How to import a blog into a Facebook fan page

How To by jean

Updated – 2012

Facebook have once again changed this completely, so these instructions no longer apply.  There are apparently third party apps that will do it for you, but I’ve read research that suggests that Facebook will place externally imported content well behind content generated inside Facebook.  Automating your RSS feed into your Facebook page may be counter productive, and it seems like manual pasting is the best way at the moment to ensure your content is seen by the maximum number of people. If anyone has any recommendations, please put them in the comment box below.  Thanks!

Updated – Apr 2011

Facebook have changed this yet again. The steps are:

  1. Access your Page manager here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/
  2. Go to your Page and click “Edit Page” beneath the Page profile picture.
  3. Select “Applications” and next to “Notes” please click “Go to Application.”
  4. On the bottom left hand side of the page select “Edit Import Settings”

However. Lots of people (myself included) have had problems with this function. Facebook is returning an error message that feeds are invalid. I have been experiencing this problem with a feed that I know is valid, because it’s working on another Facebook page.  Sigh.

Original Instructions

In a few simple steps, here’s how you can import your blog (using the RSS feed) into a Facebook page (rather than profile).

How is it done?

  1. Go to your Facebook page (or create a new one here)
  2. Click on the Notes tab in the top left hand corner (you  may have to click on the plus sign to display it)
  3. Select ‘Write a new note’
  4. Once you’re in this window, you can access the Notes settings.
    facebook-edit-notes
  5. On the right-hand side of the Notes area, you can choose to import a blog.
    facebook-import-blog
  6. Copy and paste the location of your blog’s RSS feed.
  7. The page will then import your blog.  After you have posted to your blog, the post will show up a little later in your Facebook page.

Updated – Dec 2009

Facebook changed this option slightly after I wrote this post, and many commenters ran into problems with their feed appearing on their personal page instead of on their fan page.  Big thanks to commenter Leela Robinson who identified the correct way to do this. In short – use the Notes tab at the top of the page, not the one at the bottom right.

Facebook page?

A Facebook page is different to a Facebook profile: a profile is a personal account and must be linked to an identifiable individual, whereas a page can be set up by an individual to promote a brand, product or service.   The advantage of a page is that people can become fans of that page and can be contacted en masse, sent updates, use discussion boards, upload photos, etc.  Updates to your page will then appear on their Facebook homepage.

Why import a feed?

If you are creating a Facebook page to promote your blog, importing the blog to the page means that all your blog posts will automatically appear on your Facebook page.

What’s difficult about it?

Facebook is strangely user-unfriendly when it comes to setting up and editing pages, groups, etc.  The process is a bit counter-intuitive, as you can see above.

Lots of blogs give pointers on how to import a feed into your profile, but I had trouble finding one that gave instructions specifically for a fan page.  So I noted down the instructions here in a rare fit of helpfulness.

Some of my Facebook pages:

135 comments

  1. Shipwire Order Fulfillment

    Thank you very much for this post. It really helped me push our blog to our corp Fan page.

    Cheers,

    Nate G

  2. Sommer C.

    Thanks, worked great for my fan page!

  3. Mark Freidin

    How do you get the RSS feed to link back to the website the feed came back from, instead of linking to the Facebook page?

  4. jean

    Hi Mark

    I’m not sure if you can – the way it’s always worked for me is that the posts show up on the Facebook page, and clicking on the post brings you to a secondary Facebook page, where you can then click back to the actual blog. I’m not aware of any way of cutting out the second step.

  5. Didgeroo Ltd

    I couldn’t find the import option until reading your excellent post. Thank you very much!!

  6. Lance Knobel

    When I do this, it keeps sending the feed to my personal profile, not the fan page. What am I doing wrong?

    Thanks.

  8. jean

    Hi Lance – you need to make sure that you’re an admin for the page, and that you start from the page rather than from your own profile.

  9. BenOC

    Thanks for this ! Was hard to find in the Google !

  12. Shannon

    excellent tutorial, worked beautifully! Thank you very much for sharing =o)

  13. Marta

    Thank you! I knew it had to be something simple like this and using the RSS feed applications has given me nothing but a headache. This worked so much better. Great tip.

