An RSS feed assists you in finding and distributing content. RSS feeds can consist of updates for a particular site or combine information sources in one place and provide updates when a site adds new content.

Once you've set up an RSS feed, you can choose to post updates as and when you require or you can set up an RSS Auto Poster so that updates made to an RSS feed are automatically posted out to your social channels.

Basic setup

1. To start, click on the RSS feed in the list to the right. In this example, we use the Moz Blog RSS feed we have already set up in the article highlighted above.
2. Next, select the New Auto Post button located above this, next to the New Feed button.
3. You first want to ensure you are on the correct feed. You can check this by looking at the name in the Selected Feed field.
4. Next, select the social profiles, blog, profile list or similar you wish to have the RSS feed post to automatically using the Post To drop-down.
5. Using the Update Frequency option, you can select how often the system should check for updates from the RSS feed.
6. Next, you can choose Scheduled, which means a post(s) will be sent out as soon as a new article is added to the RSS feed and picked up based on the Frequency you've selected. To have more control over when posts are sent out, you can instead use choose to have posts added to your Drafts view or a Queue.
7. Using the Number Of Entries To Publish, you can select the maximum amount of updates to be pulled from the feed for auto-posting.
   Note: This will be affected by the number of updates that have been added to the RSS feed within the frequency timeframe, e.g. if you've selected to post two updates every day, but only one post has been added to that RSS feed in the last day, and whether you set the auto poster to post repeats or only post new entries.
8. You can set whether or not you want to be alerted when posts from the RSS feed are sent out, in which case you’ll be sent an email when a new post is sent out. You can enable this by turning on or off the Alert Me When Posts Are Published option.
9. By selecting whether a feed is Active or Paused, you can temporarily disable an auto poster without having to delete the settings you’ve added. 

Advanced Options

Using the Advanced Options available will help you control what content is included in a post from an update to the RSS feed and make sure posts include the right content to be posted successfully. For example, making sure that an image is attached if you're posting to Pinterest or that the post doesn't include more characters than Twitter allows.

1. The Type Of Posts To Share option has two settings:
   • Any - Any posts added to that RSS feed in the last 30 days can be picked up and posted out.
   • New Posts Only - Only posts from that RSS feed that have been added in the last 30 days and have not already been posted out by the RSS auto poster will be posted.
   Note: RSS auto posters will only check posts that were added to an RSS feed in the last 30 days to ensure that the content being posted out is ideally as current and therefore relevant to your audience as possible. You can, however, still view and manually post out updates to an RSS feed added more than 30 days ago.
2. You can set what information is added to the posts that will be sent out using the Post The Following Content option.

   This allows you to select whether the default content taken from the update and included in a post is the:

   • Title and Link - This option is best if you're posting to several social sites (not including Instagram and Pinterest) as the character count is kept low and all basic information is included in the post.
   • Title and Description - This option is good for blogs like WordPress, where you want to include your own image. We'd also suggest having updates saved to your Drafts view (see information on adding drafts above) first so you can easily attach an image and publish the update.
   • Title, link and image - This option is best when posting to sites that require images, such as Instagram and Pinterest as well as Twitter.
   • Title, description, link and image - This is another good option when posting to several social sites as long as they allow for a longer character count, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
   • Description, link and image - This option is similar to the above but might be preferable if you want to make posts look a little more organic.
   • Description only - This and the two options below are mainly useful if you're not planning to post full content but are instead looking for content ideas to use later. If you're selecting any of these options, we'd suggest having updates saved to your Drafts view (see point 6.) so that you can review the content and add to it at a later date before it's published.
   • Link Only - See above
   • Title Only - See above
   
   
   Important: We don't recommend using RSS auto posters to post to Instagram unless the RSS feed is yours or your client's own RSS feed, e.g., that they've set up an RSS feed for their WordPress blog. This is because Instagram requires that the images you post are your own or that you have specific rights to share them. For more information on this, please see Instagram's Community Guidelines.
3. If you want to shorten the URL attached when posting, you can do this with the Shorten Links option.
4. Using the Repeat Posts option, you can select whether you want posts to be repeated if they've already been picked up previously.
5. You can also set whether you want the system to send posts in order of newest first or if you’d prefer the system post updates in random order by using the Posting Sequence.
6. The text you add to the Prefix Each Post With text box will be included at the beginning of every post brought through from the RSS feed.
7. The text you add to the Suffix Each Post With text box will be included at the end of every post.

Filters

1. By adding words into the Inclusion or Exclusion filter, you can control which posts from an RSS feed are posted. So, for example, if you’ve set up an RSS Feed which might include mentions of a competitor, you can add their name into the Exclusion filter and then any updates which include their name will not be posted. To ensure that only posts with certain words, for example, your brand name, add this into the Inclusion filter.

   If you want to include multiple filters, separate your filter terms with commas, eg. "dogs, cats" which will filter the title and body of items in the feed for either the word dogs OR cats.

Google Analytics

1. You can also add your Google Analytics details to track links to your site if your RSS feed is coming from your blog or similar.
2. Once you’ve added your settings, click Save, and the auto poster will get to work.