While social media management tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer allow you to schedule updates and monitor your social media engagement, automation tools such as IFTTT take it up a notch by allowing you to create specific actions based on triggers. These are especially helpful if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on social media but still want to be as engaged as possible.
Here’s how IFTTT works, and examples of how to use it to streamline your social media as well as other productivity tasks.
How IFTTT (If This, Then That) Works
IFTTT allows you to create simple workflows that involve one action from one service triggering an action in another. For example, you can trigger a post to LinkedIn every time you post to Twitter, or automatically congratulate your LinkedIn connections every time they change their role.
Over 170 services (“channels”) are supported by IFTTT, ranging from social media services, apps to connected hardware. Some of the common social media channels IFTTT supports include:
- YouTube
IFTTT also supports other channels like:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Dropbox
- iOS Contacts
- iOS and Android location
- Date and time
- Weather
To get started with IFTTT, visit the IFTTT website or download their app and then give it authorization to the accounts you want to use with it.
Once you’re logged in, you can also click the “Add” button next to the recipes below to use them with your own IFTTT account.
Sample IFTTT Recipes
1. Thank a New Follower With a Tweet.
You can customize your message when you setup the recipe, for example, “Thanks {{FullName}} for the follow! I’m very happy about it.”
2. If Your Facebook Profile Picture Changes Then Update Your Twitter Profile Picture
If you mange multiple social media accounts, you know how much work is involved to modify each account profile every time the profile picture has to be updated. This recipe lets you upload it once and have it automatically updated in another network. You can copy and modify this recipe to cover other social networks you mange too.
3. Automatically Connect With New Contacts in Your iOS Address Book on LinkedIn
When you add the email for a new contact person to your iOS address book, this recipe will automatically request to connect with them on LinkedIn. This is great for networking events – no more forgetting to add people on LinkedIn afterwards. 4. Get an Email
4. When a LinkedIn Connection Changes Jobs.
This recipe is triggered every time one of your connections has a new position on their LinkedIn profile. This is helpful if you don’t go on LinkedIn often but still want to stay on top of important news for your network. If some of your connections are prospects, job changes can be sales triggers as well.
5. Congratulate a LinkedIn Contact on a New Job
Congratulating a LinkedIn contact is an easy way to keep in touch with your network. If you don’t login to LinkedIn often, this recipe let’s you automatically congratulate contacts.
6. Auto-Generate #FF (Follow Friday) Tweets for Everyone You’ve Favourited in a Week
Instead of manually selecting followers to send an #FF to, this recipes mentions people you’ve interacted with recently via a favourite.
7. As Soon As It’s New Years Day, Wish Twitter Followers a Happy New Year
It’s easy to forget or lack time to update social media accounts around holidays. Prescheduling a few holiday wishes ahead of time can prevent this problem. This recipe can be modified for other events such as Christmas or Thanksgiving.
8. Mute Phone for Meetings
Getting notifications or calls on your phone during a meeting can be distracting, and can make others feel you don’t respect their time. This recipe connects with your Google Calendar and automatically mutes your phone during meetings.
9. Add a Favourite Tweet to Buffer
You often come across a slew of shareable content in your Twitter stream at once. Re-sharing too many tweets at once can overwhelm your followers, so this recipe is perfect for sending them to Buffer so they’re shared at the intervals you’ve specified in Buffer.
10. Buffer Your WordPress (WP) Posts
Do you sometimes forget to share your new blog posts once it’s been published to WordPress? This recipe will automatically send the post to Buffer so that it’s shared at the next scheduled interval in Buffer.
11. Create Twitter lists around a hashtag
If you’re running a conference, event or Twitter chat that has a hashtag, this recipe is an easy way to keep track of all the users participating so that you can follow them or continue to engage them later. 12. Tweet Whenever I Upload a Video on YouTube
Are there other IFTTT recipes we should add to this list? Let us know in the comments below! For more tips on getting the most of social media, follow us on Twitter at @vapartners.
