19 March 2014

Another Tool in My Writer's Toolbox: IFTTT

I know bloggers and other social media savvy folks say one shouldn't cross post among the different media sites.

But here's the deal... I'm a busy mom and wife, if I'm not driving my daughters to dance related events or my son to kung fu, I'm prepping meals to eat in the car as we drive back and forth, volunteering at the school, editing pictures, helping with homework, guest-teaching, developing my writing career, or managing the household. Then there's the social sites to keep up with family, friends, and writing acquaintances. I gotta cut corners sometimes.

So going against the pros advice, I cross post my blog to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. I've used a few services to different effects - the native sharing options within Facebook and Twitter, Twitterfeed, Networked Blogs, and Friends Plus MeThe latest service I've tried is IFTTT, (If This Then That) and so far I like it best.

The service works with recipes to get things done. A brief explanation of the service can be found here. (Their description is easy to understand. You really should go read it.) When creating a recipe, the service walks the user through creating a recipe and turning it on. Like anything these days, there is a social component: users can share their recipes with others. So there are lots of recipes to try out and lots of channels (cloud services, social networking sites) with which to experiment. It can even do some home automation actions.

I've created two flavors of recipes. I have two blogs on Blogger, but IFTTT can only connect to one at a time. So one type of recipe watches my blog directly, and when a new post is published, IFTTT pushes it to my Facebook timeline and to my Twitter feed. For the other blog, IFTTT monitors the blog's RSS feed for a new post, then pushes it to my Facebook and Twitter. Two blogs to two social networking sites means four recipes.

I like the service because I haven't had to go back in and renew the recipe or blog like I have for a few other services. (If I have to fiddle with a service every time I publish a blog post, it doesn't work for me.)

When I catch a moment, I might look at the other recipes available. If there is something out there to make my life easier, I'm game.

IFTTT is free. (So far.) So, take a look and see if you can put it to work for you. ##



## No compensation was received, nor expected, for this mini-review.