Making RSS Graffiti

Post Appearance Style Guide

This guide will explain the four main publishing styles available in RSS Graffiti. It is important to select the publishing style that works best for your content. Remember, better looking posts means higher engagement, and more clicks!

The most basic publishing style is the Status Update:

When this style option is selected, RSS Graffiti will publish the title of each feed item as a text-only post. You can also include the URL for that feed item by clicking the “Append link” check box in the style options. This post style is best for brief, text-only messages to your friends or fans.

Another publishing option is the Compact style:

Similar to a status update, this option will create posts using the title of the feed item as text. Below the feed item title, there is a “Read Full Story” link back to the feed item URL, and a customizable “Source” link. By default, the Source link is the homepage of the feed being published, but this can be customized in the source settings. Compact style posts are great for including links in short message published to fans, but like status updates, these posts will not include any description text or media thumbnails.

The next appearance option is the Standard style:

The default and most popular, this style includes the title of the feed item as a link back to the original post, the description text from the feed item, and any media attached to the feed item, including properly embedded images, video, and flash. You can move the description text below the title link with the “move to text box” option, or limit the description text length to a fixed number of characters with the “shorten to” setting.

If incorrect images are appearing with your standard style posts, the most common cause is that your RSS doesn’t include images in the feed. If there isn’t an image attached to the feed item, Facebook will automatically scrape the page being linked to for an image to use. But what if, instead of using the data from the RSS feed, you want Facebook to scrape everything from your page in order to generate the title, description text, and thumbnail?

If you want Facebook to generate all the post details for you, instead of relying on the RSS feed, select the Facebook Default Formatting style setting. With this option selected, RSS Graffiti will send the feed item’s link to Facebook, and Facebook will automatically scrape your page for the title, description text, and thumbnail. All other content in the feed is ignored when this setting is selected. This post appearance is what you see when a link to your content is pasted in a manual Facebook post. You can always control what appears in Facebook’s automatically generated preview using OpenGraph tags in the HTML of the page being linked to.

That’s all for this basic overview of the four main RSS Graffiti style options. These settings are available in the target options window, which can be accessed by clicking on the name of your Facebook page or profile in the publishing plan dashboard. Have questions or need help? Please don’t hesitate to open a thread in our community support forum. Happy posting!

New Feature Launch: AutoShare!

Want your fans to automatically share your content? RSS Graffiti AutoShare empowers your readers to automatically share posts to your feed with their own friends and fan!

Here’s how it works: When a reader clicks an AutoShare link, they are directed to install RSS Graffiti with your feed pre-loaded as the source of a new publishing plan. Once they select a target, such their Facebook profile, and enable the plan, new items in your RSS feed will automatically publish to their timeline.  This allows your readers to spread the word for all their fans and followers to see.

To generate an AutoShare link for your feed, visit app.rssgraffiti.com/autoshare and select your source from the drop down menu. If you’re not currently using RSS Graffiti, you may want to first test the feed with your own publishing plan. Next, select badge, icon, or link, and customize the text. When you’re happy with the preview, paste the embed code onto your web site.

When your readers click this AutoShare link, they are installing RSS Graffiti preloaded with your feed. Make sure your readers understand that when a new item is posted to your feed, it will automatically publish to the Facebook profile or page they select as a target. If they would like to stop posting your content at any time, all they need to do is visit app.rssgraffiti.com and turn off or delete the publishing plan.

We think you’ll find AutoShare a powerful tool to amplify the reach of your content. For more info about this new feature, check out our quick video walkthrough, or visit app.rssgraffiti.com/autoshare to get started right away!