  14. Veronica

    Thanks for the great instructions on how to import a blog to a fan page!! It sure helped me out a lot. 🙂

  15. Elizabeth Chamberlain

    Thank you so much! This was very helpful.

  16. Pazar Cuccok

    Thanky you for the tip! However after I import my blog’s RSS to my fan page, the first 4-5 lines of the posts are displayed on the wall (which is great) but when I click more I can read the full text of the post on facebook instead of driving traffic to my blog. I wish the more link would lead to my blog. This way people will not visit my blog because they read the posts on facebook. Is there a solution to this?

  18. Carla

    Thanks. I searched and searched to figure out where the settings for the notes were to allow importing a blog to my FAN page. Your post was the absolute best! Thanks for being “helpful.”

  20. Mark Waterfield

    Thank you so much for this………………….. It was very helpful and after tooooo much time wasted got there.

    Can I suggest that in your instructions are added you will find the notes tab on the bottom left of the facebook page and if you can not find it then you have to click on applications first and there you will find the dreaded notes tab.

    It is certainly not an intuitive system but perserverance can win out.

  21. Celes | The Personal Excellence Blog

    Extremely useful! Thanks so much – I was trying to hunt for this option up and down on my facebook fanpage (http://www.facebook.com/personalexcellence). Can’t believe they made the option so obscure!

    I have another question – can we import notes as excerpts or one-liners? I don’t know if I want to add the full blog posts, especially since I might want to edit afterward.

  22. jean

    Hi folks, you’re welcome!

    In response to the questions:

    Pazar and Celes – you need to set your RSS feed to only contain the first few lines of each post. This is all that Facebook will display, and the user will need to click through to your site to read the full post. You do this in the RSS settings on your blog – in WordPress, it’s in Settings > Reading. Choose ‘summary’ instead of ‘full text’ for the feed options. This does mean, of course, that only the first few lines will appear in RSS readers as well.

    AK – I’m not aware of any way to show thumbnails in Facebook. I have thumbnails for each post on this blog, but they don’t show up when the posts are imported to my Facebook page. Sorry I can’t be of more help here.

  23. Lucky Balaraman

    Hi Jean,

    Thanks for this wonderful post. I have a question.

    I find that ‘Notes’ only shows the first few lines of my WordPress post (although my blog is set for ‘full text’ in its feeds). How can I make Notes display the full text of the post?

    Thanks in advance, Jean —

    Regards,

    Lucky

  24. Sean

    When I import the RSS feed to my facebook fan page, it is also importing to my personal facebook profile. Can I make it so it just posts on my fan page?

  25. Adam Bean

    Thanks very much Jean. I have been looking for this info every where. But this is the firrst time it has been explained clearly, and it actually works.
    Cheers Adam Bean

  26. Don Smith

    I did as the instructions said, but it only importing to my profile page, and not the FAN page. I started in the fan page, and went to note, write a note, but when the note comes up, there is no setting option. The only time I see a setting option, is before I click Write A Note, and it says “Import a Blog”. Please help, this is drivin me nuts.

  27. Ms. Freeman

    You are absolutely the most awesome human being on the face of the planet. I have been searching high and low for just this bit of info. It is easy and obvious to do on a personal page, but is somewhat hidden on the fan page.

    Thanks you so much for being that great person to share this info.

  28. How to Create a Facebook Fan Page | Freeman Legacy LLC

    […] The link did not work so, I search Google again for ‘How to import a blog into a Facebook fan page’ and I found the most awesome person along with the small amount of info I had been looking for. I […]

  30. Brittany

    Thanks for this resource. For some reason, when I linked my new blog to my facebook fan page, it is also now linked to my personal profile page. I can’t find any settings on my personal page on how to stop the importing. Any thoughts?
    Thanks!

  31. Sima Dahl

    I spent far too long looking for exactly this information – this was perfect. Thanks for spelling it out for me so clearly!

  32. Andrew Maxwell

    Jean – thanks for this.

    I like to think I’m pretty tech savvy – but i’m frankly amazed at the interface on Facebook – I’d managed to import notes to my own profile – but I was having no luck at all getting them on the fan page.

