How do I import my blog RSS feed into a Facebook fan page?

Glad you found my earlier article. This is one of those areas on Facebook that are surprisingly complicated until you realize that the most obvious path is not the best one. Specifically, there are no additional Facebook apps that you need to hook into your fan page, the ability to track a single RSS feed (RSS is the data feed of blogs, podcasts, etc) on a profile page is actually already built-in to Facebook.

The problem is knowing how to get to it!

So here's what ya do...

Start out by logging into your Facebook account and going to your fan page. You can most easily do that by clicking on the "Ads and Pages" link on the left navigational column. This is what I see:

Since I've already set up the Ask Dave Taylor Fan area (you are a member, right? :-) we'll work on the Boulder Open Podcast instead. I click on the name of the fan page (not the "Edit" link) and get here:

The next step isn't to click on "Settings", as you might think, but instead to click on the "+" tab so we can add a "Notes" section:

It starts out pretty darn blank:

We're almost done. Really.

Now, click on "Write a New Note" and ignore everything but the little strip of icons along the top of the page:

Click on the "Notes" icon, as shown. Now everything changes and you get the needed Notes settings box:

You can probably guess what do from here! Click on "Import a blog"...

Now enter the URL of your blog RSS feed or, if you don't know it, the URL of your blog itself (Facebook can usually figure things out properly) and click on the "Start Importing" link.

It'll chug away for a bit trying to figure out what's going on, then will show you the last few entries from the blog's RSS feed:

Looks good? Then on the right you'll see the option you want:

Click on "Confirm Import" if it all looks good and you're done!

Nice, that's just what we want for the "Notes" section, a mirror of the RSS data itself. Better yet, though, check out the home of the Boulder Open Podcast fan page now:

Now to tweak that RSS data to be optimal for people who get to the material via Facebook. But that, dear reader, is another story for another day...