With a motto that says “Put the Internet to work for you,” it's no wonder why IFTTT has become a popular social media moderating tool. IFTTT, or “If This Than That,” is a free service that saves you the time of doing much of the repetitive and time-consuming aspects of daily internet activities. Basically, the beauty of IFTTT is that it triggers digital actions for automatic responses. When one thing happens, IFTTT lets you create an certain reaction. Confused? I've got a few ways that IFTTT could save you precious time, especially if you're into social media!

How Do You Start?

After creating your account on IFTTT, you have the ability to immediately start building the commands you want, without needing any type of coding knowledge. To write commands, you have to enable the apps and services that you want IFTTT to be able to reach, such as your Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, etc. When you begin creating your own commands, or recipes, the IFTTT algorithm walks you through the entire process. I love how simple and straightforward it is.

If you're not sure where to start, IFTTT offers access to a wide variety of recipes already created by other users. Browse through what's new or what's hot and popular to find automations that would make your digital life so much easier and richer.

I've listed five examples below:

IFTTT Recipe: If your Facebook profile picture changes then update your Twitter profile picture too connects facebook to twitter

IFTTT Recipe: Upload new Instagram photos to Flickr connects instagram to flickr

IFTTT Recipe: Congratulate your LinkedIn contacts automatically for their new jobs connects linkedin to linkedin

IFTTT Recipe: Tweet my WordPress blog posts connects wordpress to twitter

Moderate in Moderation

Take a lesson from someone who's been there. Say you want your Facebook Page updates to also post to Twitter. And your WordPress blog auto-posts to Facebook and Twitter. You could potentially have 4 posts to Twitter, all with the same content, all at the same time. That's just not a good look!

[clickToTweet tweet=”As with anything in life, it's important that you use social media moderating tools in moderation.” quote=”As with anything in life, it's important that you use social media moderating tools in moderation.”]

Keep your moderating to the simplest level, for your sanity and your followers enjoyment.

How I Use IFTTT

You'll find below a few ways that I use IFTTT across my personal social media accounts as well as for a few of my clients.

  • Post Instagram photos natively to Twitter.
  • Post YouTube videos from a favorites playlist to Tumblr.
  • Share new Instagram photos to a photo album on a Facebook Page.
  • Changing a Facebook Profile picture also changes a Twitter profile picture.

New Product: Do

As I was researching for this article, I noticed a new app created by IFTTT called “DO.”

do ifttt

Take action with the tap of a button. Do empowers you to create your own personalized button, camera, and notepad. Run Recipes right when you want to.

The premise seems more for those who wish to moderate other aspects of their life via their mobile devices. I didn't want to take too much time going into the details but I felt like it would be careless if I didn't at least mention it.

So, do you or would you use this social media moderating tool in your digital life? What parts do you like about the IFTTT free service and what don't you like?

Until Next Week,

Andréa Jones Signature

About onlinedrea

Andréa Jones is a social media strategist who works with lifestyle brands to build their online presence through targeted social media and content marketing solutions. She's also the founder of SavvySocialSchool.com - a membership community with everything you need to achieve visibility, growth, and engagement on social media.