How to Use IFTTT to Automate Your Online Activities {Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge}

Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge

Updated March 15, 2014

When I first learned about IFTTT from Samantha, I was intimated by it. There were so many options and you have to really dial in to get recipes to work just the way you want them to. But the more I used IFTTT, the more comfortable I got. And now I’m currently up to 37 recipes. It’s addicting and habit-forming.


What is IFTTT?

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT is an acronym for ‘if this, then that’. The image above pretty much explains what components make up an IFTTT recipe. The recipes you use and create will help you automate your online activities.

  • A ‘trigger’ (the THIS part) would be something like “when I post a picture on Instagram” or “when a new post on my blog goes up”.
  • An ‘action’ (the THAT part) would be something like “post my picture on my Facebook profile” or “create a photo post on Tumblr”.

I recommend you check out IFTTT’s About page for further explanation and information. Go on, I’ll wait for you.


TIP: Personal Recipes check for new Trigger data every 15 minutes. Some Recipes have “Quick Triggers” that will run as soon as they receive Trigger data. Quick Triggers can be identified by a lightning bolt icon.

How to Use IFTTT

IFTTT is free to use and it’s easy to create an account. Once you create an account and start creating recipes of your own (or selecting pre-made recipes to use), you’ll be prompted to activate the Channels involved, like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.


TIP: There is no need to activate a Channel (e.g. Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc.) until you are prompted to do so during the process of creating or using a recipe.

The number of recipes you can create/use are endless. And IFTTT is coming up with new Channels all the time. Here are some pre-made recipes to give you an idea of what you can do with IFTTT:

IFTTT Recipe: When a new book is added to Amazon Kindle's Hot New Releases (Romance), send me an email.
IFTTT Recipe: When a new book is added to Amazon Kindle's Best Sellers (Romance), send me an email.
IFTTT Recipe: When I post a new Instagram picture, add it to my 'Instagram' album on my Facebook Page
IFTTT Recipe: Text me if the CDC reports a Zombie outbreak
IFTTT Recipe: When #Facebook profile picture changes, update #Twitter profile picture
IFTTT Recipe: Tweet my Facebook status updates
IFTTT Recipe: Backup my contacts to a Google Spreadsheet
IFTTT Recipe: Download new Facebook Photos you're tagged in to Dropbox
IFTTT Recipe: Save your Instagram photos to Dropbox
IFTTT Recipe: Save my iOS photos to Dropbox
IFTTT Recipe: Text me the weather every morning
IFTTT Recipe: Text to escape
IFTTT Recipe: Help me find my lost phone!
IFTTT Recipe: New York Knicks Updates

 And you'll definitely want to add this recipe to your collection:

IFTTT Recipe: Get all the Updates to IFTTT via email!

The recipes above are ones that have been created by IFTTT members (like myself, or someone else) that you can use yourself. You can also browse pre-made recipes or create one from scratch.

Here are some more recipe examples to get you going:

  • Blogger > Tumblr: When a new post goes up on my Blogger blog, create a photo post on my Tumblr. (I use the photo post option for Tumblr so as not to clutter my Tumblr space.)
  • Blogger > Facebook Page: When a new post goes up on my Blogger blog, post an image from my post to a designated photo album on my Facebook Page (or Facebook profile).

    TIP: Use the photo album option for Facebook so that it show an image on your wall instead of just a link. Photos get more ‘likes’, comments, and click-throughs.

  • Twitter > Facebook Page: When I tweet, update my status on my Facebook Page.
  • Date & Time > Twitter: On this day and time, tweet this message. You can create a recipe to tweet a specific message once a day, week, month, or year. I use this recipe for my weekly #BackUpFriday reminder tweets. You can also use this type of recipe to tweet yearly holiday messages (like Happy New Year!) or even for your #FF shout outs.

And I’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg in regards to what sort of recipes you can use and create.

TIP: There's an IFTTT iOS app. For Droid users, IFTT has said that an Android app is in the works.

