As Social Media week comes to a close we have decided to extend it over at Politics4All. Our community is filled with interesting people writing about fascinating topics important to them. We want to get to know you better and so do others in our community. We would like to feature you on our blog in a get to know you style interview. If you are interested in being featured or possibly guest posting on our blog drop us a line or comment here and we will be in touch.

That’s not all. We want to help you drive traffic to the content you are producing at Politics4All. So if you want us to tweet about your posts make sure you tweet us @politics4all and we’ll kindly respond with a RT.  If you are launching a campaign, as we are more than happy to provide the RT, along with a mention on our weekly campaign round up.

And finally, we are in the process of planning some “tweet ups” to connect with you offline as well. Keep checking back here at the blog as we will announce it here first.

As always we want to hear from you so if you have ideas or suggestions or want to help us plan these events please leave us a comment here.

Technorati Tags: blogging, candidates, citizens, events, political groups, social media

Today we’re launching the beta version of our new Blog Post Import feature which enables any Politics4All site member who maintains a standalone blog site to republish political posts through his or her Politics4All blog. Benefits for our members include the following:

• write once, publish twice
• imported posts are open to voting & commenting
• post announcements will appear in your followers’ MyP4A activity feeds
• each imported post includes a link back to the original post on your blog site

Contact us to request a beta invitation.

How It Works

Requirements

• Politics4All account
• original blog post content with political relevance (see Blog Import Terms of Service)
• ownership or permission to republish original posts (see Blog Import Terms of Service)
• valid RSS or ATOM feed of original posts

Even if your original blog site contains a mixture of political and non-political posts, you can use your blogging software’s tagging or categories feature to create a politics-only feed (see instructions below under “Creating a Politics-Only Feed”).

Getting Started

Note: currently requires beta invitation

Go to your Politics4All blog and click your blog’s Settings link. From the Blog Settings page select the Import Feed tab:

From the Import Feed tab, enter a valid RSS or ATOM feed URL and Blog Homepage URL in the fields provided:

Next, accept the Terms of Service and click the button to import your feed:

We will then validate and the feed and import your posts going back one month and up to 20 posts.

After the initial import, we check the source blog periodically throughout the day and automatically import your new posts. Imported content includes the following:

• post title
• content (either the entire post, a summary, or a link…whatever is included in  your feed)
• timestamp of original post
• tags
• link to original post

Supported Blog Software

Thus far this has been successfully tested with feeds from Wordpress, Blogger/Blogspot, LiveJournal, Newsvine, and Textpattern. However, most valid RSS or ATOM feeds from any blog software should work.

Write Once, Publish Twice…Distribute (Almost) Everywhere!

Because we already provide “share-out” links for members to share content through Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Buzz!, etc., bloggers can use our platform to more easily share their published content through other social networks.

Creating a Politics-Only Feed

This is only necessary if you publish non-political posts on your standalone blog.

Most popular blogging software supports tagging and/or categories and allow people to produce feeds featuring only content with a specific label, tag, or category. Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, and Textpattern have all been tested successfully in this area. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1

Create a tag that you only use for posts that contain political content. The obvious choice for this tag would be “politics” , but it really doesn’t matter so long as that tag is used only for posts that contain political content.

Step 2

Determine what the web address to your politics RSS or ATOM feed should be. If you’re not sure, find your blog software below for political feed url examples that should work for you in most cases. If your software isn’t listed below, check with your blog software’s support site, or contact us for help.

NOTE: The following RSS and ATOM feed url examples assume your political tag, label, or category is “politics.” The “<bloghomepageurl>” should be replaced (in most cases) with whatever the web address of your blog’s homepage is.

WordPress ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feed/atom?tag=politics

WordPress RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feed?tag=politics

Blogger ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feeds/posts/default/-/politics

Blogger RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/feeds/posts/default/-/politics?alt=rss

LiveJournal ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/data/atom?tag=politics

LiveJournal RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/data/rss?tag=politics

Textpattern ATOM: http://<bloghomepageurl>/atom?category=politics

Textpattern RSS: http://<bloghomepageurl>/rss?category=politics

Technorati Tags: blogging