If you have been a regular reader of my blog, you would’ve noticed I have talked about IFTTT quite often. IFTTT stands for IF THIS THEN THAT, IFTTT is an automation tool that lets you connect two different applications together based on the parameters you define. I have personally used this tool and today I want to share with you a couple of ways bloggers like me can use IFTTT to their blog promotion as well.
IFTTT requires an action to trigger another, lets say you will like to automatically share your blog posts to Tumblr every time you publish a blog post on your blog, or you want to share same blog post to other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. Then this action depends on your blog feed, once a new post has been published on your blog, you blog feed will trigger the action of such post being shared to the Social media sites you choose. In IFTTT this is called “recipes”, there are so many recipes to chose from in their site.
To create a recipe you tell IFTTT what the “This” and “That” are, choosing your source and your destination. So once the condition for “This” is met, it triggers the other action for “That” in your recipe equation. So in the example above, once you publish a new post, a new feed item is created which is the “This” in our recipe equation, which triggers the “That” in the same equation by sharing to the social network we chose.
How to create a recipe in IFTTT
Am assuming you don’t already have an IFTTT account, click here to create an account quickly. Then after that sign in to your account. Click on the “create” button and you will be taken to the ‘Create a Recipe’ page.
1. Click on the “this” highlighted in blue to reveal the channels. These channels are the building blocks of IFTTT, you can use it to connect two applications. For the sake of this tutorial lets use feeds since I am more interested with promoting my blog using this tool.
2. Next is to “Choose a Trigger”, click on “New feed item” as specified on the image below.
3. Then enter your feed address or Feed URL on the space provided for the new feed item and click on the “Create Trigger” to create your trigger. See image below
4. Then you will be taken to the next step called the action step where you will choose a channel for you action. Click on the “That” as shown on the image below.
5. Then at this step you are expected to choose an action channel.
6. You will be asked to activate your Facebook Channel as shown on image below
Click on the “Activate” button and a page will be opened to you to login your Facebook account and allow IFTTT access. Once you have successfully activated your Facebook channel the button will change to this;
Then you can click on the “Continue to the next step” button and you will be taken to the “Choose an Action” step.
7. Then click on any of the three options as shown on the image below to decide what the action would be when you publish a new post. Let’s say we decide to publish a status message every time we publish a new post, then choose number 1 as labeled on the image below
8. Then you will be taken to the “Complete Action Fields” where you can add ingredients to your action. Click on the + button to reveal the ingredients you can choose from.
9. Then click on the “Create Action” Button.
10. Add a description to your recipe and click the “Create Recipe” button to create your recipe.
Now you have successfully created a recipe that triggers the action of posting a new status message on your Facebook wall whenever you publish a new article on your blog.
There are thousands of recipes you can create from choosing any two of the channels on IFTTT, i personally have recipes that share to my Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Storify, LinkedIn, Buffer, Flickr, Diigo etc. Bloggers can take advantage of this tool t the promotion of their blog, it is totally automated and you can actually check your activity log to see how your recipes are doing.
Must Read: Free social media automation methods
I hope you find this tool interesting in promoting your blog or in achieving any other aim, Amrish of liveindiantvchannels actually asked me to write a detailed tutorial on how to use IFTTT yesterday and i promised him i will publish it today. I hope i have done a great job in composing this tutorial in a short while.
Now over to you, create your recipes and share with me your favorite recipes, maybe i could create your type of recipe. What do you think of IFTTT? How do you think bloggers can use it to their advantage? Share with me using the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.
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Hello Mavtrevor,
What a wonderful post indeed. I actually love the post and how simple the tutorial is :) .
I have not tried it yet because i hate automated machines, but these sound different. I’ll try it and see how it goes. Thanks
Thanks Babanature, i am glad you found it interesting. IFTTT is indeed an awesome tool, you will say so soon.
thanks for sharing about IFTTT. actually, i never heard of it until you shared it to us. hmmm..now your post left me thinking of what social media should i use. i am considering other social media . my twitter and facebook automatically post my new article so i will not use it for IFTTT
Hi There this is a very awesome and well explained tutorial by details
this is the first time I hear about Ifttt it looks different from the others
Cool another way to promote our blog Nice :D
thanks for sharing do have an awesome day ahead :D
shared your post everywhere :D
GREAT article! Thank you so much. I discovered IFTTT a few weeks ago, but i have CLEARLY not been using it to its full potential. Many thanks)
Get to IFTTT and check out the numerous number of channels to choose from. You will love it.
Thanks Anis i am glad you found my article interesting, Netmediablog is dedicated to providing resourceful articles like this like i promised my regular readers.
I hope this post encourages you to make good use of it soon…thanks for your comment.
Never heard about this…I will surely try on my shoutmehow blog…Thanks for sharing this blog promotion tool…:)
Hope it is an simple and effective guide to use IFTTT.
I read about it but am not using this great tool to promote my blog posts.
I bookmarked this clear guide for future use, thanks for sharing it :)
Thanks Vivek, glad you found it interesting, IFTTT will definitely be a useful tool to you like its been for me.
Nirmala there are tasks we can automate in blogging and i personally use IFTTT for some of those.
So basically IFTTT is pretty much just a tool that automates your cross-posting efforts of your blog entries to your social media accounts? We already do that manually and takes no more than 5 minutes to do… but then again, we only have one or two blog posts a month.
IFTTT is far more than that, you should check it out yourself.
Hmmmm another nyc post from you…its awesome tip for us…thnx for sharing my frnd…
I am presently using RSS Graffiti to publicize all my articles on Facebook from RSS feeds but now thanks Nwosu for bringing to the forefront this amazing tool. I am gonna try this for sure – IFTTT.
Thanks Sanjay, i am glad you found it interesting.
Thanks Giriraj for your comment, you will definitely find this tool useful.
Hi Nwosu,
I’ve used this service a couple of times and yes, it can do the things as you said. You’ve explained it really good and hope many friends will join the service soon. Its great tool to automate some tasks like sharing your recent post in Facebook, Twitter etc.
Hey Bro,
I have not heard this term before but it’s really looks cool would like to try this stuff for my promotion really appreciate your effort
You really have to give it a try now. Remember to come back and share your experience.
Glad someone can confirm my claims hope other bloggers use it to their advantage.
I am currently using WordPress Jetpack plugin to publicise my posts. I would give it a try. If it is better than Jetpack then i will switch it
IFTTT is not all about publicizing your posts, there are so many other things you can use it for check it out.
Informative post on an inventive automated social-sharing tool.
I love it!
Mike Searles
Scooped to:
http://www.bloggingcontentideas.com
Thanks Mike for your kind gesture.
Want to add more , of course social media is the key for ultimate blog promotion but not everything , There are other ways too like going behind the scenes i mean sharply monitoring the promotion strategy of successful bloggers like Ana Hoffman and Tyler Cruz. They even focus on their design too like adding their own image in logo, comment author and many more. And your tips completely adds value to my knowledge. Nice written article.
Hi Bro,
Thanks for sharing this great and awesome Social Media automation tool. It will make my job more easier to share all my articles in to social media which is certainly one of the latest trend of SEO for ranking articles in Search Engine.
This is the first time am hearing about this social help website, i will be trying them out and we certainly be posting my review here.
Thanks for this detailed tutorial.
Just followed your tutorial Mr. Nwosu, and it’s straight to the point, but i though this tool, the IFTTT can be able to share our posts on all my facebook group?
right?
If only you are an admin or contributor to such groups.
thanks a lot you have saved my day