If This Then That (commonly known as IFTTT) is a fantastic free tool which lets you create ‘recipes’. Recipes are a simple two-step process: a trigger that prompts an action. So for instance, you can trigger 8am to unmute the ringer on your phone or get a mobile notification when the weather predicts rain. Essentially, it automatizes something you’d normally do manually – and saves you time in the process.
Here are five recipes every marketer is bound to find useful (and time-saving):
- Save every tweet to Google Drive. This saves your tweets to a Google Drive spreadsheet. Really useful if you want a simple way to keep track of your output.
- Share your Instagram pics as native Twitter photos. Normally, when you share an Instagram post to Twitter, it shows up as a link without even an image preview – quite frustrating! This recipe makes sure to share your Instagram picture to Twitter as an actual photo complete with link bringing people back to Instagram.
- Create Twitter lists around a hashtag. Twitter lists are fantastic but can be time-consuming to create. This takes a lot of the pain out of the process by generating lists automatically around a chosen hashtag. Just make sure you pick a highly specific hashtag or the list won’t have much value.
- Generate leads using Twitter Lists. If someone interacts with an influencer/competitor you’ve identified, it adds them to a list. Again, this can be a very useful way of getting their attention.
- Automatically add Tweets with a conference hashtag to a Twitter list. This one is particularly useful when you’re organizing a conference – it can be hard to keep track of all the output on the night. This will put all the tweets into one handy list.