Getting Your Tools To Talk To Each Other

Connection tools like IFTTT and Zapier are some of my favorite tools in online marketing these days. Not only are they easy to use, but they are really cool too! In order for these tools to be effective for you, you first need to have good content to fill them up with stuff to do.

A lot of people get overwhelmed by this process, but it’s actually entirely straightforward. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@andymac71 via @EHQcom”]What used to take a long time with lots of small moving pieces can now be accomplished in a more streamlined way. Now you can connect your social to your blog and your blog with your CRM and all the way through your funnel. [/inlinetweet] [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@andymac71 via @EHQcom”]In fact on the two platforms I’ve mentioned Zapier and IFTTT other users have already created a library of pre-made “recipes” of platform connects that can get you started or give you some novel ideas. When your tools start talking to each other, a world of possibilities opens up![/inlinetweet]

It’s simple enough to do something like say connect two social platforms so that it crossposts all your Facebook posts onto your Twitter account, but what’s truly unique is that you can also use these tools to filter 3rd party content as well.

Let’s face it, you don’t want your social channels to be all self-promotion all the time? No way! You want to give your audience as much value as you possibly can.

[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@andymac71 via @EHQcom”]Using Zapier or IFTTT you can automate your social feeds to find content that’s relevant to your audience and get it to post automatically. This is great especially when we hardly have time to actively manage social these days.[/inlinetweet] You can actually set it up to share content from your favorite outlets as soon as they post it by connecting their RSS feeds to your channel.

These tools are only growing more powerful as more platforms accept their integrations. Last I checked Zapier already has over 600 different options. Here’s an example of just one way you can use Zapier to automate growing your social channels.

Zapier For Social Media Influence

Everytime I get a new Twitter follower I have a Zapier “Zap” set up to move their account info onto a spreadsheet in Google docs. This gives me their name, location, and follower counts.

This happens automatically, there is nothing I need to do to “check” on the process. Then once a week I review the list and look over my new followers. I do a quick sort based on their own Twitter followings.

If an account has a large following or is in a location I’m interested in they’re more likely to be someone I want to reach out to. Unfortunately in the online world, size does matter and not all accounts are created equal. Usually I’ll then go and message these accounts and start a conversation.

There are so many opportunities to use these tools, whenever you see yourself copying and pasting data from one platform to another that just might be where you need to create your next automation.

 

Action Steps

  1. Connect your Twitter account to your Google sheet with Zapier or IFTTT.
  2. Once a week review your new Twitter followers and sort them by following size.
  3. Reach out to the most influential followers and start conversations.

 

BONUS

Set up a connection to automate content on your social channel from your favorite outlets.

Result You Will Achieve

An automated social media monitoring plan that uses connection tools to get your platforms talking to each other and sharing data.

Mentor: Andrew McCauley

Co Founder at AutoPilot Your Business, customized automated strategies have continually seen 300-500% growth in traffic to business websites, and reducing many hours per week for his clients.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.