Social media with IFTTT. Now, what am I talking about?
For those of you who have no idea what it is all about, IFTTT is also know as IF This, Then That. Some call it a powerful productivity tool and some say IFTTT takes automation to the next level.
For me, IFTTT is a great way to automate a huge part of your social media strategy.
There are like over a thousand ways you can use IFTTT for (nearly) everything in your life but I’m not going to that extend. I’ll keep it short and simple — You will discover how you can start automating your social media with IFTTT.
And all you need is 10 minutes to read this article.
A little introduction to IFTTT
IFTTT was created by Linden Tibbets, Jesse Tane and the co-founder, Alexander Tibbets in San Francisco, California and was launched in September 2011. Today, IFTTT recipes are widely used and shared by users. Fifteen million recipes are used every day (source).
Basically, IFTTT operates like a trigger and action system. So, if this trigger happens, that action will occur — hence the name.
Here’s an example of how I use IFTTT on a daily basis.
- A recipe is created (recipe would require a trigger and action).
- The trigger is when I save an article to Pocket and tag it as ‘task’
- The action is when after all the above happened, the same article will be imported into my Evernote and labelled as ‘task to do for the week’
- The last step is to refer back to my Evernote for blogging purposes (content curation)
So, IFTTT helps me to be more productive and trust me, there are a whole lot of recipes to play and create.
At this point of writing, there are 128 channels than you can use on IFTTT; from Gmail to LinkedIn.
And this brings us to the next part of the article.
How to create a social media recipe on IFTTT?
There are 8 steps to create your (first) recipe on IFTTT. And yes, 8 quick steps. I could create a recipe under 3 minutes … seriously.
Step 1: Create a recipe
Step 2: Create a trigger value
Right after clicking ‘this’, you will have the option to choose the trigger value. In this case, I choose my RSS feed for example.
Step 3: Choose the options that fits your needs
To complete this example, I have selected ‘New feed item’ and added my RSS feed URL.
Step 4: Creating the action value
When you reach this page, it shows that you have completed the steps for creating a trigger. Let’s continue to the last part, shall we?
Step 5: Choosing an action channel
Note: Buffer works on single account. This means that if you have 10 social accounts on Buffer, you need to copy (there’s a button to replicate a recipe) the same for each social platform of your choice.
Step 6: The last 2 steps! Don’t stop here!
Buffer allows you to upload a single post or a photo as seen above. In this example, I’ll go with ‘Add to Buffer’.
Step 7: Customize your future posts
This is where the fun part is. You can configure how the post will be shared on Buffer or the another 127 channels of your choice.
You can customize them using the codes below:
- {{EntryTitle}} > Title of your post
- {{EntryUrl}} > URL of your post
- {{EntryAuthor}} > Author name
- {{EntryContent}} > Full content (not advisable to use on social media)
- {{EntryImageUrl}} > Image URL
- {{EntryPublished}} > Date published
- {{FeedTitle}} > Your RSS feed title
- {{FeedUrl}} > Your RSS feed URL
Step 8: Finalizing and hit ‘publish’!
The last step is rather simple. Take a moment to check if everything is setup properly. You can name your recipe using the ‘Recipe Title’ box. This will only be visible to you and not to the public.
How to automate social media with IFTTT?
Now imagine this.
You create over a dozen IFTTT recipes and every time you publish a blog post, it gets distributed to the various social media platforms of your choice.
Remember those days wheN you need to submit manually, one by one?
Those days are relatively over thanks to IFTTT.
You can also create recipes to create a chain event. For example, each time you publish on Buffer, it will trigger a social share on your Facebook account, and this trigger will send the link over to Reddit. You get the point.
With IFTTT, your choices are pretty much unlimited.
And if you think that this is not workable, I have a close friend who does this for a living. Sharing posts on social media using IFTTT. He has over 100 recipes which will trigger with different values.
Over to you
I hope you find this simple tutorial useful. IFTTT has been a powerful social media tool for me and I have absolutely zero regrets.
But speaking of social media tools and automation, other solutions we’ve tried to improve our social media game are social management platforms, which are great for people who need to automate and schedule their social media accounts. Check out our article and see if you can find a tool that is suitable for your needs!
See also: The 5 Steps Rule of Social Media Automation
