I started off this assignment wanting to find a way to connect my social media platforms, specifically Twitter and Facebook. It can be time consuming to share out what is happening in the library to both platforms, so I was excited to explore ways to post to both of these platforms through one post. I began looking at Hootsuite because it had come recommended to me by many people and was listed as one of the ideas for "Veteran Tweeters." However, when exploring it seemed like there was a cost associated with it and it seemed like it was more advanced than what I was looking for. I quickly "jumped ship" and began exploring "If This Than That."
"IFTT" is an app available for iphones and ipads. This is free and extremely easy to navigate. All options are laid out for you in a tile format and you are able to simply select what posting options you would like. However, I ran into many struggles along the way. First to my frustration it kept syncing to my personal account and not my "library" account (first failure). Once I finally was able to link it to my library account, I couldn't figure out how to link it to a "page" it would just link it to my main account. I finally found an option that allowed for information I post on my main page to also post on all of my other "pages" in Facebook. I was excited about that, but it presented me with two other problems. The first being that because you can only make a business page on FB off your main page, I was now forced to make all my posts on my main page, which I worry about people now being able to make posts on (hmm... I guess I could just not accept their friend requests). The second issue was when I wanted to post a picture with my status the picture didn't post on in the status, just the message. I figured out that I could get the picture to post to Twitter by using the hashtag #tw after my post. However, I still wasn't able to get the picture to go to my "library page." Ugh...After a lot of exploring I finally found an option to send photo upload on FB page to Twitter w/ image. However, although that was a success, it proved to be another failure because when it posted to Twitter it showed the status, but the picture holder said "image could not be found." (Sigh...)
Like I mentioned earlier, I had many "failures and successes" in this assignment, but in the end I do feel like I "grew." I am not giving up yet though. I will keep you posted... as I try to find a way to get my photos to attach with my status while posting to my "library page."
I do suggest trying IFTTT though because they have so many cool options that don't have to do with Twitter and Facebook. I am looking forward to exploring more options... when I am a little less frustrated.* As an added comment, I did try Buffer, which very easily posted to pages, but they only gave a 6 day free trial. Was I missing something? When I signed in it said that there was 10 free connections. Hmm...
