Create Your Own Social Curation Tools with ‘If This Then That’ (IFTTT)
Program the web with the conditional statement “if this then that” (IFTTT) and create your own set of social curation tools for free.
Now when you hear the words ‘conditional statement’ and ‘program the web’ you may be already tuning out – stay with me here, the awesome guys over ifttt.com have made programming (what would be) complex tasks – super simple through the use of their intuitive interface.
Puts the Internet to work for you
How does IFTTT work?
IFTTT connects two services of your choice (at the time of writing this post, IFTTT enables you to connect to 39 services from BoxCar to ZooTool) and when an event occurs on one service, it performs an action on the other service. Simple! Let’s run through a real world example:
If starred item in Google Reader post a new tweet to Twitter
First signup (if not a member) or login and authenticate your Twitter and Google Reader accounts. For this example we will create an IFTTT task that every time you star an item in Google Reader it then posts a new tweet to Twitter.
Once accounts are authenticated, head on over to create your first if this then that task.
Step by Step Setup
- 1. Choose Trigger Channel (Google Reader)
- 2. Choose a Trigger (New Starred Item)
- 3. Create Trigger
- 4. Choose Action Channel (Twitter)
- 5. Choose an Action (Post a new Tweet)
- 6. Complete Action Fields (Optional add relevant #hashtag)
- 7. Create & Activate
Now visit Google Reader – skim your feeds and look for a post your community will enjoy, ‘Star it’ and IFTTT will automatically add it to it’s queue of actions to execute. That’s it! Frictionless sharing built into your workflow.
Any task you create, you can share with the World by turning your task into an IFTTT recipe (here’s the above task as an IFTTT recipe with one click setup). For the rest of this post we’ll run through 3 other IFTTT recipes you can leverage for your social curation activities.
When a new Blog post is published, add to BufferApp and share on Twitter at the most Optimal Time
This IFTTT recipe will automagically share your new published post to Twitter at the most optimal time, enabling you to reach most of your friends and followers. Increase click through, retweets and even your klout score.
To analyse the best time to tweet use SocialBro (amazing tool to manage and analyze your Twitter community). Learn how to implement SocialBro data over on the Buffer App blog.
If you favourite a video on YouTube send to Tumblr Blog as video post
This recipe is great for aggregating and curating your favourite YouTube videos to a Tumblr blog. The objective of this IFTTT recipe is to curate great content that is valuable to your audience and positions you as a value provider (so plenty of nyan cat videos then!).
You could mix it up by adding other IFTTT recipes that push valuable ‘on topic’ content you discover via google reader, or even send insightful tweets as quotes to your Tumblr blog.
To get really creative with this – create a group Tumblr blog and have your team curate the content.
Automatically add anyone using a specific hashtag to a Twitter list of your choice
This recipe has many usage scenarios. It curates Twitter lists based on people discussing a certain topic. To do this simply enter a hashtag you want to track and IFTTT will automatically curate a Twitter list of people using it. One way you could use this – say you have an upcoming blog post on ’9 ways to increase conversion rate on landing pages under 2 minutes’ (linkbait title saved for future reference) it would be a good idea (if not already) to connect with people passionate about conversion rate optimisation (Hashtag #CRO on Twitter) – set the IFTTT task to track this hashtag, curate the list – you now have a continually updated list of people you can develop rapport with and when the time comes share your new blog post with.
The Only Limit is your Imagination
IFTTT turns your favourite web services into Lego blocks and enables you to save time curating content and automate activities such as monitoring your brand online. Your imagination is the only limit of what you can achieve with this great tool.
If you enjoyed this post, share the love by clicking one of the buttons below. If you want to share awesome content with your Twitter network throughout 2012 (and support Acquisition Engine at the same time) add this IFTTT recipe to your list of tasks :)
