I love productivity tools and finding ways to accomplish more with less time. A tool I recently started using is IFTTT which stands for If This Then That.
I have to admit when I first found out about IFTTT, I was confused. It didn’t make sense to me how it would be useful to me. Now, I know there are many ways authors can use this tool to be more productive and I am excited to share them with you.
Check out my video tutorial on how to use IFTTT and recipes below:
Here are links to 9 of my favorite IFTTT recipes to help authors be more productive:
Social Media
1) Send all your tweets to a Google drive document.
I LOVE this automation! This will automatically save all my tweets in a spreadsheet for me. This way I can easily see what tweets I have shared and be able to reuse tweets that are evergreen later.
Caution:Social media is meant to be social. So I would not recommend repeating the same tweets very often.
However, sometimes you may share tips, quotes, etc. that would be beneficial to share on a yearly basis. This is an easy way to gather all your tweets and start a file of tweets you can reuse.
2) When you change your profile picture on Facebook, have it automatically update your profile picture on Twitter.
This is great for branding purposes. I usually recommend having the same picture on all your social media platforms. However, if you change your personal profile image often on Facebook, you may not want to activate this recipe.
3) Share your Facebook page’s posts on LinkedIn.
This is a great way to share the same information on LinkedIn as you do on Facebook. However, keep this in mind as you are posting to Facebook so you keep your posts applicable to both platforms.
4) Welcome a new member to your Facebook group.
If you have a Facebook group related to your book or product, this is a great way to automate welcoming new members. However, if you get TONS of members in one day, realize that your group will then be clogged with a bunch of welcome messages at once.
For one of my groups, I use this text:
Hi, {{MemberName}}! Welcome to the {{Group}}. Feel free to introduce yourself. We are glad to have you here.
5) Download pictures you are tagged in on Facebook to Dropbox.
This can be helpful if you are tagged often in marketing images that you want to keep for later or publish on other social media platforms as well.
Writing and Reading
6) Record an audio message and have it automatically transcribed and e-mailed to you.
Here’s another option if you prefer to use Evernote.
This is one of my favorite IFTTT recipes and there are so many uses for it for authors. For example, you could record a new book idea you have with chapter ideas or character ideas. You could record a blog post and then edit the transcription to publish later.
Another way to use this feature is to record an MP3 and use the edited transcription for a product you can use as a bonus to your book. The options are really limitless.
I haven’t used this function extensively yet, but I did do a test and the transcription was fairly accurate.
7) Convert and send documents from Dropbox to Kindle.
Do you prefer to read on your Kindle instead of your computer? If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time on your computer between writing and book marketing.
It’s nice to take a break when reading other documents. This is a handy way to have PDF’s and other documents converted to a Kindle format and send it to your device.
Other
8) Add incoming e-mails with the word “Receipt” to a spreadsheet on Google drive.
This is especially helpful if you need to keep a record of your business expenses for taxes.
9) Finally, I decided to go ahead and save my recipes on Google Drive as a backup.
Browse IFTTT for more recipes here. (Or click the image below to go straight to the IFTTT site.)
Do you use IFTTT recipes for your digital publishing efforts?
If so, what recipes have you found to be most helpful? Please share in the comments below.
Hi,
Nice tips you have here. I knew IFTTT but not using it much yet.
Thanks for sharing.