First, follow the instructions on my prior link here:
http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/
Once you’ve done the above, you can post to Wordpress blog and it will echo out to both Facebook and Twitter.
Next, manually connect Twitter to your Buzz. Here’s how:
Log in to Gmail. When you click “Buzz” and then click “Connected Sites”, you’ll see the source manager; this lets you control permission levels for each source (in other words, you can set it so that your posts via Twitter are shared with certain people as opposed to your default privacy settings). [Note: controlling this was pretty un-intuitive. You’d think you could get to this under “Settings”, but you can’t. Bad design.]
That’s it! Enjoy.
Is Google’s new Buzz feature a Facebook / Twitter killer? Time will tell. For the near term though, it’s probably a good idea to check it out. With Twitter-to-Buzz integration, you can easily set up Buzz to mirror your Twitter posts. In my next post I’ll show how to integrate Facebook and a Wordpress Blog so you can post-once and it will echo out to Twitter, Facebook and Buzz with zero extra steps.
In the meantime, here’s some Power User Tips:
TWITTER TO BUZZ
You can manually connect Twitter to your Buzz. When you click “Buzz” and then click “Connected Sites”, you’ll see the source manager; this lets you control permission levels for each source (in other words, you can set it so that your posts via Twitter are shared with certain people as opposed to your default privacy settings). [Note: controlling this was pretty un-intuitive. You’d think you could get to this under “Settings”, but you can’t. Bad design.]
@REPLIES
When you’re entering a comment, your @reply will add people to the post and deliver it to their inbox. For example, type in “@mary” and you’ll see a list of matches. Note that while this makes it “private”, it appears that that person can share your comment with others much as an email may be forwarded, so beware this loophole.
FILTERING
If you’re a power user already using Gmail filters, note that your regular email filters will apply to Google Buzz messages, so you can control what types of messages you see.
BUZZ DOCUMENTATION
Finding the Buzz documentation was a bit of a chore, so I included the direct link here:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=27291
I used to write a blog post, then go to TinyURL.com to get a short link, then I’d log in to Twitter to tweet about my new blog entry, then I’d go to Facebook and do the same thing. What a drag. Here’s how to automate your blog so you write once and publish to multiple place automatically — it mirrors the content out to both Twitter and Facebook with no extra work necessary!
This mini-tutorial assumes:
- You have a Facebook “page” set up and a Twitter account.
- You have a blog set up on your own domain (mine is swshinn.com) and it uses WordPress software to manage the site.
- You (or someone you know) knows how to FTP into your site and install WordPress plugins (it’s really not that hard — Google search to find many tutorials on this).
Step 1: Getting Wordpress to automatically post to Twitter
Download and install the “YOURLS: WordPress To Twitter” plugin:
planetozh.com/blog/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter-a-short-url-plugin/
Once installed and activated, configure these settings:
- Under “URL Shortener Service” pick a service. I use TinyURL.
- Under “Twitter Settings” enter the login and password for your Twitter account.
- Finally, check the box that says “ Send a tweet with the short URL”. This means that every time you submit a blog post, this WordPress plugin will automatically make a short URL for your blog post (in my case, generating a TinyURL) and post the entry to your Twitter account.
Here’s a screenshot of my settings (click the image to enlarge it):
YOURLS Wordpress To Twitter Plugin
Step 2: Getting Facebook to automatically list your new blog posts
Assuming you have a Facebook “page” (I’m not sure it would work with a normal Facebook account or Facebook “group”; and most authors prefer the “page” features), here’s how you do it.
- Click on the link to “Edit” your page.
- Then on the settings page that appears, under “Notes Settings” on the right, it gives the option to “Import a blog.” Click that link, and then enter the URL for your Wordpress blog’s RSS feed (by default, this is “http://yoursite.com/feed”).
- Click on “Start Importing.”
You’re done!
In the future, when you post to your Wordpress blog, Wordpress will tweet your post to your Twitter account, and Facebook will grab the entry and post it under your Facebook page notes. Note that Facebook may take a few minutes (maybe even an hour or more) to grab your blog post, so be patient. 
If you liked this article, add me as a “friend” on Facebook and Twitter!:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/S-W-Shinn/197734288134
http://twitter.com/swshinn
Book trailers are a new technique for marketing books. Book trailers (or book videos) emerged in 2002 with a company called Circle of Seven Productions.
Book trailers are now becoming mainstream. Bookscreening.com is a website entirely devoted to the viewing of book videos. Another site — Christianbookvideos.com — focuses on Christian book videos.
I’m intrigued by the new “V” TV series. They seem to take matters of Faith seriously, plus one of the “good guys” is a Catholic Priest!
More publishing mysteries revealed by @RachelleGardner: “Sell-in, Sell-through, and Earn-out”: http://bit.ly/49lOYD
If you’re a pen aficionado like me, check out these cool pens from Japan: http://bit.ly/3PW1rp
Very nice diagram on proper use of an apostrophe: http://bit.ly/1J0B8O
In order to carve out time for writing, sometimes you have to draw the line and cut off the email spigot. How?
How? As this 43 Folders article says, this include finding automation and economies of scale. Some examples:
- add info on your Contact page explaining what people can expect from you
- use auto-responses and email template sstating when you are away or can’t be reached
- where necessary send short responses to clarify when you’ll be available again
It’s all about setting expectations.
A great quote from Stephenson’s “Why I am a Bad Correspondent” — why writing is hard work requiring long, uninterrupted spans of time:
Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.
(4.00 out of 5)