The Challenge

  1. If you don’t already have one, create an account on IFTTT.
  2. Create a recipe from scratch. While you can use pre-made recipes on your own, you must create a recipe from scratch to complete this challenge.
  3. Come back to this post and leave a comment telling me about the recipe you created. I want to know (1) what your trigger is, and (2) what your action is. Tell me which variables you used (i.e. for Twitter, tell me if you used: (a) new tweet by you, (b) new tweet by you with hashtag, (c) new link by you, or (d) new favorite tweet by you).
  4. Once you have completed the challenge, enter the giveaways via the Rafflecopter forms below. (You can enter to win one or both of the giveaways below.)

 

*If you have any questions about using IFTTT, leave a comment below. I will be around most of the weekend to help people out and check out the recipes you create.


Giveaway

One lucky mini-challenge participant will receive a $5 (USD) Amazon Gift Card.

And thanks to the lovely Amanda from On a Book Bender and The Path of Least Revision, another lucky mini-challenge participant will receive a digital copy of her ebook Blog Events: The Secret to Engaging Your Community, Growing Your Network, and Establishing Your Expertise. (Amanda is also hosting a Bloggiesta mini-challenge, Link Love: How to Give Good SEO Permalink, so be sure to check it out.)

  • No purchase necessary.
  • Must be 18 years old or older to enter.
  • Giveaway open Internationally, as long as I can send you an Amazon Gift Card from my amazon.com account. Void where prohibited by law.
  • Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received.
  • See Rafflecopter form for information on how to enter this giveaway.
  • Please read TBV's Giveaway Policy before entering.
  • Giveaway ends 9:01 pm (Pacific Time) on 9/22/2013.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway

About Brianna: Supermom by day, naughty reader by night. Addicted to chocolate, Twitter, her iPad, her Kindle, and 99¢ Kindle deals. You can follow Brianna on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Instagram.

60 comments:

  1. You're the IFTTT queen with all those recipes! Great post.

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    1. Thanks for introducing me to IFTTT! (And for starting the addiction LOL)

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  2. I heart IFTTT. I already have a few recipes, but the only shared one I have is "If Feed published, then add a note to Evernote." which basically saves the feed from my blog as a note (in a specific notebook) in Evernote. That way I have all my blog posts there - I use Evernote as my blogging/ editorial calendar.

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    1. Do you save the entire contents of the post to Evernote, or just the title? If you're saving the entire post content, that's a great way to back up your blog.

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  3. Oh my goodness, I have never heard of IFTTT. This is going to be life changing! Great challenge, thanks.

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  4. I'm totally in love with IFTTT. I use it for personal stuff like getting breaking Knicks trades and player signings but I also use it for work, like sending facebook status updates to twitter. I'm gonna do more with it, like dropbox which I don't currently do. Thanks!

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    1. I didn't know you were using IFTTT for work too. Awesome!

      And I use IFTTT to stay up to date with my husband's football team :)

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  5. My favorite IFTTT recipe is "if I tag an Instagram photo with the "books" hashtag, share it to my blog's facebook page." This way, I don't have to go messing around with the share settings each time I want to change where I'm going to share a pic - my personal or blog fb page. Nice post!

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    1. Great tip on how to use IFTTT to post only certain things!

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  6. I created a IFTTT recipe with my instagram and twitter. Every time I take a Instagram picture it will post to twitter with a tweet and attached picture. Really fun challenge, I will definetly be using it more

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    1. That's a great recipe (I have the same one) and I'm glad you're finding IFTTT useful!

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  7. Thanks for this challenge! I've never heard of IFTTT before, but I love the posting photos to facebook from all my blog posts! So cool and I wrote a recipe for it. Love this! It could do so many awesome things.

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  8. . I want to know (1)My trigger is an instagram post. Each time I post to IG, I will receive and email. I chose to keep it simple for the first one, but I plan to keep playing with it. This seems like something I can really use.

    Sophia

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    1. That's a great recipe to start with! It's fun looking around to see what recipes can be made :)

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  9. I'm officially addicted!! (I just set up a recipe to text IFTTT and it will call my phone!! Now I can escape that awkward moment at get togethers! LOL!!)

    Jac @ For Life, Love and Books

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    Replies
    1. Isn't that handy? You can also set it up to call your phone when you can't find it ;)

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  10. This is an awesome challenge, Brianna! I'm curious to see if I can get it to post to Google+ (bwahahahaha!!!!)

