If you like to be aware of multiple ways to accomplish similar feats, then please allow me to walk you through using the free If This then That service at http://ifttt.com/.

Once you have an account at If This then That set up, then click on Tasks, then Create Task.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task.png” captiontext=”First click create task” width=”362″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

If This then That does a lot of color coding; so click on the underlined, blue This link.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-this.png” captiontext=”Next click THIS” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Then for your trigger channel, click on RSS Feed.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-trigger-feed.png” captiontext=”Next click FEED as the trigger” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Then click on New Feed Item.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-trigger-feed-pick-new-feed-item.png” captiontext=”Next click New Feed Item” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

And put in the web page address of your WordPress blog. For WordPress, my experience is that “feed” is a part of the URL.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-trigger-feed-enter-feed-url.png” captiontext=”Next enter the web page address of your blog feed” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Then click on the underlined, blue, That

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-that.png” captiontext=”Then click THAT” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Now if you want to target your Facebook Fan page, then click on Facebook page (if you’ve not set up a channel connecting Facebook, you’ll be prompted to do so).

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-that-then-chose-facebook-pages-action.png” captiontext=”Then click Facebook page as your action” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

From here you can experiment as to what works best for you; in my opinion the create status message gives you the cleaner publish on Facebook.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-that-then-chose-facebook-pages-action-create-status-message.png” captiontext=”Then click Create a Status Message” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

From here you can either accept the default, or click on Addins to modify what is used as part of the Status message. You can also adjust the formatting and text so long as you don’t change the variable spelling / names.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-create-task-pick-that-then-chose-facebook-pages-action-complete-status-message.png” captiontext=”Now either accept the default status or adjust by adding in extra fields” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Then to finish up, give your task a unique, meaningful description, and you are ready to go.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ifttt-finish-creating-task.png” captiontext=”Finally, give your task a unique, meaningful description, and complete the task” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Once your task is set up, you can “Inspect” your task to run it manually.

If you are one of our managed hosting customers, and have questions about connecting your WordPress blog you host with us to one of your Facebook fan pages or your personal Facebook page, contact our customer support department for free help.

One way to increase your blogging audience is to publish the articles you write on your blog to your Facebook fan page(s) or personal page.

Let me share with you one of the ways you can publish your WordPress blog articles to Facebook without the need for a WordPress plugin, or setting up a Facebook application. In a future blog article, I will cover If This Then That as another alternative to publishing your blog articles on Facebook.

RSS Graffiti makes it easy to share your blog posts, Twitter updates, YouTube videos and other social activity with your friends and fans on Facebook. You can use RSS Graffiti with any website or social application that has an RSS/Atom feed.

To add the RSS Graffiti application to Facebook, browse https://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/

You can easily add various sources to publish to your Facebook fan pages or your personal Facebook page.

Below is a live, as of March 29, 2012, example of two publishing plans — one for our company Facebook fan page, and the other for my personal Facebook page. You are allowed to set up a number of feed sources; the RSS Graffiti 2.0 beta includes the ability to pull posts from twitter users as well as twitter hash tags.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-overview-page.png” captiontext=”RSS Graffiti 2.0 Beta overview page” imgalt=”RSS Graffiti 2.0 Beta overview page” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

First, if you don’t have one already, create a publishing plan.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-publishing-plan-settings.png” captiontext=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Publishing plan settings” imgalt=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Publishing plan settings” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Next, adjust your target by left clicking on the target link.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-target-settings-basic-tab.png” captiontext=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Target Settings basic tab” imgalt=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Target Settings basic tab” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

You can chose to target a specific fan page, or your personal page; and whether you are posting on behalf of a specific fan page or from your personal page.

You can decide from three different methods of posting from Standard (the default) to Compact to Status Updates (with or without a link). As you select each one, the preview on the bottom changes to reflect what a post might look like when published. Personally, I find the “Standard” (default) works best.

Once you have your target set up, then add a source.

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-source-add-new-source.png” captiontext=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta — add new source” imgalt=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta — add new source” width=”473″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Here is an example of a fully set up source for publishing our WordPress blog to our Facebook fan page:

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-source-settings-basic-tab.png” captiontext=”RSS Graffiti 2.0 Beta Source Settings basic tab area” imgalt=”RSS Graffiti 2.0 Beta Source Settings basic tab area” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Did you catch how the feed URL of http://www.dynamicnet.net/feed/ can be transformed to http://www.dynamicnet.net/blog/ ?