    Next problem to solve – lots of my embedded content isn’t showing up in the notes.

    Many Thanks,

    Andrew Maxwell

  33. Camilla Saulsbury

    Hi Jean,

    I was so happy to see someone post about this issue. But I was wondering if you could help, becasue I am still having problems.

    The beginning issue: my blog feed posts to my profile on facebook, but not to my fan page.

    I tried to follow your directions, but I am not getting the information on the pages that you have in the directions above.

    When I click on “write a new note”, I do not get anything that looks like what you have above in steps 4 and 5.

    When I clik notes )from aplications, initially), I get an option to import a blog; that’s what I had done before, and it is posting to my profile page, not my fan page for my book fan page, the ultimate shortcut cookie book.

    If I click on “write a new note” as you have in step three, I get a page where I cannot find anything that resembles the line in step 4, and there is no new place to import a blog.
    It simple says “write a note” at the top, with a blank space for “title:”, then space below with “Body” and on option to upload photos.

    I am desperate for help.

  34. Denise

    Hi Jean ~ Thanks for these wonderful instructions. I used them a few weeks ago and they worked like a charm.

    In the meantime I’ve been asked how I did it and referred them here…So thanks again!

    Denise

  35. brent

    yep you’re right, it was the only how-to I found for how to do this with a ‘page’ instead of a personal profile… I was about to give up 😀

  36. Marie

    Thanks a million Jean, that was really helpful!

  37. amanda emmanuel

    Thank you so, so very much! wasted countless time on this simple task, I should have just come to your blog post first! thanks again 🙂

  38. Tree

    Thank you!! Great instructions…works perfectly!

  39. Facebook Fan Pages

    Thanks very much Jean. This is the first time it has been explained clearly, and it actually works.

  40. ariele

    Hi thanks so much for this…..here’s my question: when I update my blog (and my facebook fan page gets updated), a wall post on my personal page appears with a snippet of the blog, but with MY personal profile, not the facebook fan page profile. I hope this makes sense. driving me insane!!! thank you in advance……Ariele

  41. Serra

    Thanks so much! I was looking all over and all I could find was how to do this for a profile, this was really useful, and so easy!

  42. Jenifer

    At step 5 (Once you’re in this window, you can access the Notes settings.) I can see the “Write a new” button, but not the “Import blog” bit. I am on my fan page (http://www.facebook.com/TheDonkeySanctuary) and am the administrator.

    Any ideas? Spent about an hour so far looking for clues! Not finding Facebook particularly user-friendly 🙁

    When I am on the fan page, I see Notes available down at the bottom lefthand side. When I click in here, it says I am already importing. But that lists the rss feed for my personal profile page – confused!

  43. Joy

    Thanks so much! You’re a savior!

  45. kylia

    thanks..very useful tip..ive been trying to do this for so long!

  46. Jerry

    Thank you so much! Was easy once I had the steps – but without your post, I doubt I would ever have figured it out.

  47. marc

    oh.
    my.
    god.

    hours of headbanging and twitterfeeding later… I find this post. THANK YOU!

  48. Ines Garcia

    Thanks!!!! After spending hour trying to figure it out your post helped me set it up in one minute!

  49. Lisa

    Hi,
    Thanks for the instructions. When I try to put the feed on the Fan page, the feed only shows up on the main profile page. I opened up the Fan page, selected Notes, imported the blog feed, but the feed still doesn’t show up on the Fan page. Any advice?

  50. Alec

    You’re a god. Thank you so much for this

  51. Rick B

    I’m having the same problem as several others. Not only does my blog appear on my fan page, but ALSO ON MY PROFILE PAGE. Not to mention that it shows up twice on each page. It’s driving me crazy and I’m about to just scrap the whole idea. What seems to be a great idea, is just not very effective.

    Any assistance you might be able to offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

  52. Leela Robinson

    I too was struggling with the blog feed posting to my personal profile, rather than my fan page. This was happening when I tried to access notes from the bottom left. But I figured it out! and now my blog posts to my fan page

    go to your fan page
    click on notes tab near top
    click on the “write a new note” button on upper right
    then click on the notes icon that appears in the row of icons in upper right
    then you will see an option on the right that tells you that you are or are not importing notes from an external blog
    click through and post your blog url

    hopefully this works for you too!

