Social media is a big part of any modern marketing campaign. However, managing social media properly can mean a lot of time-consuming work. It’s one thing to have a solid plan, but the real work comes with the day-in, day-out hands-on implementation of this plan. There are lots of products that claim to automate this process, but they’re all missing a key thing: variety. You can set your tumblr to auto-update to your twitter, and your twitter could update your facebook, but this creates a single monolithic, repetitive structure. So, how do you add nuance to your social media plan without adding complexity and hours to your day?
Enter ifttt, which stands for “if this, than that”. It does exactly what the name implies. It allows you to make rules like “if I am tagged in a picture on facebook, then send me a text message” or “if I tweet, then create a facebook status message”. While at first glance it seems similar to simply allowing twitter to update your facebook, it’s really so much more. For one thing, the status message on facebook doesn’t have to have the same content as the tweet or other social media event that triggered it. For another, these rules can be combined into complex recipes. This creates a very large matrix of possibilities that you can use to create a truly unique routine that reflects the social culture of your business. One of the best examples that I’ve seen is linking instagram pictures to dropbox, instantly making your hip photos available to anyone anywhere that you want. However you’d like to use it, it’s definitely a powerful way to easily freshen your social media presence without a lot of added work.