Where I find this feature most useful is if you have a feed URL like http://feeds.feedburner.com/illbehonest-global-site-updates and you would rather direct visitors who click on the source URL (web page) to go to http://www.youtube.com/user/illbehonest instead.

In the source settings advanced tab, you can adjust the formatting of the message, as well as pick the start date for publishing (right now the label is cut off date; but the actual functionality is start date).

[captionpix imgsrc=”http://www.dynamicnet.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rss-graffiti-2-beta-source-settings-advanced-tab.png” captiontext=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Source settings advanced tab area” imgalt=”RSS graffiti 2.0 Beta Source settings advanced tab area” width=”500″ align=”center” margintop=”15″ marginbottom=”15″ theme=”photo”]

Try experimenting with different formatting; I’ve found the “Same as the Item’s Title” to be helpful; you might have a different experience.

Once you have a source to target set up, and turned on, try it out by creating some blog articles — live or test ones you later delete.

If you are one of our managed hosting customers, and have questions about connecting your WordPress blog you host with us to one of your Facebook fan pages or your personal Facebook page, contact our customer support department for free help.

Now, both business have taken off tremendously. Wow! Amazon.com has gone from books to selling almost any legal product that you can think of; and they have Amazon web services where you can rent computer time from their global network.

Now, I like good stories and movies like anyone else, but I’m sure there are many like me who also want to know… so what? What can I learn, and then do with it?

Facebook has become a popular means for businesses to communicate with their customers; so much to the extent that if there’s a politician, they are on Facebook and Twitter. Now, what I see as the pain, the problem is how can the small business owner keep their site up to date, their blog up to date, and still have time to keep Facebook and related social network up to date without duplication, and hopefully with enough variety that they don’t look like everyone else on the playing field.

While WordPress does have plugins where new (and even edited) pages and posts (aka blog entries) automatically post to the various social networks, most of them are very general. For instance, going to the Facebook wall. What if you wanted to make the most of Facebook? Blogs go to Notes, News goes to a News tab, and wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a fill-in-the-blanks contact form on Facebook where people can contact you yet another way?

A few weeks ago I shared how you can automatically have your blog posts automatically feed into Facebook.com Notes so you could keep your Facebook.com site updated with fresh content.

Now, I would like to walk you through how to set up Facebook tabs that you could use for a Contact Form, a way to share News (separate from your blog), or even your own fan page where you could provide people who Like the page with a promotional coupon.

Visit http://www.facebook.com/dynamicnet.net to see what we’ve done to liven up Facebook so far.

The steps that follow make the following presumptions (prerequisites):

1. You have a Facebook.com company page already set up (or will have it set up shortly.
2. You have the appropriate user rights within WordPress to install a plugin, and adjust its settings.
3. You already have a contact form on your WordPress site.
4. You are comfortable creating and editing pages or posts within WordPress.

Let’s start off by your logging into your WordPress back end. Go to Plugins, Add New, and Search for Facebook Tab Manager by David F. Carr, and install / activate it. Below are the settings I’ve found to work best. With one of the beauties of WordPress is that you can try something new, and if you don’t like it, try something else. So experiment, and have fun trying to see what different settings do for your needs.

Once activated, you will have a new menu option within your administrator bar called Facebook Tabs. In that section, you will find you can see existing tabs you’ve created, add new Facebook tabs, read the documentation for the plugin, and go through the Reveal Tab setup (where you can set up what visitors see based on whether they have Liked the page or not.

Now let’s see how this works by going through creating a contact form you will have in WordPress.

First, go to your existing contact form and edit it so you can copy the code. This might be short code (that’s what it is for our site since we use Gravity Forms), or it might be HTML or a combination of both. Once you have it copied, let’s add a new Facebook tab.

This is just like adding a new page or new post. Give it a meaningful title, and past in the code you copied from your contact form into the visual editor (if HTML, switch to HTML view first).

