Social Auto Poster Addon

Social Auto Poster is one of the recent add-ons that we have produced for MEC. With these add-ons, you can automatically post events that you have published in MEC on your social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Meetup, and Instagram.

Social Auto Poster Addon has numerous features that enable you to add and edit your events to your social media. Below, we will examine its features one by one, so stay tuned.

Social Auto Poster Addon Installation

After installation and activation, a new feature called Social Poster will be added to MEC’s menu. Once you click on it, you will see this page:

On this page, we enter the data for the social platforms we want to connect to MEC automatically in their tabs respectively. Then, we select the type of account. Now, let’s go through them one by one.

Facebook

First, we need to create a Facebook app to connect Facebook to Social Auto Poster Addon. Please visit this page, log in to your Facebook account, and click Create App.

On the next window, click on Other and then click the Next button.

A dialogue window will appear prompting the selection of a program. Kindly choose Consumer from the available options and proceed by clicking the Next button.

Fill in the form and click on Create App.

On this product page, set up and configure the Facebook Login Product (same for both Facebook and Instagram).

Please choose the Web Platform option. Enter the URL of your website in the provided field. Once you’ve entered your website address, click the Save button. After saving your website address, click the Continue button to proceed.

Note: The following steps, numbered 2 to 5, can be quickly reviewed without making any adjustments. There is no need for action on your side for these steps.

Afterward, from the Facebook Login submenu on the left sidebar, click on Settings.

Return to your website and copy your redirect address under

M.E Calendar > Social Poster > Facebook.

Then, in the Valid OAuth Redirect URLs section, enter that address and save the changes.

Now, navigate to App settings > Basic through the left sidebar menu, input your website address in the App Domains field, and click Save Changes. Additionally, ensure to back up your App ID and App Secret for future use.

Finally, from your Facebook page, go to the Pages section and create a new page.

Go to the About tab on the Facebook page you created. From there, choose Page Transparency from the menu. Your page ID will be visible in the section on the right.

Copy the page ID and follow these steps.

Go back to your website again and go to  M.E Calendar > Social Poster > Facebook.

1. Account Status

Here, you can activate your Facebook account.

2. Account Title:

Here, Enter a name of your preference.

3. Facebook App ID*:

This is the step where the App ID is required. Input the App ID you previously backed up into this field.

4. Facebook App Secret*:

This is the step where the App Secret is required. Input the App Secret you previously backed up into this field.

5. Facebook Account ID **:

In the new Facebook page that you’ve created, scroll down to the About section and copy and paste the page ID in this field.

6. Categories:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on category, use this field.

7. Organizers:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on the organizer, use this field.

8. Speakers:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on the speaker, use this field.

9. Locations:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on location, use this field.

Finally, click on Save, and you will see that your account has been added to the bottom of the page.

Now go to the General tab, and from the Account menu, select the Facebook API that we’ve created.

In the Default Schedules section, we can determine whether our events get posted on social media as soon as they are published on the website or after a specific period.

Also, on the Single Event page, we have added a new tab called Social Poster, where you can activate the settings.

Instagram

To set up a Social Auto Poster Addon for Instagram, you simply have to link your Instagram Business Account to the Facebook Page.
How to connect Facebook to Instagram.

Twitter

Note: right now, it’s impossible to show event images on Twitter.

To post your events on Twitter, first, you need to create a developer account on Twitter and then create a project to connect your website to Twitter’s API. Let’s see how.

To create a Twitter developer account, first log in to your account and then go to this address and click on Sign Up.

Fill in the form to create your account.

You will receive a confirmation email that you need to verify.

Once the developer account is created, go to your dashboard and click on Create Project.

Next, select Building Tools for Business and click on Next. In the third step, you can enter a project description if needed.

Here, we have to create an app. So enter a name for the app on the new page and click Next.

Now we have the info we need.

From the menu to the left, click on the app you’ve just created, and from User Authentication Settings, click on Setup.

Here, activate OAuth 2.0 and set the Type of App on the web. Enter the info for website redirection and save.

To enter your website redirection info, go to  M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Twitter.

Copy the data and go to M.E. Calendar > Social Poster > Settings on your website and fill in the empty fields.

We will see the Twitter account added to the bottom.

Linkedin

To enable Social Auto Poster for LinkedIn, you need a LinkedIn account and a Business Page connected to your personal account. To create a Business page, please see this article.

To begin, go to the LinkedIn Developer page and click on Create App.

Fill out the form and click on Create App.

Here, we have to create two products:

1. Share on Linkedin

2. Sign in with Linkedin

After selecting the products, as you can see in the image, they will be added to the Products section.

Then, you have to go to the Settings tab and verify the LinkedIn page.

Then go to the Auth tab and copy the redirect address from your website from  M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Settings > Linkedin and paste it into Authorized redirect URLs for your app.

Finally, go to M.E. Calendar> Social Poster > Settings > Linkedin and enter the API data that we received on this page.

Now click on Needs authentication to complete the verification.

Meetup

To enable the Social Auto Poster Addon for Meetup, you need a Meetup account. After creating an account, to create a new app, go to this link and click on OAuth Clients.

After that, go to this address and click on Create a New Client.

Next, fill in the info to create a new client.

Note: From your website, navigate to website M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Meetup and copy the redirect address.

Once the form is completed, you must wait for API verification by Meetup.

Next, create a group in Meetup and get the group’s slug from the address after approval.

For example, if the group address is this:

https://www.meetup.com/mec-wordpress-plugins-group/

Then the slug would be this: mec-wordpress-plugins-group

Finally, after getting the Secret Key and API Key, go to your website to M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Meetup, add a Meetup account, and verify.