A few months back, I wrote an post on Free Google Tools for Websites and Blogs. One of the things I recently discovered is yet another awesome Google tool: Google Feedburner’s Socialize feature. Google now has its own URL shortener, which Socialize makes use of. This also enables you can use Google Analytics to track your traffic from Twitter.

I absolutely love Socialize because it automates your workflow. There are other tools as well that do the same thing, such as TwitterFeed, however, I’m a big Google fan, and I love the integration with Google Analytics, which I already use on a regular basis.

Socialize is really easy to set up, and the Feedburner Blog contains a really straightforward paragraph on the steps:

“To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner’s Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter (as always, make sure to ping FeedBurner whenever you update your feed so this process happens as near real-time as possible).”

Here’s a screenshot I took of the Socialize area in Feedburner, found in the “Publicize” tab:

Once I set everything up, whenever I post to my blog, my blog feed is then fed to Feedburner, and from there, Socialize automatically posts my blog title with a link (using the Google URL shortener) to my Twitter account. I also customized mine and added “UC Web Creations | ” to the front of the title itself. This way, I don’t have to do it manually, and can concentrate on other tweets!

This is what my last blog post tweet looked like on Twitter:

UC Web Creations | Resources for Small Businesses – DimDim http://goo.gl/fb/vDKY
9:38 AM Mar 5th via Google

I’ve been setting this up for my clients as one of the services I offer, and every single one of them loves this, because it helps them be more efficient as well.

I wanted to share this resource with my readers – this is definitely a worthwhile FREE service to use with your blog, especially if you’re already using Feedburner and Twitter and you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with keeping up with it all. This will make your life easier – it’s definitely made mine and my clients’ lives easier!

Have you tried Socialize yet?

Related posts:

1. Free Google Tools for Websites and Blogs
2. Review: WP Greet Box (WordPress plugin)
3. Why have a blog?
4. MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate Plugin Review
5. Review: The Wibiya Toolbar