How to Auto-post to Google+

Unlike other social networks, Google+ doesn’t provide the APIs necessary to send posts to their site. So, you actually have to go to Google+ and type up your message to get it on your profile.

Unless you’re crafty.

Compiled from a myriad of somewhat hard-to-understand posts I found around the web, I’ve sorted out what I believe to be the easiest method to send new posts to Google+ without actually visiting the site. So…you could automatically post new updates from your blog or some other site’s RSS feed that you like. Just remember, use this information with the same rules as Google themselves abide: Don’t be Evil.

What You’ll Need

How to Set it All Up

1. Get Your Google Voice Email Address

Messages sent to your Google Voice number can forward automatically to become posts on Google+, but first you need to know your Google Voice number’s email address. Here’s how:

  1. Login to Google Voice and click the Gear Icon, then Settings > Voicemail & Text.
  2. Tick the checkbox next to Text Forwarding: Forward text messages to my email.
  3. Send a Text to your Google Voice number from your mobile phone. That text message will also be forwarded to your associated Gmail account.
  4. Login to Gmail and find the new email. The subject line will be SMS from [Your Google Voice #].
  5. Note the email address is came from. This is your personal Google+ email address. It’ll be something like 15555555555.ABCD1234@txt.voice.google.com.

Now, any email you send to that address will auto-post to Google+.

2. Auto-post Your New Blog Posts (or any other content you can snag) to Google+

Now that we’ve got an email address that can post to Plus, let’s look at how we can use it in a practical setting. Like getting new items in an RSS feed to post to Google+.

  1. Sign up or login to IFTTT, a “web automation” service.
  2. Get your website’s RSS Feed address. Most WordPress-powered sites have their feed located at http://yourwebsite.com/feed.
  3. Click Create near the top of IFTTT’s interface.
  4. Click This and then choose Feed in the list of options below.
  5. Choose New feed item and enter your RSS feed URL.
  6. Click Create Trigger.
  7. We’re almost done! Click That and choose Gmail from the list of services.
  8. You’ll probably have to verify Gmail’s account access if you haven’t yet, just click through as directed if you haven’t done this already.
  9. Now complete the various fields as so:
    • To address Enter your Google+ Address, as we covered above.
    • Subject I typically leave this as {Entry Title}. This will be the first line of your Google+ post.
    • Body I like to use {Entry Content} (since my feed just uses Excerpts…you might want to skip that if your feed uses full content), a <br> or two, and then something like via {EntryURL}.
    • Attachment URL can be used to insert the first image in the post, if there is one. This is completely optional.
  10. Click Create Action and you’re all set!

I have no desire to plug up Google+ with SPAM, or anything of the sort. But I just don’t have the time every day to update this additional service by hand when I’m already trying to work with Facebook, personal Google profiles and Twitter for myself and several clients. If this was useful for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments, or you can throw me into one of your circles! Occasional new, useful information updated about twice a week.

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