Making Social Networking More Manageable

I still don't know what social media platform I enjoy using the most or more importantly what my target market enjoys using and will interact with my brand on the best. I started using a tool last year for my 817 Arts Alliance organization because trying to post regularly on several social media platforms was becoming too time consuming. The tool that I chose was IFTTT. The way that this tool works is that you create recipes for action based on preset occurrences, if x then y. I set up recipes based on newly published blog posts. I was even able to break that down further and create different recipes based on specific labels I included in blog posts so that a tweet about a music concert that resulted from a blog post would be different than a tweet generated from a post about upcoming art classes.

I realized when I got so busy with the Christkindl Market between Thanksgiving and Christmas that using IFTTT would be a big time saver for me with Eclectic Design Choices' social media efforts too. (I am not sure why that light bulb did not go off sooner.) To start, I will begin with simple recipes that take action based on a blog post being published for just my EDC business Facebook page and Twitter. Going forward if I find it makes sense to split out the recipes for different labels in my posts as I did with my 817ArtsAllinace recipes, I will update them. (Note: I have just created my new account for Eclectic Design Choices and the term recipe seems to have been replaced with the term applet.)

To create a new applet, click New Applet under your account name. Next, click the blue "this" on the page that comes up and select the trigger platform for your applet to run. (Use the search bar to narrow the range of possibilities.) Once you have chosen the trigger platform, choose from any actions that are shown for that platform. Then you will be shown a page when you click the blue "that" to build what action is taken based on your trigger. Tips: Make sure to choose Facebook pages and not just Facebook if you want something to post to a business Facebook page. Unfortunately Instagram will not allow a third party app to post to it, so you can only use that platform to trigger an action, not receive one.

Here goes. Hopefully when I hit publish everything will work as seamlessly as it does for my 817ArtsAlliance recipes (applets). Perhaps IFTTT is something you can use to help you save some time while managing your social media presences and more. (I am not affiliated with IFTTT nor have I received any compensation for this post.)