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    1. They don't have a Google+ channel. Maybe it'll be something IFTTT adds in.

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    2. I asked IFTTT on Twitter about the chances of a Google+ channel in the future. I'll comment back when/if I get a reply.

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    3. Here's the reply I got from IFTTT regarding the possibility of a Google+ channel:

      we'll need a more robust API to play with first, perhaps down the line.

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    4. There seems to be a way to do it through using Buffer
      http://www.mrbhatt.com/blog/tech/how_to_post_to_google_plus_1.html

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  11. THIS! My life may never be the same! Thank you!!!!
    I made a recipe to post my instagram photos as a twitpic (rather than the way it shares now which is a link to the instagram pic and you can't view it on twitter without leaving twitter). Omg now I have to go make more recipes.

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    1. Is there a way to duplicate a recipe? So, I just created a recipe for posting on facebook, and I want to do the same for twitter with the same trigger. Do I have to start from scratch or can I duplicate and edit the few details?

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    2. You can't duplicate a recipe but you could use an already existing recipe created by another IFTTT member.

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  12. I'm trying to create a recipe that is triggered by forwarding an email to IFTTT, with the action to append to a google doc. However, it isn't including the CONTENTS of the email, just subject and then "via Email". Played w ingredients but no luck :( I've tweeted them on Twitter so hopefully I'll get a reply back.

    I'm going to go set some up for Instagram and Facebook though :)

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    1. What Channels are you using for the trigger and the action?

      IFTTT is really good about responding on Twitter but it is the weekend so it might not be until tomorrow when you get a response.

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  13. I created a recipe that every time a post with a giveaway tag on my blog posts that a tweet will go out on my Twitter. Kind of excited to see how this works when one goes live. :) I will have to create some more recipes now.

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  14. I checked out IFTTT which seems super useful for my work blog. I created an account and created a recipe which was supposed to post a link to a particular FB page when a blogger post from http://nhbookcenter.blogspot.com with a specific label (ladybug picture book award) was posted. I wrote the post and published it, but 25 minutes later there isn't a post on the FB page. Any idea where might I have gone wrong?

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    1. Did you enter the label on IFTT exactly how it appears on your blog? That's the only thing I can think of. If it's exact, I'd shoot IFTTT an email (support [at] ifttt [dot] com). I hope you get it worked out.

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  15. Never heard of it...but you are always my go-to person for the newest and best tech things!

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  16. I created four new recipes, Blog Post to Facebook and Twitter, New Post in Feedly category Must Read email me, and IFTTT updates to email. I'm totally addicted and wish they would add Pinterest. Can't wait to see what else I can create! Thanks for the great challenge and tutorial.

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    1. You've created some great recipes there!

      You could always suggest a Channel to IFTTT. I do it on Twitter ;)

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  17. I made a recipe so that my Instagram pics with a tag of #books goes to my FB page instead of my personal profile. That is going to be a big help. I tweeted the IFTTT twitter account to see if they have any plans to connect to Goodreads or Pinterest. Even Amazon. It would be so great to be able to use this to cross-post, and even update my kindle.amazon profile. This could be very, very big! So, now that I've spent my entire blog time playing with this feature, I really need to buckle down or I am not going to get anything accomplished this weekend! Thanks Brianna!

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    1. IFTTT comes up with new channels often, so keep checking.

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  18. My first recipe (after much panic because OMG, THE CHOICES) was to tweet the link to every GLA review. Kelly schedules/posts those, so I can't use the automatic tweeting option. I'll have to keep playing. I can see how these would be really helpful for my business. :)

    Got distracted from this comment by creating my second recipe: getting texted whenever it snows. Niiiiice.

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    1. That's what intimidated me when I first learned about the site - THE CHOICES. It has so much to offer, with online activities and beyond. I just found out my 49ers are still losing thanks to IFTTT. Blessing, or curse? LOL

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  19. Thanks so much for the challenge! I'd never heard of this site before, actually, but it sounds really useful. I created a recipe that will take every link I post to Twitter and repost it as a status update on Facebook.

