Wanting to automatically share blog posts on social media after publishing?
Doing it manually is not only time consuming but lends itself to forgetting.
Well lucky for you there are a number of ways to share your blog posts on social networks ensuring that every single article you write is immediately posted to your account profile without any manual intervention.
We’ll look at the most effective and least resource intensive way to do this.
Why I Prefer Not Using A Plugin to Share Blog Posts On Social Media
Without doubt, because plugins inject additional JavaScript and CSS into your website, it’s inevitable that this brings with it additional overhead.
When a user requests a website via a browser, a number of processes are completed. These processes include loading all of the HTML code in your pages, the CSS code and any scripts that need to run in order to fetch information from a database that lives on your server.
It can take anywhere from a number of milliseconds to a number of seconds for each process to complete. Very briefly, this is what happens when you request a web page.
- Domain name is converted to an IP address – Your browser requests an IP address that matches your domain name from a root server which then returns the information to the browser.
- Browser requests a file – the browser makes an http/s request for a file (usually an HTML file), from the server on which your website lives.
- Server sends a response – provided the file is found, the server responds with a response code, usually 200 OK. If the file is not found or redirected another request is made. Additionally, this slows down load times.
- Browser performs a process – the browser processes and combines the HTML and CSS markup.
- Browser displays the web page.
By reducing the time it takes to run all those processes, you can enhance your load times. And fewer plugins means less JavaScript, HTML and CSS to parse.
Furthermore, many of the plugins designed to automatically share blog posts on social media are not only difficult to configure but numerous features are only offered in premium versions.
What About Jetpack?
I used to be a Jetpack fan purely because of the ability to auto share blog posts on social media. But it came with a sacrifice.
Jetpack performs many of the functions that would normally require multiple plugins. To name a few, it includes security features, backup options, forms, share blog posts on social media, sharing buttons, comments and a whole lot more. Not all of these are free.
Because of its vast functionality it’s obviously quite a big piece of software. If you’re only after a couple of features it’s preferable to use separate plugins so as to reduce overhead.
What’s The Alternative?
Ever heard of IFTTT? It’s an online alternative to a publicize plugin so
- it’s free
- it adds no overhead to your site and
It Works!
NOTE: Some hosts use mod security (firewall) to prevent DDoS attacks. If you ever run into problems connecting your WordPress service, it’s because the firewall is blocking xmlrpc. You simply need to get your host to whitelist your domain for xmlrpc in mod security.
Head on over to IFTTT.
Sign up with IFTTT using any of the signup methods on the home page.
Click the + button to create your first applet.
You can also create an applet from the profile menu.
Click Create.
What we’re going to do is create an applet (recipe) that says the following:
If a post is published in WordPress then publish it to Twitter.
Create your “if” condition by clicking the large + button.
Search for WordPress, then click on it.
Click Connect.
Add your site URL, WordPress Username and WordPress Password.
Select the relevant trigger.
Click the + button to select the “that” condition.
Click the Twitter icon.
Click Connect.
Authorize the connection to Twitter.
Click Post a Tweet or, even better, Post a tweet with image.
Create the action.
Click Finish.
To Conclude
Well there you have it, a great way to auto share blog posts on social media.
Now go ahead and do the same for all of your other social networks!