• Tweet
• Share
• Email

• Tweet
• Share
• Email

I’ve discussed previously several methods that I use with Twitter in order to generate traffic and income.  Some of those methods are very straightforward, such as advertising on twitter.  But one method that I discuss takes a bit more setting up, which is routing rss feeds to twitter.

Recently, I’ve been having a discussion with one of my readers, who contacted me to ask more information about making the use of rss feeds and how to use them on twitter.  After our discussion, I realized that I needed to put out a blog post on the subject for others that have the same questions.

What are RSS Feeds?

First off, rss feeds are a great tool.  If you aren’t aware, rss feeds are news feeds for a blog.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  This is a way for readers to subscribe to automatic updates from a website or blog.

Most blogs or website have a subscribe button that looks like this:  

You can find my rss feed buttons,   and , in the top right of the sidebar under Subscribe and Connect.

Just look for that image on any website and blog.  When you click on that image, it is linked to a special url that allows you to subscribe automatically to the site’s rss feed and then get updates automatically.

You can either send those subscriptions to a specialized news reader such as google reader, or simply set it up to send the updates to your email.

This is a very useful tool for keeping up to date with your favorite blogs or websites on the go.  If you are trying to break into blogging, it allows you to get the news from multiple sources in a single list without having to hop from site to site.  You can get information sent out to you on an automatic basis to keep up with news and get ideas on blog posts for your blog.

I highly recommend subscribing to the rss news feeds from your favorite blogs.

You can find my rss feed here.

Sending RSS Feed Updates to Twitter

Aside from simply subscribing and getting your own personal news updates, you can also route rss feeds to your twitter accounts with services such as twitterfeed or dlvr.it. Both of these services provide for various options that allows the twitter message to get sent out with a short portion of the blog post, so the tweet contains some information and a link back to the post.

This can be very useful for a blogger to set up automated updates from his own blog to twitter.  This way, you can have a twitter account set up for your blog and have send your post updates to be tweeted out on an updated bases.  This is a good way to build some traffic back to your blog by making sure that your twitter followers are kept up to date on your latest blog news.

One of the other ways to make use of routing rss feeds to twitter is to utilize some of the other rss feeds that are available to you.

For instance, if you are running a Donanza Job Board, one of their recommended ways to getting more traffic to your job board is to send out your job listings to twitter.

Simply go to your Donanza Job Board and look for the rss feed at the upper part of your job board.  Just copy that link over to your routing service and your twitter account will get regularly updated with the most current job listings.  This is an awesome way to inform job seekers to the latest jobs available on your job board.

How to Set Up Sending RSS Feeds to Twitter with Twitterfeed

I use both dlvr.it and Twitterfeed to route my rss feeds.  Each has their own pros and cons depending on the type of feed that you are sending and the purpose of the twitter account.

Twitterfeed defaults to the bit.ly url shortener, which has accurate analytics tracking.  This is good for when you are routing feeds such as your own job board.  Twitterfeed is able to separate real clicks from bots and give you a good idea of how many clickthroughs your links are getting.

Twitterfeed is fairly easy to set up with just a couple of steps to get started.  Here’s how to easily set up your rss feed with twitterfeed:

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Step 4.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations!  You can get started creating your automated tweets!

Now, you can get imaginative with the various ways that you use this method of sending rss feeds to twitter.  You can set up as many routes as you like to a twitter account.  Keep in mind that you don’t want to overload your twitter followers with automated tweets as they will get annoyed and stop following you.

I definitely recommend not going overboard with the automated tweets on your main twitter account.  Personally, I have my main twitter account set up to get updates from my own blog and my job board.

However, I also have some niche twitter accounts that I’ve set up to send out other types of updates such as affiliate links along with Adfly links.

I will go into further detail on niche twitter accounts and setting up dlvr.it in part two of this series.

Read Part Two:  Niche Twitter Accounts

About Richard  (300 Posts)

Richard is a full time professional, husband, father and blogger juggling all the responsibilities of life and running a blog. Richard enjoys writing about life and online money matters.