Imagine if you could update all of your social media channels, keep tabs on what your competitors are up to, keep your content organized, and make sure you don’t spend hours looking for information buried in your Inbox? Let’s look at some creative IFTTT recipes.

IFTTT (If This, Then That) is a tool that has the power to do all of that almost automatically once you set up key “recipes,” or processes, that you want to happen.

While IFTTT can’t do all of the work for you, it does set a brilliant foundation for you to do the things that you know will move your business forward.

It exists to help you be more productive so you can make the most out of the time you have each day.

Creative IFTTT Recipes to Run and Grow Your Business

1. Build relationships

If you want to get on the radar of the influencers or consistently keep in touch with the people who you want to build relationships with, you can use IFTTT in a few ways:

• Twitter to Google Drive: Using this recipe, you can have tweets that you’ve favorited added to a spreadsheet on Google Drive, so that in the future you can personalize your message to those people.
• Google Calendar to Facebook: Allows you to automate wishing friends a happy birthday on Facebook.  (And, yes, it’s best if you follow up with a personal note).
• Gmail to Twitter: Thank someone for following you on Twitter.

When you automate these processes using IFTTT, you can build relationships in a more systematic and organized way.

However, note that while you can automate certain aspects, meaningful relationships will require you to be hands on and personally build them.

2. Automate your listening

Having a listening system is one of the fundamental systems for any business.

When you keep an eye on what other business owners in your field are doing, you create opportunities for yourself.

Perhaps one of them published a blog post that you have an opposing viewpoint about and another released a product that’s similar to one that you’re working on.

In the first case, you have an opportunity to create interesting and useful content; and in the second—show how working with you will be unique.

Here’s how you can do that using IFTTT.

RSS to Evernote: Using this custom formula, you can be updated whenever a new blog post gets published on a website you are monitoring.

Need to figure out that blog’s RSS feed?  Read this How to find a Website’s RSS URL Feed.

The blog posts will be sent to a specific Notebook in Evernote that you can review regularly.

By listening and keeping a finger on the pulse of your industry using IFTTT, you stay ahead of the curve.

3. Organize your content

How can you remember what updates you’ve posted before or what topics you’ve written about on your blog?

Using IFTTT, you can create archives that update themselves.

Here are four ways to do that:

• Twitter to Google Drive: Use this recipe to archive tweets to a Google Spreadsheet.
• Twitter to Evernote: Use this recipe to archive tweets to Evernote.
• WordPress to Google Drive: Use this recipe to record your blog posts in a spreadsheet
• Facebook to Evernote: Use this recipe to save links you post on Facebook into an Evernote Notebook

When you create an automatic archive, you’re able to recycle content for future posts and keep track of what you’ve created so your team members can refer to it in future blog posts, social media updates, or in e-mails to readers and clients.

4. Tame information overload

Nowadays, email is our primary means of communication. That means A LOT of information we receive lands in our Inboxes.

But who has the time to actually properly save it?

After a while, this means that important pieces of information get buried under new e-mails and you have to waste time looking for it or bear the consequences of forgetting about it (hello late fees for unpaid invoices or multiple follow up emails from your accountant asking for missing receipts).

To avoid this, try using these recipes in IFTTT:

• Gmail to Evernote: If you have business expense receipts that you want to save in one place for easier organization during tax season, you can do that with a recipe that directs all e-mails from a handful of specific e-mail addresses to an Evernote Notebook.
• Gmail to Google Drive: Alternatively, you can send your receipts, orders, or invoices into a Google Spreadsheet.
• Gmail to Dropbox: And if you don’t want to spend hours trying to remember who sent you the document you are looking for and in what e-mail, consider taking advantage of the recipe that allows you to save e-mail attachments in your Dropbox.

By setting up IFTTT to work with your e-mail Inbox, you lessen the chance of letting important emails become critical as a result of forgetting about them.  Instead, you will create a system that keeps you organized and on top of your Inbox.

Disclaimer

IFTTT is a magical tool, but it has its downsides.  For example, in many cases, you can’t set up a super specific channel where, say, IFTTT will be wishing happy birthday to some of your friends, but not other, or add to a spreadsheet business-related Tweets, but not personal ones.

In those cases, you need to be prepared to set aside a bit of time to clean up the information IFTTT filters for you.

Also, if you are new to IFTTT, don’t get discouraged if a recipe doesn’t work right away or needs some tweaking.  It sometimes takes a little TLC to get some recipes to work as you wish. 🙂

Align It With Your Goals

Ultimately, how you use IFTTT largely depends on what your goals are for your business. What do you need to accomplish on a daily basis?

The opportunities for automating processes using IFTTT is wide. You can avoid the overwhelm by figuring out what systems you’d like to have automated before you go searching for recipes.

Back To You

Do you use IFTTT?   What is your favorite recipe?