  53. Blogging Tips

    Great and easy way.I just now successfully imported my blog posts into facebook fan page

  54. Zoë Robinson

    Thanks ever so much for this. It’s great to finally have my comics appearing on their Facebook fan pages as a reminder about updates. Less work for me, more interactivity for fans. It’s win-win! 😀 Thanks again!

  55. Ravin Chand

    Jean… THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!! You don’t know how many freakin’ hours I wasted trying to get my Tumblr to post in to my facebook page properly. This was a HUGE help. Again, thank you!

  56. Lee

    Thanks for the instructions, and the December 2009 updated.

    For our Facebook Fan page, we want to import the guest post we wrote for another blog. How can we add just one blog post to the Facebook Fan Page?

  57. Alfred

    Hey,

    Many thanks for your help on this. I was going crazzy figuring out how to do it but thanks to you I have done it in 5 minutes… well, after I had spent an hour yesterday with no luck!

    Once again, many thanks.

    Visit us any time on Facebook – FilmAmora

  59. grosir

    is there anyway to import rss directly to the wall instead of notes?

  60. Emily H.

    Thank you! This was super helpful!

  61. Tony

    Thanks for the info! Worked great.

  62. Bryan

    Thanks for the info and comments… Good stuff!

  63. Visahwjeet

    Thanks dear…

  66. Michael

    Thanks for the help.

  67. carolann barton

    Thanks this was really useful for me and easy to set up.

  68. Sonia Coleman

    Jean, Thanks so much for the clear instructions on how to import my blog onto my business Facebook fan page. This was much better than any help I found on Facebook!

  69. Brad

    Many thanks. You should be writing documentation for Facebook. Better yet, redesign their lousy interface, then write the documentation. Thanks again!

  70. Ryan Graves

    Thanks. Good SEO paid off!

  71. Ted Hessing

    Got it going on the first try! Thanks for the help!

  72. Corinne

    Thank you very much. I found this most helpful.

  73. Jennifer Tankersley

    Thank you for this very informative post. My fan page has been idle for so long. Now I know that it will be updated at least whenever I post to my blog. Thanks!

  74. Debra

    I used the instructions and it works, but it takes up to 48 hours for the post to go from my blog to the facebook page. Is this normal?

    Thanks
    Debra

  75. editorjackie

    ohhh yeah! this worked great! TY T

  76. Sheri

    Hello, do you happen to know why it takes so long for my blog feed to show up on my fan page?

    BTW…your instructions for importing were terrific! Thanks.

  77. Ian Partington

    This info was heaven sent, you are a life saver 🙂

  78. Amy (Saving with Amy)

    YAY! Thank you SOOO much! Been trying to figure this out for months! Only wish I had seen it sooner! 🙂

  79. Matt Baume

    OMG thank you so much. This is so helpful. I’ve been trying like crazy to import the RSS for my marriage equality blog at http://stop8.org and I would NEVER have found it on my own.

    Yay!

  80. Lazy Pineapple

    Oh thanks so much for this….it works superbly…thanks for being so thoughtful and putting these instructions…you rock

  81. jean

    Thanks for all the kind words and praise folks! I blush. 🙂

    Jeyaganesh – you need the url of your blog’s rss feed, not the blog homepage. I just looked at your blog, and the correct url is: http://cybergyaan.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

    Sheri – my posts are also often slow to show up in Facebook, I don’t know if there’s any way around it. Check the settings of your RSS to see if there’s a delay – for example, I have coded a 10 min delay into my CheapEats.ie blog, so I have time to correct or take down a post before it appears in the feed.

    Matt Baume – go Marriage Equality! 🙂

  82. Honey

    Thank you! I found our tutorial very useful and was able to successfully complete the task.

    Blessings
    Honey

  83. Frank

    Thanks for you tutorial. Sometime the usability from Facebook is not the best…

  84. Mitch

    THANKS!!!

