How it Looks

The Page Watch Type tells govDelivery what format of content to look for. For YouTube and Flickr, Page Watch uses an RSS feed. Twitter, however, has its own type. 

Page Watch emails created for YouTube and Flickr include a list of recent updates, each linking to a new image or video.

Page Watch emails created for Twitter include a list of the actual tweets, each with the following elements:

• Profile Image and Name – Both elements link to the user’s profile page.
• Details –  This link brings subscribers to the specific tweet page itself.
• Retweet – This link lets the subscriber retweet the tweet, sharing the tweet with their own followers. The subscriber will be asked to login in order to retweet. 

Before You Begin: Find your Content

When setting up a Page Watch topic for social media sites, you need to tell Page Watch where to look. For sites like YouTube or Flickr, you must provide the URL for the appropriate RSS feed. For Twitter, you need to provide the user name for the appropriate Twitter feed.  

Step 1: Create a Social Media Category

We recommend Creating Categories that will house individual topics for each social media service you want to use. Many organizations title this Category, “Organization Name on Social Media,” or simply, “Social Media”.
 

Step 2: Create Social Media Page Watch Topics

Next, you’ll need to create a Topic for each of your social media accounts, which will allow your email subscribers to be automatically notified any time your organization posts something new to the services you select (like Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr). Once these topics are set up, each time you post to that service, that update (or a bundle of updates from a period of time) will automatically be emailed to your subscribers.

To create a Page Watch topic for a social media site:

1. On the Account Area toolbar, click Topics.
2. Click on the appropriate topic.
   Notes:

   • Bulletins sent through Page Watch will be categorized with this topic and sent to the subscribers of this topic.
   • If you want to set up a new topic with Page Watch, you can find instructions in the Creating and Editing Topics article.
3. On the Topic Information page, scroll down to the Page Watch Settings section and set Page Watch Enabled to Yes.
4. Keep Page Watch Suspended set to No.
5. Select a Page Watch Type. 
   • If you are setting up Page Watch for Twitter, select Twitter.
   • If you are setting up Page Watch for YouTube or Flickr, select RSS/Atom Feed.
6. Tell Page Watch where to look for content:
   • For Twitter, enter your Twitter User Name.
     Note: If you want govDelivery to watch more than one page or feed for the specified topic, click Add User Name.
   • For YouTube or Flickr, enter the URL in the Page Watch URL field.
     Notes:

     • Your URL must contain the scheme name (e.g., http://).
     • To see the page you have entered, click the green "Preview" button next to the URL field.
     • If you want govDelivery to watch more than one page or feed for the specified topic, click Add URL.
7. Set the Number of Page Watch Results to Save for this topic.
   Notes:

   • This setting does not affect Page Watch bulletin drafts; it determines how many results summaries are listed in the Page Watch Results list for this topic.
   • This setting works together with the Page Watch Schedule. For example, if you have Page Watch set to run once a day and set the Number of Page Watch Results to Save to 5, govDelivery will store the last 5 Page Watch results or the changes for the last 5 days.
8. Select a Page Watch Schedule.
9. Select if you want to Bundle Page Watch Messages. When selected, only one message is created for all new updates when Page Watch checks the page.
   Tip: Always enable bundling for a Twitter Page Watch topic. This combines each individual Twitter change made between Page Watch runs into one email. If you disable bundling, your account will draft a separate email for each change that Page Watch notices. This would bombard your subscribers with emails. Enabling bundling also provides the Account Name macro and Topic Name macro as the default subject line, making it a clean presentation of the information. Learn more about Macros.
10. To enable Auto Send, set Page Watch Auto Send to Yes. 

    Important: Twitter is the only thing that govDelivery both consumes and posts to. It is possible that your organization could loop content by automatically posting to and Page Watching the same Twitter feed. To prevent sending the same information in a loop, be sure that you are not using auto-send on a Twitter Page Watch topic that you also use to post content to Twitter.

11. Click Save to save your changes.

Step 3: Associate your social media topics with your category

When all of your social media topics have been set up, associate them with your social media category. You can find instructions for doing so in the Modifying Topics Associated with a Category article.

Best Practices

One of the best parts about automating your social media updates, is that once they've been set up successfully once, your automatic emails will continue to function indefinitely with little to no maintenance on your organization's behalf. The following items are a few of the best practices that we strongly recommend taking into consideration and enacting when setting up your social media automation for the first time.