Feature request: Sharing external links on Facebook and Google+

[Mitch Wagner]

<p>I love SNAP and use it many times a day. I gladly upgraded to the pro version. </p>

<p>I have a feature request – or a few feature requests – that would make it better for my purposes. </p>

<p>My blog is a linkblog. I post links to articles, videos, images, and podcasts that I like, with comments on them. Most people do that to Facebook or Twitter; I do it on my WordPress blog as well as those places. It's old-school linkblogging that was common before Facebook, Twitter, and other social media moved in. If you have difficulty understanding what I'm saying, visit my blog to see what I'm talking about.</p>

<p>I use SNAP to coordinate posting on my blog and social networks. Rather than use SNAP to share a link back to my blog on Facebook and Google+, I'll share the external link to the content I'm commenting on. I also duplicate my blog posts to Facebook and Google+. People on Facebook and Google+ usually don't come back to my blog at all. </p>

<p>I could just post to Facebook (and other social media) directly, but I like coordinating everything through WordPress and SNAP. </p>

<p>My process now is to compose a post in the blog and then scroll down from the editor to the SNAP "Post Options" area. I go to the Facebook section and manually uncheck "Auto – Post URL" then I paste in the external link to the URL field. Then I do the same in the Google+ part of the "Post Options" area. </p>

<p>I often do something similar with Twitter, writing a tweet and including a link to the external content. </p>

<p>I'd like to save a few steps here. I can think of two options for Facebook and Google+</p>

<p>Preferred: If the post Format is "Link," then SNAP would grab the first link in the body of the post and use that URL for Facebook and Google+, rather than linking back to the post on my blog. </p>

<p>Or failing that:</p>

• Create a new field at the top of the SNAP "Post Options" area, above the options for Facebook, Google+, etc. Label that field "External Link,"
• Allow the user to paste in a URL for the external link in that one, prominent location.
• Then configure Facebook and Google+ so the default behavior is sharing the External Link, when the user has pasted one in, rather than a link to the original blog post.

<p>Separately but related: On Twitter, I've noticed that if I share a very long link in the tweet, SNAP and/or Twitter will count the characters in my link and apply that toward the total character count of my tweet, therefore badly cutting off the tweet unnecessarily. Is there any way to automatically shorten a URL included in a tweet BEFORE sending the tweet, preferably using Twitter's built-in t.co shortener, so a user can the maximum characters in a tweet?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

[Mitch Wagner]

Sorry about the HTML tags in the post above. I should have read the instructions more carefully.

[NextScripts.com]

This feature was implemented long time ago.

Using custom URLs in Autoposts

[Mitch Wagner]

Oho and aha. I need to look into this. Thanks much!

[Mitch Wagner]

And I just looked into this. Brilliant! Thanks so much!

[Author]

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