How to update Twitter and Facebook with your Google+ posts
This blog post contains affiliate links.
Update – May 2014 – Friends+Me*
Since I wrote this post there have been a few new services that can help with updating your other social networks from Google+. The one I would like to highly recommend is a service called Friends+Me*. This turns Google+ in to a fully fledged Social Media Management tool. It allows you to selectively cross post to Google+ pages, Twitter, LinkedIn (profiles, pages & groups), Facebook (profiles, pages & groups), Tumblr and even Appdotnet. It has a scheduling system similar to Buffer and cross-posts intelligently to other networks (including using full images, headings and descriptions). It’s something I use every day and couldn’t do without it.
However, I do think there is a strong case for selective syncing between social networks. I use Selective Tweets regularly to post to Facebook from twitter using the #fb hashtag. This means I am in full control of when I want my Tweets to post to Facebook.
I’ve mentioned Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but what about Google+? Google’s social media platform is still the new kid on the block, and their API (the system that lets applications talk to and retrieve information from Google+) is still in its early stages. This means it is currently very difficult to do any kind of syncing to and from Google+.
Back in July, I posted on my personal blog of a way to post to Twitter and Facebook from Google+. At the time, there were quite a few hacks that tried to achieve this. One way (and highlighted on Lifehacker) to post to Facebook was to add your Facebook “post to” email address to your circles. Unfortunately this cut your post off after 50 characters. The original author recommended a (now defunct) extension to post to multiple social networks. However, that’s not what we want to do here- we want automatic syncing of posts.
The method I came up with involved Twitter Feed and an app called Plusfeed by Russel Beattie that served your public Google+ posts as an RSS feed. It was a fab app while it lasted, but alas, Russel’s app got hammered by robots, and then Google’s pricing model made his costs go through the roof. Subsquently someone released Plusfeed2 but a month later that died for similar reasons.
There are quite a few Google+ to RSS services out there that don’t use Google’s app engine, so perhaps there is hope. It’s a shame that Twitter, Facebook and Google+ seem to be trying to kill RSS. I wrote a post on Google+ entitled “Social Media and RSS feeds- is RSS dead?” as it seams that most social networks don’t like RSS. One service that seems to work well is zipl.us. This gives you a vanity url and an RSS feed of your public Google+ posts. I personally wouldn’t use their vanity url service (I prefer gplus.to) and you have to be careful with the whole concept of G+ vanity urls as they may stop working if the site closes down and at some point in the future Google+ will start their own vanity urls. However, their RSS service is very cool.
So, this brings me on to how you post to Twitter from your Google+ posts. Well, there is the hard way and the easy way. First let’s do…
The Hard Way
We’re going to use zipl.us and Twitter Feed. Firstly, head on down to zipl.us and pick yourself a username (you need to do this even if you’re not bothered about a vanity url).
Then paste in your Google+ ID. This is the long string of numbers in your Google+ profile url. If you don’t know what this is, visit your Google+ profile and copy the long string of numbers in the address bar. For example, my profile url is: https://plus.google.com/u/0/118089425632910430111/posts
so my Google+ ID is: 118089425632910430111
You’ll then be presented with your RSS feed! Make a note of this url as you’ll need it shortly. You can create an RSS feed for any Google+ user you like and subscribe to them in your normal RSS reader. This is a good way to make sure you don’t miss any cool posts by your favourite Google+ people. You could even use ifttt to send you an email or an sms whenever they post on Google+.
Please bear in mind that this only works for public Google+ posts. You won’t see any Google+ posts that are limited to one or more circles and not public.
Once you’ve done this, head over to Twitter Feed. If you haven’t come across Twitter Feed, then do check it out. Put simply, it’s a way of posting Tweets from an RSS feed. The reason I recommend this over another similar service (such as ifttt) is that it has lots of advanced features which will help. The downside is that it only checks your feed every half an hour, but to be honest this should be more than enough.
Change the “post content” to “description only” although you may want to play around with that.
You may want to add something to the Post prefix box. This puts some text at the start of the post, so you could add something like “From My G+”. I have left it blank.
At the bottom there is the keyword filter. I haven’t added anything here because I am happy for all my posts to be posted to Twitter and Facebook. However if you want to add a tag to your G+ posts (for example #fb and #tw) you could get Twitterfeed to only post to Facebook and Twitter if it finds those tags in your post.
Click on next and add your Twitter and Facebook accounts and then click on create. And you are done!
If you want to update more than every half an hour then you could try another service such as ifttt which posts every 15 mins.
As I mentioned above, one disadvantage with this method is that your post needs to be public in order for it to be picked up by the RSS feed. Perhaps there could be a way to add authentication in the future so that the RSS feed shows private posts, but that’s for another time. Perhaps by then, Google will have released RSS feeds to G+.
