Why you should use FeedBurner’s new Socialize tool

I’m a big proponent of Google services. Any time you can give your site Google juice, it’s a good, healthy thing.

Recently FeedBurner, a Google service, announced the addition of a tool called Socialize.

FeedBurner Socialize automatically publishes your content to the social Web, in particular, Twitter.

I’m also a big proponent of efficiency and automating publishing when possible, instead of manually re-publishing or posting links.

Here’s how FeedBurner’s Socialize works:

In your FeedBurner account, go to the Publicize tab.

The sixth option down on the left is for Socialize – Publish to the social web.

You can add Twitter accounts (any number of them), and then associate a specific account with that particular feed. I have associated a number of feeds with my main Twitter account (@codella) because the feeds all have to do with my marketing and public relations consultancy business (which is what I use that Twitter account for).

Now, every time I publish a blog, the Google FeedBurner Socialize service automatically sends an update to Twitter with my blog post title and a Google-shortened link.

Here’s an example:

You’ll notice that Google was three minutes faster publishing an update in Twitter than I was. I manually posted a link through Tweet Deck to my blog article, but the FeedBurner Socialize service beat me to the punch by a few minutes.

In fact, it was even re-tweeted before I published the link in Twitter to the blog post.

Google also makes the Socialize tool available through its Google Toolbar application.

I like that Google has entered the URL shortening business. They provide good analytics and you know that URLs shortened by Google won’t one day stop working. At least if Google does stop working then we may as well not even have the Internet.

Related posts:

1. PR research tool
2. Information harvesting using filtrbox
3. Using Social Media as a Tool for Public Relations — Pete Codella's course at University of California, Irvine Extension
4. Internet monitoring, measurement and search tools
5. Measuring what is said about you on social media platforms