What is IFTTT, anyway?

Are you using IFTTT? No? You’re behind the curve and we all know you need to stay ahead of it. IFTTTonly arrived at the end of 2010, so it is still a relatively new service. But users have taken to it in droves, since it saves a great deal of time and costs nothing. So what is it?

Automated Responses

In short, IFTTT automates responses to certain triggers across a number of platforms, without you having to physical check and perform actions yourself. We all know it’s important to have a presence on all social media networks, and since there are new ones appearing every day, it can be time consuming to keep tabs on them all, and monitor how successful different marketing strategies are doing on each one. If you use a blog or other types of social media, IFTTT can really lighten the load, and provide useful marketing research data.

If This Then That

The clue to how it works is in the name. The apps on IFTTT.com will help you set up your plan, or Recipe as it is called.

The ‘this’ part of your Recipe is known as a Trigger, and when it is tripped, the ‘that’ part of the equation – the automated Action – is activated.

A Trigger might be: “If I post a new article on my WordPress page’

The ‘that’ part of the Recipe – or Action – will then occur automatically.

An examples of an Action might be ‘Then inform my Twitter followers’

The IFTTT Recipe is simply “If I post a new article on my WordPress page, then inform my Twitter followers” Simple! You can add as many Actions as you wish.

Which channels are using it?

Tons, and more channels are adopting every month. Currently, the figure stands 108, including:

Instagram, iOS Photos, WordPress, Craigslist, Facebook Pages, Date & Time, Dropbox, You Tube, LinkedIn, eBay, Tumblr, and Twitter.

You can see the full list on the IFTTT Channels Page.

Tell Me More…

Ok, look at this Recipe as an illustration:

Sample IFTTT Recipe

Following on from the first example, let’s imagine I have a WordPress blog. My Recipe could be this.

If I post a new article to my WordPress page then:

It is sent to my newsletter subscribers

It is posted to Reddit

It is posted to Delicious

My Blogger account is updated with the new post

My Facebook followers are sent a link to the post

My Google Plus followers are sent a link to the post

It is shared on my LinkedIn account

My Tumblr account is updated

My Twitter followers are informed

You get the idea. You can coordinate Actions across as many accounts as you like, and gather Market Research data to see which channels are most effective.

It Sounds Difficult…

It really isn’t. But before you launch into creating your own Recipes, why not check out the cool Recipes others have already created on the IFTTT webpage, and piggyback off those? There is an active community on IFTTT, and lots of existing Recipes to show you what can be done. You can use it for many applications, not just social media ones. Join IFTTT.com for access to some simple tutorials.