[Quick Tip] How Do I Share A Facebook Post To Twitter?

Well, I kinda figured this was going to happen.

Last week, I responded to an email asking me how I post my tweets or tweets I liked to my Facebook page. It took off over the weekend, garnering a ton of tweets and retweets. So obviously it’s a social media tip that people have been thinking about.

To continue in this series of social media cross-promotion, I thought I’d go ahead and add a follow-up post that answers the question of “how do a share a Facebook post on Twitter?”

Evaluating The Process Of Sharing A Facebook Post To Twitter

The steps are fairly similar, but there are some additional privacy concerns that you need to be aware of when it comes to Facebook. With Twitter, a person can either set their tweets to be visible to the world or protected and only visible to those that are allowed to see them.

It’s a binary choice of either unprotected or protected. If you share a tweet that is protected, users who aren’t authorized will see a message that the tweet is protected and allow them to request access to see all the person’s tweets.

My SocMedSean Twitter Feed Is Unlocked – Give It A Follow!

Facebook, on the other hand, allows users a significantly broader set of privacy options. The creator of a post can set the privacy of a post to be as granular as only showing to themselves, to as expansive as showing it to the whole world. Between those binary options, there are a TON of different levels.

The reason I bring this up before going through the steps of sharing a Facebook post to Twitter is because you need to be aware that just because you share a post that YOU can see because you are friends with someone, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will be able to see it.

NOTE: I have received quite a few questions about how to make someone else’s Facebook post shareable. The answer is, you can’t. If you are not the original poster of the content, you cannot control the privacy settings for the content. That means you cannot simply make someone else’s Facebook post shareable if they have restricted the privacy settings.

Instead, the creator of the post has to understand how to make a Facebook post shareable to the world. Only when they do that can you link Twitter to Facebook by sharing their post. 

As an example, imagine that you are Facebook friends with Bobby. Bobby shares an amazing cat video that you just have to share with your Twitter friends. You share the link to Bobby’s post on Facebook, but when your Twitter friends click the link, they get an error that they have to log in to Facebook.

Facebook privacy settings on a post, image, or video might prohibit your Twitter followers from viewing the content.

If, once they login, they don’t have the permissions to view the post, they receive an error. Sad Panda.

The reason is likely because Bobby has chosen to set the permission on their post  to something like “only show their posts to their friends”. Because you are one of their friends on Facebook, you can see their post. The members of the Twitter-verse, with whom you shared the post, are not friends with Bobby so they get an error message instead.

So, while the details below will give you the step-by-step of posting a Facebook status to Twitter, be cognizant of the security issues that might arise. In the steps below, I’ll show you how to check the security before you even post, to see if it’s worth sharing.

ProTip: Facebook posts from Facebook pages, rather than individuals, are much more likely to be open to the public. Therefore, sharing a post from a Facebook page is less likely to run into the privacy restrictions than those that are posted by your friends.

Steps For Sharing A Facebook Post To Twitter

Step 1 – Find the Facebook post that you want to share

Start by finding the post you want to share. For this post, I’ll be sharing the link to the “Stinky Fish Challenge” video. If you haven’t watched it already, don’t watch it while you are eating lunch. TRUST ME.

Step 2 – View the individual post

Next, click the link to the date/time that the post was published. This will take you to the individual post, rather than showing it in your timeline or in the timeline of the Facebook page you are viewing.

Step 3 – Ensure the Facebook post is shareable

Before you share the post, check the privacy settings to see whether it is even shareable. If it’s highly restricted, meaning that the original poster has put privacy restrictions on it, it will probably just frustrate your Twitter followers, so stick to those posts that display a globe icon. This means that the post is visible to everyone.

TIP: If you notice that the privacy icon isn’t a globe, you might be wondering to yourself “how to I make the Facebook post shareable?” and, as I mentioned earlier, the answer is…you don’t. Only the original creator of the post can adjust the privacy settings of their post.

What you CAN do, though, is reach out to the owner of the post or just leave a comment on their post saying something like “please make this Facebook post shareable with the public so I can share it with the world”.

Sometimes it works and the content creator will adjust the Facebook privacy settings for the post to make it shareable, others times making the request doesn’t work because they want to keep their Facebook post private.

Step 4 – Copy the shareable Facebook URL to Twitter

If the privacy settings are okay, just select the URL in the browser and copy it. This give you a link that you can share from Facebook to Twitter. Because you are on the page dedicated to this specific video, image, or post this URL will lead your Twitter followers directly to the content you want to share.

In this case, the URL for the video I am sharing is https://www.facebook.com/BigJoeInsurance/videos/1422969431075632/

NOTE: If the URL doesn’t have a unique number like that at the end, you probably aren’t on the page that is specific to the content. Click the date/time link that I mentioned in step 2 and try again.

Step 5 – Paste the URL into your tweet

Finally, head over to Twitter and create your post. Posting a link on Twitter is easy because you can just paste the URL into the tweet if you want to allow Twitter to shorten it.

If you want to shorten the link yourself, you can always use a tool like http://bit.ly. In my case, I shortened it with Hootsuite’s Ow.ly shortener.

Step 6 – Post your tweet

Click the Tweet button and the Facebook post will be shared with your Twitter followers.

As always, I hope that helps folks who are unsure about how to cross-post content across social networks. Sharing a Facebook status update or post to Twitter can be relatively easy, but be sure you’re checking those privacy settings to see if it’s worth sharing.

Let me know if there are questions, comments, or feedback on these steps.

–Sean

Side Note: Solutions To Other Frustrating Facebook Problems

Quite a few people have emailed me or reached out to me via comments/social about other frustrating issues with Facebook. If you’re experience any of the issues below, here are the links to the articles to help solve them:

• Viewing Facebook Messenger Without Installing The App
• Organizing Your Photos Located In Your Personal Albums
• Figure Out Who Is Following You On Facebook
• Adding Symbols To A Facebook Post
• Clearing the Facebook Messenger Notification When You Don’t Have Unread Messages
• Posting A Tweet On Facebook
• Switching Your Facebook Feed To Show Most Recent Chronological Posts, Instead Of Top Stories
• Getting Rid of The Messenger Popup Notifications On Facebook Desktop/Browser version
• Organizing Facebook Photos Located In a GROUP Photo Album
• Downloading My Facebook Personal Data
• Searching Your Facebook Feed For A Specific Post
• Changing Your Facebook View From Mobile To Desktop On A Tablet

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