Save Time on News and Social – 5 Reasons to Automate with IFTTT

Most of us wake up each morning and check our personal email, work email, social media accounts and several news sites. If we’re lucky, we find a minute to check the weather before leaving the house without an umbrella. Also, don’t forget to favorite those tech article tweets to read later (and actually come back to them). I find it time-consuming and went searching for a tool to automate some of those daily chores.

Enter: IFTTT (if this then that)

It’s a service that allows you to automate common tasks on the web by creating Recipes, which connect Channels (Twitter, Dropbox, Google Reader, Evernote, etc.) to Triggers and Actions. For example, you can set up a Recipe that autosaves all photos from your Instagram account to your Dropbox account. No more searching your phone for that amazing photo of your classy cocktail. Here are some reasons why I’m finding IFTTT (pronounced like “Lift” without the “L”) really useful:

1. Sharing Articles on Twitter, Made Easy

I was never a big fan of Google Reader until I figured out that it could make sharing to Twitter as simple as one click. I created this Recipe:

Starred Item in Google Reader Creates Twitter Post with Title and URL

So, when I star any news item in Google Reader, it is tweeted from my Twitter account in a {{ItemTitle}} – {{ItemUrl}} format.

2. Save Your Twitter Links to Evernote

I always wanted a better way to look back into an searchable archive of links I’ve shared. I’m a big fan of Evernote, so I set up this Recipe to automate the process:

Send Twitter Links to Evernote

If my tweet contains a URL, it creates a new Evernote note in my “Twitter Links” notebook and captures the link URL, tweet text and when it was published.

3. Customize Your News Via Email

Connect your news reader of choice (I use Twitter and Google Reader) and create a Recipe that allows you to star/favorite tweets or articles and automatically have the link emailed to you. Browse a few minutes in the morning, favorite articles that are interesting, then read the rest at work. Take it a step further and customize the email subject line, then set up a filter that sends the email to a specific folder. No more clogging your inbox. Here’s a Recipe for that.

4. Community of IFTTT Users

There’s an amazing community of IFTTT users sharing new Recipes all the time. You can browse a bunch and even filter by “What’s Hot” or by specific Channels.

5. IFTTT Can Text You the Weather

Here’s a Let me know if it’s going to rain Recipe. I mean, come on. Super useful and pretty genius.

Getting Started

If you’re already a fan of IFTTT, you can easily invite a friend via email. Let me know your favorite recipes in the comments below. If you haven’t yet signed up, it only takes a few minutes to create an account and connect your Channels. Also, check out the IFTTT blog for news and updates.

Bonus – Even More Automation

I haven’t personally tried out Zapier, but it looks to be another automation tool to try. It looks like it integrates some customer support and project management apps like Campaign Monitor, Basecamp, Asana, Assistly and others. More info on Zapier from TechCrunch.

Photo credit: avrene