Automatically Publish Posts to Facebook
Getting your website’s content in front of more viewers is a common goal for marketers and business owners alike. Sharing content on Facebook is a popular and effective way to do that. However, it can be time-consuming to manage content on multiple platforms regularly.
Fortunately, auto-publishing posts to Facebook from your WordPress site is an accessible solution. Setting up an automatic publishing system can help you maximize the benefit of having both a website and a social media profile. What’s more, there are several ways you can set up your auto-publishing system.
In this article, we’ll take you through the steps needed to set up automatic publishing for your WordPress site and Facebook account. We’ll also discuss the benefits of this approach. If you’re ready, let’s dive right in!
Why Use Auto Publish?
Keeping up with content creation and social media schedules can be exhausting for any size team. Auto-posting your site’s content directly to Facebook is one way to alleviate some of that strain.
Facebook is still the leader when it comes to social media networks, and continues to grow. What’s more, engagement among Facebook users is high. With 2.41 billion monthly active users, there’s a huge potential audience for your website’s content. Auto-posting can be the best way to maximize access to this audience, while keeping your time investment low.
Auto Publish Posts Using a Script (In 4 Steps)
If you want to set up automatic posting without installing a plugin, you can use a script on your website to push content to Facebook. You’ll be using an ‘If This Then That (IFTTT)’ script to make that happen. This is one way you can gain the functionality you want without adding another plugin to your website, keeping it lean and fast.
Step 1: Find or Create an IFTTT Script
IFTTT scripts are also called ‘applets’ or ‘recipes’. These applets watch for one or more specific triggers, and execute pre-determined tasks in response.
There are two trigger options to keep in mind when it comes to auto-posting from WordPress:
- A new post is published
- A new post with a specific category or tag is published
In response to these triggers, you might instruct WordPress to take one of the following actions:
- Create a new post
- Create a new photo post
To set up an IFTTT script, your best option is to use the free IFTTT platform. To get started, you will first need to create an account on the website:
Once you set up your account, you can explore the extensive applet library. Searching for “Facebook” or “WordPress” should help you locate the right tools:
Once you’ve found an applet that does the task you’re looking for, you can select it and begin connecting WordPress to your social media accounts.
Step 2: Connect Your WordPress Account
Next, you’ll need to provide some information about your WordPress website. This includes the site’s URL, along with your username and password:
If you have Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) enabled, you will need to generate an application-specific password to use in this step as well.
Step 3: Connect Your Facebook Account
Connecting your Facebook account is the next step in the process. Again, this simply requires entering your login information:
Once that is completed, you will be asked to select the Facebook page you want to receive posts from WordPress:
If you want to post to more than one of your Facebook pages, you’ll need to set up a separate applet for each one.
Step 4: Customize Your Applet’s Settings
Now you can start to customize a few settings. You’ll be able to set the parameters of your IFTTT applet with some simple options:
You can also craft the message you would like to appear on your Facebook page’s wall when content auto-posts. Once you’re done, be sure to save your changes.
If you need to make more changes later, you’ll be able to view all of your applets in the My Applets section of your account. You can find this by clicking on the user icon in the upper right-hand corner of the IFTTT page. Most changes to your applet can be done from there:
You can click on any of your applets to access more settings, and even view activity logs to check and see if the scripts are running smoothly.
Auto Publish Posts Using a Plugin (In 4 Steps)
Of course, you can also choose a WordPress plugin to enable automatic posting to your Facebook page. If the IFTTT applet process isn’t flexible enough to meet your needs, let’s take a look at how to set up this handy feature with a plugin instead.
Step 1: Select and Install an Auto-Post Plugin
There are several high-quality and popular plugins in this category to choose from. We’re going to use Blog2Social, one of the most popular and robust options, to demonstrate how to connect your Facebook page to your WordPress site:
First, install and activate your chosen social media plugin in your WordPress admin dashboard:
It’s important to note that Blog2Social uses the Heartbeat API, as does WordPress. If you’re using our WP Engine hosting service, you’ll also need to install the Heartbeat Control plugin to enable heartbeats on your site.
Step 2: Connect Blog2Social to Your Social Media Accounts
In order to set up a schedule or automatic posting, you’ll first need to connect Blog2Social to your chosen social media accounts. Now that you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll find a new Blog2Social item in your WordPress menu:
The Blog2Social dashboard is quite robust. You can set up posts, manually send blog posts to Facebook, and create a schedule. If you go to Blog2Social > Network, you can easily manage all of your social media account connections:
Now you’re ready to start cultivating your auto-posting strategy!
Step 3: Set a Posting Schedule
One of the biggest benefits of using a plugin for your auto-posting needs is that you can take a ‘set it and forget it’ approach. If you go to Blog2Social > Calendar in the plugin’s dashboard, you can access calendar and post scheduling options:
Here, you can add content from your blog and assign it to post on specific days to designated social networks. That way, you don’t need to log in and share new content each time it’s added to your site.
Step 3: Adjust Your Settings to Ensure Proper Post Formatting
When you auto-post from WordPress to Facebook, not all of the formatting translates exactly the same from platform to platform. To make sure your posts are going to look the way you want, you’ll need to visit the Blog2Social > Settings page:
Here you can adjust whether your WordPress tags should show up as hashtags in Facebook. You can also enable shortcodes in your posts, and use an automatic URL shortener for longer URLs.
Step 4: Manually Share Your Favorite Posts
If there are posts on your site that you love, but don’t really fit in your scheduled calendar of posts, you can choose to share them manually with one click. In the Blog2Social > Share Blog Post section of the dashboard, you can access a library of your WordPress posts:
The Share on Social Media button makes it easy to quickly select a post to share to your social accounts. This might be useful if an old post suddenly becomes timely again, and you want to maximize the engagement on social media without disrupting your pre-set schedule.
Keep Your Content Flowing With WP Engine
Social media maintenance shouldn’t slow you down, now that you have some helpful tools you can add to WordPress. Automating as much of the posting process as possible saves you time you can spend on growing your site and business.
Here at WP Engine, we offer the best developer resources and WordPress hosting so you can keep your site running seamlessly. Check out all of our WordPress hosting plans and solutions, to make the most of WordPress and build engaging digital experiences!
