#HootTip: How to Set up Your RSS Feed in #HootSuite

Hoot Tip of the DayThe HootSuite Dashboard is dedicated to streamlining your social media efforts. That’s why the Dashboard is chock full of features and tools to help you make the most of your social media management. Plus, we’re always adding more. To help get you acquainted with the various functionalities, or just give you a refresher, we have a new #HootTip all about a handy HootSuite feature.

 

Setting up your RSS Feed

RSS Feeds are a great way to save time, and stay updated on the latest information from your favorite websites. Once you set up an RSS feed in HootSuite, you have the ability to take an RSS feed from any site and update it to your social network accounts automatically. Not only will this save you time, and effort, but will also make your social network accounts a hotspot for the latest news.

Follow the steps below to set up an RSS feed in HootSuite. 

Here’s How

  1. Click the Launch Bar, go to Settings, and select “RSS/Atom”.Setting up RSS
  2. From here, click the button that says, “Add New Feed”.Add a new RSS Feed
  3. Paste the RSS feed URL into the “Feed URL” text field.
  4. Select the social profile(s) you want the RSS feed to post to, and choose the appropriate options.
  5. When you’re finished, click the “Save Feed” button, and you’ll be streaming feeds into your profile in no time!

**Bonus Round!** If you want to set a standard message to go out with your RSS feed, fill in the “Prepend text to each message” box. It could be an intro to your own blog or a hashtag. There are plenty of ideas to add value to your message!

Like many updates, we’ve added these handy features based on your helpful feedback. What’s your next idea?

Keep an eye out for a new #HootTip each week – they’re short, sweet and re-Tweetable so you can share your HootSuite expertise with your friends and followers. Some lucky RTers may just find themselves with a #HootKit… It’s our way of saying “thanks for spreading the word.”

 

Author: Donné Torr

Donné Torr has written 32 posts for the HootSource blog..

Donné is HootSuite's Strategic Content Writer. She focuses on Case Studies, HootGuides, White Papers, InfoSheets, HootTips, Client Success Stories and other secret projects.

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Comments

  1. Cindy September 21, 2011 at 10:22 am

    With Faceboook requiring SSL as of October 1 will we still need one if we use your app?

    Reply
  3. Laura September 27, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Hi everybody!

    Am I the only one having trouble lately with the RSS publishing? No blog post images are being shared on Facebook with the link… :S

    Reply
  4. Adam L Simmons December 1, 2011 at 5:53 am

    Is there a way to set the time the RSS feed updates? I recently changed it to updated once every 24hrs and it post at 7:30 PM and I have seen a DRASTIC decrease in clicks on the links. If I could change it to send out the update around midday, I think that would make a world of a difference.
    Any suggestions?

    Reply
    • Angelique January 4, 2012 at 10:52 am

      I would find this to be helpful as well, or to at least have an idea when it will post.

      Reply
      • Chris May 15, 2012 at 11:27 am

        Yep. How do we know when the rss feed will post to Twitter and our FB Timeline?

        We publish our posts at midnight but we want the announcement to go out the next morning at 7am.

        Reply
        • Andy Au May 18, 2012 at 9:29 am

          Hi Chris,

          Thanks for visiting. Contact our Help Desk for insight on this.

          Reply
          • Esther April 16, 2013 at 3:34 am

            Hello

            I cannot find any information about rss-publication timings in the help desk. Could you please post a link to the item containing information about this?

            Thanks.

          • Sam Milbrath April 17, 2013 at 2:56 pm

            Hi there!

            Thanks for the great question. RSS feeds in HootSuite check for new posts based on when you set up the feed. For example, if you set up the feed at 2pm, and have it set to check every 24 hours, it will check and publish new posts every day at 2pm. This isn’t yet reflected in a Help Desk article, but I’ve added a note to add this in a future edit. Hope this helps!

            Sarah – HootSuite Help

  5. Patrick Grimbergen (@LynxKorfbal) March 2, 2012 at 12:25 am

    Hi,

    I’m kind of getting worried. My WP-rss is somehow not getting published from hootsuite. Am I doing something wrong?

    Reply
  6. radhey March 27, 2012 at 12:01 am

    We have set our feed setting 4 per hour. In first hour it posted 4 but in second hours it stopped to post. Is it’s setting is not working properly.

    Thanks and Regards
    Radhey

    Reply
  7. Nate April 19, 2012 at 8:28 am

    Rather than clicking the “include text from post in messages”, it there a way to tease out a couple key element from the feed and apply them to the “prepend text to each message” section?

    Example: my post here (http://twitter.com/#!/CinemaInFocus/status/192728091217506304) included portions of the feed that I don’t need/want as it convolutes the tweet. Recommendations?

    Reply
    • Rob (Support Ranger) April 24, 2012 at 5:17 pm

      Hi Nate,

      At this time, it’s not possible to include specific elements of the blog post in the ‘Prepend’ box. The ‘Prepend text to each message’ box can only be used to type in specific text which will be added in front of the title of each post that is sent out via RSS to your social networks.

      Hope this answers your query.

      In future, you can find help by going to http://help.hootsuite.com or by tweeting @HootSuite_Help.

      Have a great day!

      Rob.

      Reply
  8. Wendy Merritt May 9, 2012 at 2:53 pm

    I am noticing that when you select more than one Target Profile you cannot see the other profiles that you previously selected. The Add RSS/Atom window and the Settings window both only show one Target Profile. Did my other profiles get removed? Are the other profiles still there and just not visible? Is this a glitch with the last update?

    Reply
  9. James Shaw July 23, 2012 at 11:50 am

    I’m a little confused – you say “social profile(s)” – implying we can choose multiple profiles. But I can only choose one. I’ve tried holding shirt or ctrl down, but the dropdown closes after picking the first profile. How do I select twitter, facebook and g+ to share my blog with?

    Reply
  10. David December 6, 2012 at 9:15 pm

    Is there a way to add a hashtag to a RSS feed in Hootsuite? I know there is the option to prepend text.

    Reply
  11. Mike December 28, 2012 at 10:29 pm

    What about appending to the end of the tweet as well? This would be good for adding hashtags to the end of the tweet.

    Or…is it possible to designate certain keywords to include a hash tag?

    Reply
  12. Phil March 31, 2013 at 9:00 pm

    It works for me. I have it set to post in 4 different networks.. and it started slow.. but now its on every 3 hours like it was set. pretty cool

    Reply
  13. Brian May 4, 2013 at 4:15 pm

    Hello Hootsuite, I am having difficulty getting my rss feed to send to google + does google allow rss caching? i’ve done all the correct steps but no feeds are being posted to my google +

    Reply

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