Like the rotisserie ovens of bygone QVC ads, you can in fact “Set It & Forget It!” for social networking.
Let’s free up time for billable work and get the tedium off your plate once and for all. You have better things to do with your time than manage a Facebook page. Things like, oh I don’t know, run your business. I give you here a quick run down of how to put your social media on auto-pilot using 1 simple tool.
Allow me to introduce the newest member of your team: ifttt.
(Pronounced like ‘lift’ without the ‘L’). This free online tool will plow through your daily internet tasks like the magical robot it is. You can set IFTTT to cross-post LinkedIn updates and Facebook posts and tweets.
So, what does IFTTT do?
IFTTT connects virtually any online tool with another one in an easy-to-understand way. It uses ‘recipes’ that follow the dead simple formula:
if this, then that. That’s where the name/acronym "ifttt" comes from.
For example, I want all of my blog posts to go to Facebook as a link so I don’t have to manually post them. So my recipe would look like this:
If I update my blog,
then post to Facebook.
Could it be easier? Unless your iPad can read your mind, nope. (
One day...)
The complete list of tools you can use are listed on their ‘Channels’ page here:
http://ifttt.com/channels. They include Twitter, Facebook, email, and WordPress – obviously. IFTTT also includes stuff like DropBox, Craiglist, and even SMS text messages. You can take advantage of the calendar feature by timing posts ahead of time, too. What *cant’* you do with this thing?
EDIT: In a previous iteration, I was miffed about the inability to sync with Pinterest. Some clever user found this lovely workaround: use your Pinterest rss feed!
The best part of it all is that you don’t even have to come up with these 'recipes' yourself. Plenty of awesome/nerdy beta users have already put some really great ones together for you.
My Top Picks…
- Share your Facebook page on your timeline.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/35173
- FB Page to LinkedIn Status.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/16698
- Any time you add a new WordPress post it updates your Facebook fan page, giving post title and link.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/10336
- Publish link from Facebook fan page to Twitter.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/1191
Facebook page Recipes…
- Wish my fans on New Year’s Eve
http://ifttt.com/recipes/12806
*this one can be duplicated and changed to any date you choose such as deadlines, birthdays, holidays, or important events
- Post YouTube upload to Facebook page.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/3832
- New Instagram photo upload a new Photo on Facebook Page Album.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/7619
Twitter Recipes…
- Tweet my Facebook status updates.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/1789
- When Facebook profile picture changes, update Twitter profile picture.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/8981
- If someone follows me on Twitter follow back automatically.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/19225
- Thanking people in Twitter when they mention you or RT.
http://ifttt.com/recipes/13394
Be careful you don't get stuck in an infinite loop! I know from personal experience how embarrassing it can be to see the same post go from Facebook to Twitter to Facebook again to Twitter again to Facebook again again... Make sure you've designated one account as your 'trigger' or 'main' account from which the automatic postings will be generated.
BONUS:
If you're up to the challenge, try setting a special hashtag to send specific updates. It's very common to see a #fb within a tweet which signals a service (such as ifttt) to pick up ONLY those tweets with the #fb hashtag to re-post to Facebook. You can arrange something similar with IFTT using the filters.
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