Managing social media can be a tough job if not done right. With the rise of the internet and the vast amounts of information it brings, many people struggle to keep up with the latest trends. It’s important to work smarter to boost focus and efficiency. When online, individuals often engage in activities that end up wasting more time instead of being productive. As new social networks emerge daily, the average user finds it challenging to dedicate time to specific tasks and can easily get distracted by friend updates, missing out on what they truly want to focus on.
Automation tools are a great help in this situation, allowing us to save valuable time that we can use elsewhere. I regularly use social media tools like Buffer and Pocket to streamline and organize my social media tasks. Today, I’m going to check out another option called IFTTT (IF This Then That). IFTTT acts as an automation solution for your online activities (as it says, ‘Put the Internet to Work for You’) and offers over 100 channels that you can use to automate tasks and run them on a set schedule.
How does IFTTT Work?
IFTTT consists of two main points ‘Trigger’ which serves as the cause for the ‘Action’ which is about to follow. Channels are defined as sections for which you can set a trigger and action to. They primarily support all the major Channels from social networks like Twitter & Facebook to your Email as well as your Mobile OS. You just need to create an account in to IFTTT and view all their supported channels here . Recipes are what groups the Channels with the specific trigger and action. The platform makes it easy for you to let you create your own recipes or build on the existing ones under the ‘Browse’ section. The existing recipes also show the number of times it has been uses along with the number of favourites it has garnered. The more popular the recipe, the more helpful for the general public. To start with, you might have to activate the channels which you are interested in automating. So If I am looking at setting up one of the recipes for Twitter, I will have to first authenticate my Twitter credentials along with the other channels I want it to be linked with to make it work. You can view your activated channels list under the ‘Activated’ tab under ‘Channels’
1. Favourite Tweet -> Save to Pocket
This was one of my first recipes which I setup in IFTTT and remains one of my go to recipes till date. Many people use ‘Favorite’ icon on Twitter as a reciprocal of a Facebook ‘Like’. However, there is also an alternate universe where people like me, use it as a read it later service. When going through my Twitter stream, I used to favourite tweets which contained interesting links which I could then come back through my Favorites tab to check on and read during travelling. With the help of IFTTT, I just made this process 2 steps shorter. Below is the process illustrated to showcase the time and efforts saved per Tweet
Pre IFTTT Process:
Post IFTTT Process:
Now I can just favourite my tweets/links which I find interesting and read it lated comfortably at my convenience in the pocket App and share it to my own social networks if it adds value. To create something similar for yourself you can follow the below steps after going to the ‘Create Recipe’ option in IFTTT:
How to activate this Recipe?
Choose the Trigger Channel: Twitter
Choose a Trigger: New Favorite Twitter by You
Choose Action Channel: Pocket
Choose an Action: Save for Later
You can then select the tags you would want to define in pocket for these Tweets. I like to keep it as ‘IFTTT’ which reminds me that these Tweets I have favorited from Twitter and can be read by categorizing tags easily.
2. New Blog Post -> Post it on Twitter
There are many a times, where you love some blogs within your niche and would want to post every content they publish. This recipe lets you publish any new content in their feed as soon as it is published on the blog. This can be setup as your own blog feed or some feed you think is valuable enough to be shared on your Twitter timeline without you reading it. In the below example I have set it up for KissMetrics blog, which is one of my favourite blogs about marketing. I have created a recipe which lets me share any new post they make to be added to my Buffer.
You can choose to receive notifications whenever the recipe begins to run, so that you can edit/delete the task at your own will.You can create similar versions of this recipe to post on other social channels if Twitter is not the only channel you are active on.
How to activate this Recipe?
Choose the Trigger Channel: Feed
Choose a Trigger: New Feed Item (If you want to publish every content they post) or New Feed Item Matches if you want to publish only a subset of the blog (eg: I may only want to publish ‘Social Media’ related content from Digital Insights blog and can put the category level url to match the keyword. Whenever the new post is published in that specific category/keyword match, the post would be added to my Buffer)
Choose Action Channel: Buffer (Or can be Twitter directly)
Choose an Action: Add to Buffer
3. Post your Facebook Page Update to Google
This recipe was cleverly created by johnnybizzle which uses Buffer to post your Facebook Page update directly to Google+. This certainly saves time when you have to post the same post on multiple social channels and avoids redundancy. Whenever you post an update to your Facebook page, the post gets added to your Buffer and is posted at your selected time on Google+
Similar to the above, you can also post your Company’s Facebook status update to your LinkedIn page in this recipe:
4. Post your Instagram Photos on Twitter:
Unless you were under a rock for the past year, you might know that Twitter & Instagram are not on pretty good terms. The microblogging site turned off Instagram photo sync and any new photo you might share on your Twitter timeline gets pasted as a redirect to your Instagram app (or browser). With this recipe you can directly sync your Instagram profile to post an inline image attached to Twitter whenever you share anything new on Instagram. Quite a cool way to make it work
How to activate this Recipe?
Choose the Trigger Channel: Instagram
Choose a Trigger: Any New Photo by You
Choose Action Channel: Twitter (Or can be via Buffer)
Choose an Action: Post a Tweet with an image
5. Save for Later in Feedly = Saved for Later in Pocket
I am a heavy user of the Read it later services. I generally browse through my Twitter feed and other interesting content during my travelling time and the generally long blog posts which would take time to be read are sent to pocket via this option. The ‘Save for later’ option in Feedly acts the same way. However, I would want my ‘To be read’ blog posts in one place and hence love this recipe when it comes to organizing & curating my feed. I save it for later if it can act as a reference for me in later blog posts or archive it if I found it shareable with my audience.
How to activate this Recipe?
Choose the Trigger Channel: Feedly
Choose a Trigger: New Article Saved for Later
Choose Action Channel: Pocket
Choose an Action: Save for later
IFTTT has unlimited permutations & combinations which you can try out to meet your other needs (apart from social media) and can be a great time saver for repetitive tasks which human Minds more often than not tend to forget. Here are some more recommendations (apart from Social media) created by other users which can help you get started with this brilliant automation service:
- Backup your contacts with Google Drive (For iOS Only)
- Mute your Phone when in your Office Area & unmute it when you get Home:
- Keep your Husband/Wife updated about your whereabouts (Very important!):
Which IFTTT recipe of the above is your favorite & helps you save time in your daily schedule?
You can share your Top 2 recipes in the comments section below. We would love to know what our readers are thinking!