    Great help!

  85. Theresa

    Thank you thank you thank you!!! This was so helpful!!!

  86. Doug Caldwell

    My blog is not feeding the Fan page after initial setup.

    Thanks so much for helping me get this going, but the blog didn’t continue to feed. Nothing in last 48 hours even though there were more postings on the blog after initial setup

    Am reviewing your instructions, checked the setup in Fan page, but no clues why the feed stopped.

  87. Doug Caldwell

    Follow-up to my 8pm comment. I deleted the RSS feed and then reinstalled it. Several, but not all of the blog postings since the initial batch appeared on the FAN page. Partial success.

    Related subject: If you can answer, How far back will RSS feed of blog posts to one’s FAN page appear? On my notes page to my PROFILE it appears to have no end. But was wondering if a FAN page notes has a limit to how many will show.

  88. Grace Oris

    Thanks so much for this! I just created a fan page and everything worked fine.

  89. Kyia W

    Thank you for the tutorial. So clear & informative!!!

  90. Cari

    Thanks for easy instructions on how to add rss/blog posts to Fan pages!

  91. Ayurvedic

    thanks so much.
    it helped me a lot in importing blog posts to FB 🙂

  92. Bunn Salarzon

    Thank you for posting this! It was very helpful.

  93. Lina

    Hi! i’m having some problems with my companys fan page. The blog doesn’t update. I have tried to do the settings all over again. Remove the import and then adding it again. The newest blog appears twice and then it doesnt uppdate anything else. so i have to do this every day. Can anyone help me with this?

  95. Lina

    Thank you Jean!

    The feed is valid but facebook fan page will not update it automaticlly.
    I can’t find anyone who has had a similar problem and facebook doesn’t respond to my mails. I hope someone here can help me

  96. Lina

    i found what the problem was!
    Facebook changed something when they did some updates and thats whu its not working and a lot of people if not all have this problem. So for now you have two choises… update manually or use an app but i haven’t found anyone that makes your blog feed look good… just text and it doent appear in the page wall… i hope that they will solve this problem

  97. Ron Callari

    I uploaded a RSS feed to my Fan page – but its been almost over 24 hours and no additional content has been transferred to the page from my blog? Why?

  99. Dragon Blogger

    I have a problem where I have 1 facebook account, but 2 fan pages for 2 different blogs, I can’t seem to make 1 feed go to each fanpage, as your “notes” only ties to your personal account not to a specific fanpage.

  101. Abdeel

    Just an FYI, ping.fm has an option to feed into facebook pages. It’s really simple, and while you are there, you can have it feed into over 30 other social networks.

  102. Alex

    thanks for the good tutorial! worked first time – just a note if you have more than one fan page per account – make sure you access the notes tab directly from the fan page you want to import to. Else it will import to wrong page (if you have more than one)

  103. Katie

    Thank you very much. I always have trouble finding things in Facebook but your post is bang on target. Wanted to fetch my site RSS in facebook fan page.

  104. Jake

    Excellent info Jean. However I just had a question.

    Is there anyway to import an RSS feed onto a Facebook page, so that when the user clicks on it, they are redirected back to a website, instead of a note?

    Also, when you import an RSS feed onto a page, does it show up on a Fans news feed?

  105. Shravan

    you are right and your step by step procedure is absolutely right. But still i can not import my blog post. I have another fan page for my another blog http://keep2enjoy.blogspot.com. For this blog it is completely working but in this blog it is not working.If any one know how solve it then please mail me from my blog.

  106. The Symposium

    Thanks so much for posting this — so much more convenient than using one of the RSS import apps! It would be nice if FB made this a bit easier, y’know?

  107. sysblaze

    thanx its working..

  108. Kevin Minott

    This post helped out immensely. I was able to import my blog RSS with no problem. Thank you.

  109. Great Content for Facebook Business Pages

    […] 1. Make updates about your company. Promote real-life events. Upload a snapshot of a new product that came in. Introduce a new employee. Mention a great interaction with a customer you had today. If you have a blog, post links to new articles (this can be automated). […]

  110. Wendy

    Hello! Thanks for making this soooo easy!