The Easy Way
There is a much easier way, and that is to use a third party app called Manage Flitter*. I love Manage Flitter as a way to manage my Twitter followers, but it also allows you to post your public G+ posts to your Twitter account. Manage Flitter are having similar issues to plusfeed in that they can’t really use the Google+ API very effectively- Google+ are only giving them very limited access. Currently they (like many other services) are having to do quite a bit of screenscraping. I think it’s silly that Google are making services like Manage Flitter resort to this, but until they sort their API out that’s the way it has to be.
To set this up, visit Manage Flitter* and sign up for an account (the basic version is free). Once you’ve down this, click on the Dashboard link and then click on “Turn on/off Google+ Sharing” (see screenshot on left)
If you want to also post to Facebook, then make sure you put the hashtag #fb towards the Google+ post (in the first 110 chars) and use the service, Selective Tweets. Once Manage Flitter posts the Google+ post to Twitter it should contain the #fb hashtag. Selective Tweets will then post this Tweet to Facebook. There will be a delay in this, but currently this is one of the only work arounds.
Of course, if you have cash to burn, you could always use Hootsuite Enterprise Edition. This is one of the only apps out there who are in partnership with Google+. It only costs $1,500 per month. Update Hootsuite offers posting to Google+ business pages on its free, pro and Enterprise plans.
Do check out FriendsPlusMe (as I mentioned at the start of this article), it’s now my recommended option.
How about updating LinkedIn from Google+?
This is definitely possible, again but you’ll have to use the hard way approach (above) to do this. Also, you’ll have to use ifttt.com as Twitter Feed doesn’t support LinkedIn. It’s quite easy to achieve- just set up a new task which updates your LinkedIn channel from your Google+ RSS feed which you created above. I’d recommend that you use the “New feed item matches” option so that it will only update LinkedIn when you use a specific hashtag. We wouldn’t want to spam our LinkedIn contacts would we?
The other option would be to let Google+ update Twitter using Manage Flitter above. Then (if you’ve got your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts linked) Twitter will then update LinkedIn. There will be a delay in the update, but perhaps this is the easier approach.
How do I update Google+ from Twitter & Facebook? (The Reverse)
So, you want to do the reverse? Well, unfortunately (as of the time of posting this) it’s not possible. Google’s Google+ API is still being tested and has not been fully released. Some social media tool companies have been given early access to the API (Hootsuite, Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Involver & Vitrue) and so you are able to manage your Google+ business pages from these 3rd party tools. You’ll have to pay of course- and Hootsuite Enterprise Edition (it isn’t currently available on other cheaper editions) costs over $1,500 per month. (UPDATE- Google+ pages integration is now free on Hootsuite). For more information, see Google’s announcement of 3rd party Google+ Management tools on the Adwords blog or the Google+ 3rd part tools page. There have been some tools to enable you to post to multiple networks from your browser, but that’s something else entirely. Unfortunately until the API is fully available we’re going to have to wait. This post by Shashank on the FastGush social media site interviewed Buffer App‘s co-founder Leo Widrich (@LeoWid) with some exciting news- Buffer will soon be able to send updates to Google+ as well as LinkedIn and Pinterest. I’ll post as soon as I hear any news. (UPDATE- Buffer now officially posts to LinkedIn and Google+ but not Pinterest as of yet)
Conclusion
So, what do you think? Is this something you’d find useful or is it just an overly complicated hack? For the time being, until Google+ sort their API out, perhaps this is the only way. As usual, do please add your comments below!
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Thanks, just did this using the site manageflitter.com like you suggested, works great!
Excellent, glad it worked for you! 🙂
Friends+Me does not seem to work for me. Does not repost at all …
What seems to be the problem? I’d definitely recommend reaching out to Alois at Friends+Me, he is always super helpful. Ian
Hi Ian, do enlighten me regarding the pushing of posts from Google + profile or page to Facebook Pages and Twitter. I am not sure how does Friends+Me actually works better than IFTTT. I have setting in IFTTT such that everytime I sent out a google+ message, it will automatically push to my facebook and twitter account. Except that I would need to create individual accounts for my different google+ profile and page. Will Friends+Me makes it much better ?
Hi Jeffrey. IFTTT doesn’t yet have a Google+ channel so you can’t directly create a recipe from your Google+ profile or page. There are some hacks that people have developed such as creating an RSS feed of your Google+ profile/page using a 3rd party service or using Google Voice, but you can’t do this directly. In any case, Google have only released an API for Google+ pages, so IFTTT will only ever be able to integrate with Google+ pages.
Friends+Me watches your public Google+ posts (on your Google+ profile or pages) and then can selectively cross post to other social networks such as Facebook (profile, pages or groups), LinkedIn (profile, pages or groups) or Twitter. You can set it up to automatically post everything to other networks, or do this selectively. I would strongly recommend cross posting selectively. Friends+Me also has the advantage of it posting intelligently to other networks. It posts an image to Twitter and will only post the title.
A nice article. But, can you let me know about procedure to add this feature to this >> http://fbtools.solrange.com
Sorry, I don’t follow you. What are you trying to do?
Mistyped that. I am trying to do that in PHP.
