begin the process of installing the application on your Facebook page.

The installation process will begin with setting up permissions so that RSS Graffiti can update your Facebook page. Then, you will set up the individual RSS feed you would like to install on your page. The entire process will only take a few minutes.

The first step in installing an application onto your Facebook page is to go to that application. Below the icon in the upper left-hand corner is a button that reads "Go to Application". (I've highlighted it in the picture above.)

Simply click on the button to start the installation process.

The next step in the installation process is to grant RSS Graffiti permission to update your Facebook page. This is a three step process.

First, you will need authorize RSS Graffiti to access your Facebook page. You do this by clicking on the authorization button highlighted in the picture. This will result in a pop up message box that confirms you are granting permission.

Once you have confirmed that RSS Graffiti has permission to access your page, you will need to grant it permission to allow constant authorization. This allows RSS Graffiti to keep the RSS feed updated on your site automatically.

Last, you will need to confirm that RSS Graffiti has permission to publish on your Facebook page.

Once you have granted RSS Graffiti these three permissions, you are ready to begin setting it up to automatically post your RSS feed to your Facebook page.

The two main pieces of information you need to give RSS Graffiti is (1) the URL of the RSS feed you want to post on your Facebook page and (2) the name of the RSS feed. The name is usually the same as the blog or column you are using for your RSS feed.

Don't know how to find the RSS feed URL on the blog or web page? No problem. Simply follow these directions on how to find an RSS feed on a web page.

The last bit of information you need is the style. If you are posting from a blog or a new column, the standard style is fine. The compact style is ideal for Twitter feeds.

What if instead of a blog or news column, you want to set up your Twitter account to automatically update your Facebook page?

This is actually rather easy. Your Twitter profile actually has an RSS feed attached to it. (You can find it the same way you find other RSS feeds). So, attaching your Twitter feed to Facebook is rather easy through an application like RSS Graffiti.

You can even customize the look and feel to go better with Twitter updates by changing the Style option in RSS Graffiti. Rather than going with the standard style, choose the Compact style to make your updates more like Twitter than a blog post.

What if you want Twitter to update your Facebook status? You can accomplish this by choosing Status updates as the style. These updates will look the same as the compact updates, but they'll also update your Facebook status.

The only thing left to do is to save your new RSS feed. You can do this by scrolling back up to where you put the web feed's URL into RSS Graffiti. This is where the save and cancel buttons are located.

Simply click on the save button and you are done. RSS Graffiti will show you basic stats about your web feed such as how many articles have been successfully posted.

Congratulations on setting up your RSS feed on Facebook!