Using Networked Blogs to add content to your Facebook Fan Page

Once you have setup your Facebook Fan Page, you would want to ensure that you have a constant stream of articles, tips and other information flowing into your Page so that your fans get stuff that is interesting to read. An important way of doing this is to ensure that you are able to get content from blogs that are relevant to your readers or fans. You can not only use content from your blogs, but even from other blogs. In a previous post (link), I had shown how to do this using the “Notes” tab of a Facebook Fan Page. At the same time, there is a limitation in using the import via Notes feature in that you can only do this for 1 blog, and any photos in the blog post are not imported. Given that Facebook supports using a number of external applications, one application that makes it easy to do so is called “Networked Blogs”.
Let us experiment with a Fan Page that I created for people interested in setting up their Kitchen Garden, learning tips and techniques, and so on. So I went ahead and created this page (link) and added an appropriate photo, that of a yellow ripe tangerine.

I also have a Blog Site called Kitchen Garden Help (link) where I put tips and other information to help in creating and maintaining a Kitchen Garden. Now, the need is to ensure that posts from the blog make it to the Fan Page. For this purpose, need to search for the Networked Blogs application and add it. At the bottom of the page, to the left, there is an “Applications” button, click that, and then click on “Browse More Applications”

You will reach this page. In the search near the top left, enter Networked Blogs and search. You will get a search result which mentions Networked Blogs.

Click on the search result, and you will reach the following page, which is the Home Page of the Networked Blogs application. Click on the “Go To Application” button on the left side, and you are now much closer to getting to your goal.

This takes you to a page which shows you feeds from blogs that you have already setup, and in the top right corner, there is a button called “Register a New Blog”. Click on the button.

Now you have reached a page where you can enter the details of your blog. If you recall from the beginning of this post, I was trying to add a blog called “Kitchen Garden Help”, and now I will enter the details of this blog in the page, including a short title, a tagline, 3 tags, and a description of the page. Once entered, need to click on the next button. Click next again in the next screen.

After this, you will be asked whether you are the Author of this blog. In my case, since I am the author of this blog, I click on the “Yes button”. Next, you are asked to verify ownership, and that is something you can do later, so I click on the “I’ll do it later” link and move on. And then, success. You reach a page where you can see that a blog has been added, and your account shows as a follow of this page. You now need to click on the “Feed Settings” link near the right middle side.
Note: In case you do not see the Feed Settings button, sometimes Networked Blogs throws up an error. You need to click on the “Get Verified as Author” link and then try again till it accepts you as the author.

Once done and clicked on the “Feed Settings” link, you will get a post that shows you both your profile, as well as your Fan Pages, and you can select the specific Fan Page to which to post to. In this case, select the “Kitchen Garden Help” Fan Page and click on the “Configure” button. You will need to do some further setting, in the case when the application of Networked Blogs has not been installed on your Fan Page.

So, you will get a prompt of installing Networked Blogs on your page, and go ahead and install it. Proceed with the steps on the new window that opens, and eventually Networked Blogs will get installed.

The process that moves on will launch your Fan Page, and if you refer to the Blog tab, then you can see the icon of Networked Blogs, signifying that it has been properly installed.

Go back to the previous page, and there will be a query about whether Networked Blogs has been installed. Once you click on “Yes”, you will next see an option “Auto-Publish blog posts to Page Wall”. Tick this option, and then you will another option where Networked Blogs is trying to get access to automatically post to your Fan Page.

Once you are through with this process, Networked Blogs will automatically pull in the posts and import them into your Fan Page, along with a thumbnail. The advantage you get is that the Blog is now registered with the Networked Blogs application, and others can also eventually find your blog and follow it if they find it interesting.
The one limitation that I have seen with the Networked Blogs application is that it only fetches 3 posts at once, so if you have written more than that many posts in the last few hours, it will only get the last 3.