Thanks, just did this using the site manageflitter.com like you suggested, works great!
That’s great, glad you managed to sort it. Definitely do check out friendsplus.me because it allows you to cross post to other networks so much more easily.
I don’t know what went wrong. I successfully connect my G+ and sign in using twitter yet my post in G+ are not posted at twitter. Any suggestion..
Which method are you using? Are you using ManageFlitter or the RSS feed/TwitterFeed option? The ManageFlitter option is much easier or even better is FriendsPlusMe which is now my preferred option.
Yet another option is a free service from Magenta River (http://magentariver.com) initially geared for photographers to crosspost images from Google Plus to Facebook it also supports text and link updates. As of Feb 2014 supported destinations are: Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr
Thanks, Michael. Although MagentaRiver doesn’t seem quite as comprehensive as FriendsPlusMe it does offer posting to other services such as Tumblr (with other ones coming). I’ll definitely have a play with it and keep an eye on it. Thanks for letting me know about it!
Ian, Note that Magenta River now supports crosspost to 500px and Flickr along with Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. It may not look too comprehensive but it is simple to use with all the smarts built-in under the hood. Advanced users can tweak a few parameters too, but mostly it just works as it is.
Another update required methinks, Buffer has been posting to G+ pages (not profiles yet) for a while now
Thanks, Peter. Actually this article needs a lot of updating! Most of it is still relevant and ManageFlitter is a good way to get your G+ posts to automatically post to Twitter. Buffer does indeed allow posting to G+ business pages. We’ll have to wait a while in my view for posting to G+ profiles. Google have been talking about this for a long time but not delivered- perhaps it will never happen.
I’ve added a new recommendation and that is FriendsPlusMe – https://friendsplus.me
I’ve been using it for a few days and love it. It allows you to post to LinkedIn (profiles, pages and groups), Facebook (profiles, pages and groups) and Twitter. It offers scheduling (similar to Buffer) too. You can choose which networks you want to cross post using hashtags. I’ll be writing an article about it in due course.
thanks this was very useful for me
Glad it helped! 🙂
very handy and the only *current* post relating to G+ » Twitter hacks. thanks kindly.
Great, glad it works for you! 🙂
So basically anyone can now do any of this stuff using the free Hootsuite service?
It depends on what you mean. Because Google+ haven’t opened up their API to include personal Google+ accounts you won’t be able to do anything with your personal Google+ profile. You can, however, cross post easily to your Google+ business page and other social channels via Hootsuite. The Google+ integration used to only be available to Hootsuite Enterprise users ($1499 per month anyone?!) but it’s now open to Pro and free users.
This post was really about how you selectively post to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn directly from Google+. The only way to do this is using the methods above. In my view Manage Flitter is the easiest way, but it only works with Twitter.
As a side note, you can connect an RSS feed within Hootsuite to post to your Google+ business page. This way you could cross post from your blog or any other network that has an RSS feed (Twitter has one but not for much longer). Unfortunately the result is horrible as you don’t get any included thumbnails and you get the ugly (IMHO) ow.ly link.
Hootsuite only allows you to post to Google+ pages
Thanks, I had forgotten to update the article- thanks for reminding me!
You’re welcome!
Hi,
It’s really nice summary of existed way how to implement cross-posting.
Nevertheless, I think I may wait for Google API release.
But anyway thanks for your analyze in this area.
Thanks, Andrii. You may have to wait a long time for Google to sort out their API. They have already released the API for Google+ pages, so you can use Hootsuite to manage your Google+ page. However despite it being well over a year since Google+ opened their doors, we still don’t have an API for managing Google+ personal profiles. Looks like I will be using Manage Flitter for this purpose for quite a while longer!
[…] The best way to update Twitter and Facebook from G+ that I have come across is to get your public RSS feed for your Google+ profile and then use a service like Twitterfeed to update Facebook and Twitter or use Manage Flitter. More detailed info here: https://iag.me/socialmedia/tools/how-to-update-twitter-and-facebook-with-your-google-posts/ […]
[…] The best way to update Twitter and Facebook from G+ that I have come across is to get your public RSS feed for your Google+ profile and then use a service like Twitterfeed to update Facebook and Twitter or use Manage Flitter. More detailed info here: https://iag.me/socialmedia/tools/how-to-update-twitter-and-facebook-with-your-google-posts/ […]
[…] The best way to update Twitter and Facebook from G+ that I have come across is to get your public RSS feed for your Google+ profile and then use a service like Twitterfeed to update Facebook and Twitter or use Manage Flitter.More detailed info here:https://iag.me/socialmedia/tools/how-to-update-twitter-and-facebook-with-your-google-posts/ […]
[…] out their API yet. It’s probably best having a look at an earlier post I wrote entitled “How to update Twitter and Facebook with your Google+ posts”. Using the same technique you can get Manage Flitter to sync your Google+ posts to […]
How to update Twitter and Facebook with your Google+ posts | Ian Anderson Gray | The Google+ Project | Scoop.it