As marketing and PR professionals we live in a very fast-paced but exciting time. We have a lot of things to do and monitor every day. However, we can take advantage of some great tools and services to make our day a little bit easier. One of those tools is IFTT.
IFTTT (If This Then That) is a service that lets you connect two platforms, so that when you choose an action from one, this then triggers an action at the other.
The basic structure would be something like this:
Step 1: Choose from 164 channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, Blogger, SMS, localization, WordPress, Bit.ly, Instagram, etc.
Step 2: Choose the trigger within the channel selected. For example, “when I receive a mention in Twitter” and then the action, “send me an email” or “save it to a Google spreadsheet”.
Step 3: Specify the ingredients (if relevant). For example, for a spreadsheet; subject, user name, link, date etc.
The final picture of the recipe could be something like this:
If you understand the simple process of developing your own recipes you can automate a lot of things to make your life a lot easier. This even includes really cool things like turning on your Philips lights when you are about to arrive home (via localization).
If you want to start simple you can just activate the recipes already created by other users.
Here’s a list of some great social media recipes available:
1. Feed your blogs
There are hundreds of recipes to automate the uploading of content to your blogs (blogger, wordpress, tumblr etc.) and fan pages from your activity in other social networks. Here are a few examples:
Recipe
Easily adds new boards with pictures to a Facebook page. Copy the link to the Pinterest board you want to post from. Remove the last / symbol and put in .rss so it looks like: http://pinterest.com/username/boardname.rss
The fastest way to upload your Instagram pictures to all main social networks (not need to select all) using buffer. Recipe
2. Share your status
Needs a Google Voice account. Follow the instructions here.
Of course you can do similar things with all the main social networks and platforms; LinkedIn, WordPress, etc.
3. Keep track of your activities for better reporting
Save all your bitly links in a Google spreadsheet to keep track of your links.
Recipe
A good way to keep track of all the tweets related with an event or to keep track of an industry sector, brand, competitor, etc.
Recipe
A simple way to have all your mentions in a spreadsheet. There is also a recipe for favourites.
Recipe
Track your Facebook status to a spreadsheet. There is also a recipe for LinkedIn status updates.
Recipe
Another good way to track and log all your tweets in a calendar for reporting or for editorial calendars.
Recipe
4. Twitter hacks
An interesting way to automatically create lists in Twitter to keep track of your brand lovers or haters, or find people talking about certain topics and then review the lists and mange them. Recipe
If you find interesting content from users this is a good way to automatically create a list in Twitter of the people whose tweets you have favourited. Recipe
Another hack to automatically send a followfriday to all your favourites during the week. Recipe
Great way to display your Instagram pictures as native Twitter images rather than just links (full image in feed). Recipe
5. Crisis Management
Are you in a middle of crisis and need to be notified of every interaction on Facebook and Twitter? Activate this recipe and get any interaction as a notification directly by SMS or email. First you need to get the RSS feed of your Facebook page and Twitter account.
You can also receive a notification via email of any Twitter search or hashtag of any conversation you need to follow. Recipe
With this recipe you can also archive the conversations in a spreadsheet for later reporting.
6. New Business
Finally just a couple of recipes for new business guys to keep track of contacts and leads.
A great way to record the new positions of all your LinkedIn contacts in a spreadsheet for any new business opportunities or just for sending a greeting email. Recipe
With this recipe you can have all your new contacts archived in a spreadsheet, also you can use it later to import into a CRM tool, saving a lot of time. These are just a few examples of how IFTT can help save time with automation. Now open an account and start creating your own recipes like a social media wizard.