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    1. Awesome! Hope you continue to find it useful, like I have so far :)

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  20. Where has this website been all my life? At first I didn't think I would use it at all, but I've been experimenting for, like, an hour. Haha. So far I've only made two recipes. One posts my Instagram photos to Tumblr when I add #books. I want it to go to Facebook too, but I don't know that I can sent it to a page and not a profile. Oh well. My other recipe sends certain types of Wordpress posts to Tumblr as a photo post. I hope they incorporate Goodreads. That would be great. Hopefully G+ opens up their API so we don't have to jump through hoops to post there as well. Thanks for opening my eyes to this website. It's great!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. It's a time suck when you're checking out all the recipe options, I swear! LOL

      You can send Instagram pics to a FB Page. They are two separate channels: FB Profile and FB Page.

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  21. Wow, this is so cool! I created a recipe which creates a link post at facebook if I post a tweet with the hashtag "discussion". It will use the first URL in the tweet as the link and the tweet without the hashtag as the description. Thank you so much for such a helpful mini challenge!

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  22. I am equally fascinated and intimated by IFTTT.

    I never seem to get to my favorited tweets in a timely fashion. My favorited list just keeps growing and growing and growing. I created a recipe to email the favorited tweet to my email account - where I can post it on my calendar for review. [and the crowd goes wild]

    Thanks for hosting this mini challenge. It is going to be very helpful.

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    1. I, too, was intimated by IFTTT at first. But once I got to playing around with it, and figured out how it works, I got comfortable with using it.

      Awesome recipe!

      Side note: If there are links in the tweets you are favoriting, I'd recommend using Pocket to save the links for later ;)

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  23. I didn't do Bloggiesta, but I kept seeing your links about IFTTT. I've always been curious so I'm checking it out! But I'm super bummed Pinterest isn't one of their channels. I'd love to make a recipe so that every 4 or 5 star review I post it automatically gets pinned to my "Books I Adore" Board!

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    1. I would love to be able to create that recipe! Let's hope IFTTT soon adds a Pinterest channel.

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  24. Thank you SO much for posting this. I'm setting up and browsing through recipes. I know that this is going to give me a better chance at social media as a blogger. I'm so excited!

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  25. I can't believe I'm still not doing this. I will definitely be implementing this this week! Thanks!

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  26. You are now my personal IFTTT guru.
    This post & my subsequent exploration of TFTTT has been a revelation.

    But...I'm trying to link my post reviews to my fb page and to twitter - success (wahoo!) except I cannot control which image it pulls when posting (ie it posted the image of one of my comment avatars rather than the book image!!)
    Any ideas?

    I also have more than one blog, but I cannot find anywhere to add more than one to my profile...I also can't find a help tab...which is why I'm asking you :-)

    many thanks oh wise and knowing one!

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    1. Glad you're enjoying IFTTT! Can you give me the details of the recipe you're using for posting blog posts on FB and Twitter? I've never had it pull my commenting avatar before....that I know of. For my blog post --> Twitter recipe, under the 'What's happening?' section (for the Action part) I have:

      New on TBV: {{EntryTitle}} {{EntryUrl}}

      and for the image URL:

      {{EntryImageUrl}}

      For my blog post automatically posting to my FB page, I actually use Dlvr.it. I can't remember why I went with Dlvr.it over IFTTT - I think it had to do with how it rendered on FB....

      For you question about having multiple blogs, I would suggest try using the Blogger/WordPress channel (as the Trigger) for one blog and using the RSS channel (as the Trigger) for your other blog.

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    2. Under the action I have
      {{Title}} #fourseasons

      and for image URL
      {{Link}}

      I tried changing it to {{EntryIMageURL}} but it rejected it :-(

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    3. It doesn't seem to like the word {{Entry}}

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    4. I should have clarified - you have to select those items (EntryTitle, EntryURL, EntryImageURL) from the drop-down. When I copied the 'ingredients' of my recipe, that's how they display.

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    5. Sorry to be daft, but I can't find any drop down arrows at any stage of the recipe making process :-(
      Do you have a paid version of ITFFF?

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    6. I don't think they have a paid version...? I don't pay to use IFTTT. Could you send me an email (via my contact form)? I'll try to walk you through the process with screenshots.

      Delete

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