I must thank Heather for bringing up this brilliant question. To me, Twitter Favorites is another hidden gem for content discovery. Apart from discovering smart tips, Twitter Favorites works as a bookmarking tool to collect testimonials, acknowledgments about others and our work. Either way, it deserves more attention from us rather than rusting itself away on the sidebar.

Retrieve the location and RSS Feed for Twitter Favorites

Twitter Favorites is public viewable for all user accounts. Consider Favorites as a ‘resourceful link’ for your Twitter, to retrieve its RSS Feed simply go to the link indicated below then look for RSS feed of user’s favorites below the ‘Following’ chart:

Tools to Import RSS Feed to Facebook Page

Now that you got the feed, here comes the best part: importing the feed to your Facebook Page. Tons of ways to achieve that and if you are already familiar with how Facebook applications can enhance your Facebook Page by adding it to your page, it should be easy for you to carry out either one of the following methods:

Facebook Applications: RSS Graffiti and Social RSS

Most of the applications are now supporting multiple feeds importing, therefore you don’t have to worry about messing up the existing blog post updating to your wall posts. RSS Graffiti and Social RSS both fit well for the job, but the former has a slight advantage over its Twitter posting options:

• ability to personalize favorite tweets as status updates
• eliminating unwanted twitter username right at the beginning (the example stripped my username to make the message more straight forward)

Twitter Web Client: Hootsuite

This is another favorite method of mine – using the almighty Hootsuite you can enjoy the efficiency of RSS Feed updating easily from its web page.

1. After logged on to Hootsuite, look for Launch at the bottom left corner of your dashboard.

2. In launch> Settings > RSS Atom to add a new feed

3. While making your way through the configuration, make sure your facebook page selection is active/ticked:

Web Application: TwitterFeed

So you’re not used to Facebook applications or Hootsuite, how about Twitterfeed that provides the same functionality to update your Facebook Page with favorited tweets easily based on configured settings. Post prefix or suffix, even apply keyword filter to further select your tweets based on Facebook Page audiences.

Social Networking & Microblogging Service: Ping.fm

Ping.fm makes sharing all the more easier! Iit covers a wide range of social media sites other than Facebook Pages and updates them in one-go! It’s comparable with FriendFeed and the process is relatively easy as well ever since Ping.fm included Feeds and Google Reader as one of their services. Just logged on to Ping.fm and go to Superfeedr to customize your feed:

Or, if you prefer to do selective tweets for Ping.fm:


1. First, Log on to your Google Reader and add the Twitter Favorites RSS Feed to your subscription.

2. Back to Ping.fm, go to this link and input your Google Reader username and Add Feed.

3. Once you have hit ‘Share’ over at your Google Reader, Ping.fm will update your Facebook Page and other social media sites immediately as how you’ve configured them.

Points to Ponder:

To identify your purpose and the type of messages you are bound to showcase at Facebook Page members is vital. Mari Smith has shared a few good ideas to use Twitter Favorites even outside Facebook. In addition to that, Favorited tweets are good choices for selective tweets (as you can apply in Ping.fm and twitterfeed earlier) instead of importing the entire twitter stream which can be a turn off if you’re super-twitter-social at times. Try using prefix to create non-intrusive updates, sharing what matters and truly important to your audiences.

What about tweets from Protected Twitter accounts, you say? When you mark ‘favorite’ for a tweet shared by your friend who has a protected Twitter account, although you can view it in your Favorites but it won’t be visible to your followers publicly, only those who are sharing the same connections you have with that protected account. It’s good to see that Twitter is still protecting user’s privacy up till now.

Now Is Your Turn…

Do you have any questions about Facebook? Or any social media issues you’re interested in finding out? I would love to have a Q&A session like this as a blog post as it helps us all to discover new approaches that might be a big step in our respective networking goals. Like Heather, you’re definitely gaining a spotlight and link love for your kind participation here in Social @ Blogging Tracker, I’ll say it’s a mutual benefit for all of us, don’t you think so? Email me and let’s make this happen.

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Discussion board can be one of the most underrated applications in Facebook Fan Page. It is a mini forum for fans to interact with one another; an excellent area for admin to collect feedback, answer requests and bond with fans in discussions.

However, most of us have neglected its importance due to a huge setback - Facebook does not provide notification for new responses. Fans can either bookmark the thread to check back regularly or have the page admin to send weekly reminders for unanswered threads. Inconvenient and time consuming. Your fans will eventually lose interest and move on.

Why Don’t Just Let the Fans Post on Wall instead?

No doubt we are encouraging an open-posting fan page. However, allowing fans to post on Facebook Wall is a complete different issue than owning an active discussion board. Not only it’s an added value but also a perfect section for new fans to blend in with others. You can easily monitor and trace back the discussions without worrying they be swallowed by busy stream of updates.

While we earnestly hoping for a solution from Facebook, I’m going to share with you how I keep up with the discussion threads:

Google Reader to Track New Responses in Facebook Discussion Board

The main idea is to create a feed from the existing thread and have Google Reader track for new responses. Here are the configuration steps:

1.  Identify the link location for the particular thread you wish to trace.

2. Click ‘Add a Subscription’ to reveal the link box. Paste the URL, click ‘Add’ and a new feed for the thread will be generated.

3. Rename the feed and repeat step 1-2 for other discussion threads. Manage them in a folder for easy follow-up.

4. Once a fan has responded to the selected discussion topic (for example: Fan’s Profile), within an hour Google Reader will retrieve the update as any other regular feed from your subscription.

Now you can head right back to the discussion board and welcome her!

Is it Possible to Receive Updates via Email or Desktop Notifier?

Email notification is not possible for Google Reader. Some third party feed generator services, however, come with delivery options, for example  Page2RSS.com combines with notify.me (email alerts); Feed Notifier is a desktop application as you can see in the image below:

I do need to remind you that time of delivery may differ from one service to another. Google Reader is still by far, my top pick for reliability.

Bonus Tip :

For feed delivery services / notifiers that are unable to recognize / generate feed straight from a discussion thread, you can retrieve the Atom Feed URL for the entire folder which consists of all the discussion threads by following the below method:

1. In Google Reader, go to Manage Subscriptions.

2. Go to Folders & Tags (publicize the feed) > View Public Page.

3. Copy link location for Atom Feed and use it for any feed delivery service preferred. (Make sure the folder feed is ‘publicly viewable’ at all times for the application to work)

Now Is Your Turn …

Do you have a better way to track new responses in Facebook discussion board? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

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