Since a picture can be worth a thousand words, here’s what our Facebook tab for our contact form looks like in WordPress:

Now, click publish and you will get instructions on that same page. To save you some headaches (since at the time of this writing the “Example Configuration” doesn’t match up correctly with Facebook.com’s current setup), please let me walk you through what to do next.

Your next step is to register to be a Facebook.com developer. After you register, you want to click on the “+ Create New Application” button in the upper right hand corner of the https://developers.facebook.com/apps/ page.

Give your application a meaningful name, review the terms, and check that you’ve read and accepted the terms of service.

In your application, you are going to focus on filling in the following areas:

Basic Info

Application Name – a meaningful name that should match entered when you created the application.

Application Description – a meaningful description

Logo – upload your logo; it should be no more than 75 pixels by 75 pixels.

Contact Email – your contact email

Privacy Policy URL – a link to your privacy policy

Terms of Service (yours) URL – a link to your terms of service

Support email or URL – fill in either box (but not both) with either your support email address or support URL.

Web

Site URL – the URL to your site

Site Domain – just your domain name without any www. or other machine name prefix.

On Facebook

Canvas URL – you get this from the Facebook tab page you published

Secure Canvas URL – you get this from the Facebook tab page you published

Tab Name – you get this from the Facebook tab page you published

Tab URL – you get this from the Facebook tab page you published

Secure Tab URL – you get this from the Facebook tab page you published

Save changes as you go through each area.

Next, on the related links menu on the left, click on the View App Profile Page link.

Then click on the Add to My Page link to add the application to your business page.

Lastly, on your Facebook business page, you can edit the tab area to drag and drop tabs; and you should always test your Facebook tab application to see that it is working to your satisfaction.

Visit the Facebook Tab Manager plugin home page for more information about what you an do with this WordPress plugin.

In addition to having a blog, a lot of marketing experts will share with you that you should consider having a FaceBook account, a twitter account, and so on as the push towards being part of social media networks continues to increase.

A WordPress enthusiast and teacher, Bob Dunn, shared in a video of his I watched last week — Bob Dunn’s WordCamp Seattle Presentation — that if you are going to have social networking buttons or links on your site, it would be good that you use them.

To me, that translates that if you are going to link to Facebook, you should have a Facebook account, and try to keep your FaceBook account up to date as well as your blog.

If you are like most of our customers — small to medium businesses, you don’t need another thing added to your to do list.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just update your WordPress blog, and have the entries automatically feed into your Facebook account? If you are like me, you love killing two or more birds with the same stone.

Hooking your WordPress blog section to your Facebook account is easy; let me walk you through the steps:

1. Log into your WordPress administrator area as the administrator user.
2. Click on Settings, Reading.
3. Make sure the radio button for “For each article in a feed, show” is set to “Full text” and click “Save Changes.” The reason for this is that when FaceBook links to your blog, if you just show the summary, that’s all Facebook will bring in (not even linking to the rest of the story). In settings, reading, where it states “Syndication feeds show the most recent” the number present is the number of blog entries Facebook.com will import. You can temporarily increase it before the import, and then when FaceBook is done importing, change it back.
4. Open up your blog home page in your browser so you can easily copy and paste the blog home page URL.
5. In a separate browser tab or window, browse your Facebook.com page.
6. If you do not see “Notes” on the left (for Facebook.com notes), then click on the “Edit Page” icon / button.
7. To add notes, on the left click on Apps, then Notes, and add it, and then click on “Go to App.”
8. While on the Notes page, on the left, click on “Edit import settings“
9. Put in the web page address (URL) of your blog, and follow the prompts to submit it.

Facebook.com will now import your blog entries.

Please note that if you have FaceBook tied to Twitter, that you will have to do a one time clean up of your Twitter account for any duplicates that FaceBook posted to twitter.com (if you were posting them manually or through a WordPress plugin).

It is ok to experiment. If you don’t like how the import went, delete the FaceBook notes, tell FaceBook to stop importing (that’s in the “Edit import settings” area), and then start over.

Once the import is done to your satisfaction, any new blog entries will show up in your FaceBook notes area once you publish them.

Now by keeping your blog up to date, you are also being more active on your FaceBook account as well. Two birds, one stone.