Cross posting to multiple blogs with Windows Live Writer and xPollinate

I am testing out the cross pollination with Windows Live Writer. I have to admit I am a little embarrassed that I didn’t know about Windows Live Writer.

I am not a Microsoft hater. I don’t have a mac or hang around with Mac people. I am really into blogging technology, so that’s why I am a little surprised that I had not heard about Windows Live Writer.

We have a client, our biggest client actually, and we are going to be setting up several site for continuity programs that target 3 or 4 very different audiences. My partner asked me how we should go
about setting up the blogs. Do we want to get a separate domain for the blogs? Do we want to have them all write to one blog? The issue is we can’t have the blogs on the domain for one of the sites because it would alienate the other 2 or 3 audience groups. I went in search for the solution.

I went to Google of course. I punched in a couple queries that didn’t do much good. Then I queried "cross post to multiple blogs". I found an article that was talking about the various options to do just what I was wanting to do. It should be noted that I have several solutions for cross posting, but most have a black hat feel to them and that isn’t appropriate for this client. Anyway, the article was talking about Windows Live Writer and a plugin for it called cross pollinate. This looked like just the ticket, but I assumed as usual it would ALMOST what I wanted but not quite.

I downloaded the software, it asked me for my blog address (URL), I punched in one of my wordpress blogs and hit go. Error, no biggie, I had to go into the admin and check enable XPRC posting. I did that, came back, and voila! Instant easy posting to my blog with the nice candy clean windows type interface. You can select the category, tags and schedule the post. Everything a basic blogger needs to start posting.

I will set the automation for posting to Facebook, Twitter, etc inside WordPress but this looks great.

I needed to download the pollinate plugin, when I did that I was told I needed to install the .NET framework and that’s where we are now, waiting for that to install.

Ok, everything is installed and this is going to be my test of the xPollinate plugin. If this works, I will be extremely pleased. Three cheers for Bill Gates!