Posting to Twitter from Feedburner

Feedburner is great, if only because you get to watch your subscriber numbers. I dare say if it wasn’t for that number (and that chart), the service would have significantly fewer users. Not because FB is bad in any way, mind you, but the best thing Microsoft ever did for Xbox Live was give people Gamer Scores.

FeedFlare are the extra links at the bottom of each feed post like “Share on Facebook,” “Digg,” and “Stumble It!” There’s a list of “flares” you can add on the FeedFlare page once you’ve activated the plugin from the Optimize page. That’s great and all, but Twitter’s not on the list. No longer!

Feedburner allows you to create your own flares, and I’m going to show you how to create your very own flare to let your feed readers share your posts on Twitter with a single click! Skadoosh.

Step 1: Create the XML file.

Somewhere on your site’s server, create a file [something].xml and paste in the following content:

<FeedFlareUnit>
  <Catalog>
    <Title>Share on Twitter (Static)</Title>
    <Description>Share this feed entry on Twitter.</Description>
  </Catalog>
  <FeedFlare>
    <Text>Share on Twitter (don't worry, Twitter shrinks the URL)</Text>
    <Link href="http://twitter.com/home?status=I enjoyed reading: ${title} ${link}" />
  </FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>

If you want to add hashtags, replace #’s with %23 or you’ll lose your hashtags.

Step 2: Add the plugin to FeedBurner.

Go back to the FeedFlare page and at the bottom of the list of available flares, there’s a textbox where you can input URLs of custom flares to add. Paste the link to your plugin (http://your-site.com/path/to/flare.xml?v=1) and hit Add New Flare.

After FB does its thing (and there weren’t errors), you’ll see your new flare at the bottom of the list. Click on the relevant checkboxes, then save your work. Finally, check your work by looking at your FB feed. Boom. Postable to twitter.

Step 3: Profit.

So easy, there’s not even a ??? step.

Tags: FeedBurner, FeedFlare, Twitter