Most social media sites have made it easy to link your accounts. But what if you want to link more than just Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? What if you want to link your Google reader account to Twitter and use a specific hash tag? Or Instapaper to Facebook pages?
Face it, not all social media sites play well together. WordPress plays well with your primary Facebook account and Twitter, but isn’t so cooperative with Facebook Pages. And what if you don’t want to link all your accounts together? Do you really want every Tweet going out to all your social media feeds?
Some creative folks out west have created a solution just for this. The site ifttt.com is still in beta, but it is one of the most innovative services on the Internet. The service is currently free. Simply create an account and your off and running. You can create tasks that link different social media sites. They refer to the differing services has channels. Basically you ink your ifttt account to a service in the channel list. Then you create a task with a trigger.
For those of you who follow theWriteTechnology on Facebook and Twitter (@theWriteTech) you may have noticed some posts have ‘via ifttt’ associated with them. I have created tasks that automatically check for blog updates and then post to my Facebook Page for the tWT. I’ve also create tasks that link my Google Reader account to Facebook Pages and Twitter using tags. When I’m reading an article in Google Reader I think needs to be reTweeted from @theWriteTech I add the appropriate tag and the magic happens. It reTweets the article for me. I have created separate trigger tags that add different Twitter hash tags. For example, if I think an article is good for the #writetip, I have a unique trigger tag that automatically adds the #writetip hash tag to the Tweet. The same goes for publishing tips. There’s a separate trigger tag that can reTweet an article with the #pubtib hash tag.
This site saves a lot of time when it comes to sharing information with other writers. If I’m sitting in the doctor’s office reading an article or simply browsing posts over lunch, by adding a tag in Google Reader I can share the information over any social media channel I have linked to ifttt.com.
The site currently has channels for over 40 services. This includes WordPress, Gmail, Pinboard, Facebook, Google Reader, Readability, Twitter, Delicious, Evernote, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more. No longer do you have to remember to post something when you get back to your computer. Now you can do it from your smartphone or tablet with ease. This site will reduce the time you spend on social media and allow for more writing time.
Now stop thinking about your next excuse for burning through your writing time and get down to business. Close out you browser and open your word processor. You have magazine articles to sell and novels to pen.
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