    Wendy

  111. Anna

    Thank you, very helpful!

  112. Norman

    When I followed your directions, I found I was able to get my blog and Twitter feeds to post of my Facebook page, which was great. But the blogs and Tweets are also appearing on my personal page, which I’d rather it not do. Can you provide more details on how to get this done? Thanks!

  113. daniel ocean

    you are the shit!!! thanks a million!

  114. Jon

    Worked great! Thanks for the help.

  115. Emily

    Hi,
    I’m having a bit of trouble with this tutorial. After clicking ‘edit import settings,’ inserting the url, and clicking ‘start importing,’ I am prompted to create a personal profile. I don’t understand why its asking me to do this, because I want to import a blog into a public profile. Please help!

  116. Angie's Recipes

    I have a similar problem like Camilla Saulsbury.
    After importing the blog, the feed posts to my profile on facebook, but not to my fan page.

    Help.
    Angie

  117. Katie

    Thanks, i was lost in facebook and then i have to search in google. Thanks a million.

  118. dotJenna

    Facebook has changed this and now requires you to post 1 blog first before giving the option to “Import.”

  119. In Him

    Hi,
    We followed your steps, and we get the following error when putting: http://www.inhim.wordpress.com/feed.xml in to the edit box:
    Import Failed

    We couldn’t find a feed using the URL you provided

    We validated the above URL with the 2 validation sites you mentioned in comment 94 on April 22, and they both said it is valid.
    Any ideas?
    Thanks, and have a great week!

    Andy and Miranda – In Him

  121. Mike

    I have installed RSS Graffiti application to page, added RSS link in it and now it is OK 🙂

  122. arnel

    very helpful but unfortunately my rss feed failed. I code my feed using classic asp with an w/ an extension of .asp. It works on feedburner but i don’t know why it doesn’t work on facebook.

    My feed: http://www.asmsite.net/sundayschool_xml.asp

  123. Facebook Fan Page Applications

    I have heard that we can import blog but don’t know exactly how to import it, but after reading this it is very easy to import blog on Facebook Page. Thanks for the info !

  124. Bill Enross

    Thanks, worked like a charm!

  125. How to do this

    It looks like Facebook changed the way to do it again… too bad 🙁

  126. Jonathan Clark

    I think a lot of problems have cropped up since the major redesign to Facebook pages on March 11th. I was fiddling around with this and temporarily removed my blog feed – big mistake! Now Facebook won’t let me re-enter it. Says that it cannot find a proper feed, although I’ve tried URL’s for RSS, Atom, Feedburner, and even the Validator that FB recommends.

    I ended up trying the RSS Graffiti app mentioned by Mike on October 4th. Rated as 4 stars. Seems pretty functional so far, so I’d recommend giving it a shot. Here’s the link:

    http://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/

  127. RebeccaWho

    I’ve tried importing the RSS feeds of several blogs to several different fan pages and it always says:

    “Import Failed
    We couldn’t find a feed using the URL you provided.”

    I’ve tried using the RSS URL and feedburner. ie:
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/PushonlineMarketing

    Any ideas?

  129. Vixxan

    It worked like a charm. Thanks a million!!!

  130. Juli L.

    Thank you! This worked great! I saw it on another fan page and was hoping to add it to mine, but I thought it would end up taking me hours to figure out…thanks again!

  131. Annie

    Thank you so much for sharing this tutorial! 😀 It was easy and worked first time!

  132. shruthi

    The first import from RSS feed works fine. All the posts appeared on the Fb page. But the page is not updated with the recent blog posts even after 48 hours. The RSS feed is validated using a feed validator .Could you Please let me know how to get the posts on fan page atleast after 3-4 hours of blog update as claimed by FB.

  133. cristina

    thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

  134. Sara-Linnéa

    Thanks a million! I’m impressed how they manage to hide stuff so well…

    I had trouble at first so I’d like to point out (and maybe help someone) that you need to use Facebook _as yourself_ to be able to do this. If you have switched to use facebook as your page, it doesn’t work. For what reason, ask the mysterious facebook gods…

    Thanks again.

Comments are closed.