If This Then That (IFTTT) is a great website to automate simple recurring processes. Through IFTTT.com you can set up triggers that cause actions to automatically happen. For example, you can automatically tweet a picture you posted on Instagram, or get an email every time a product you are looking for on Ebay is posted. With its nearly 160 integrations, I would guess that any entrepreneur could find a use for an IFTTT recipe. At SocialProvidence, we use IFTTT for Twitter marketing. Specifically, we use IFTT automations for three main purposes:
Create lists of leads:
A relatively new feature, Twitter Lists, give you one more touch point with your target audience that you can use to group people with common interests. We created an IFTT that adds people that have Tweeted about social media ROI to our "Social Media ROI Forum." So far, it has shown early signs of success: The list now has over 600 members, and this past week we have seen the highest engagement on our content ever. Our daily growth is also consistently higher than average.
This tactic is particularly useful because it brings people with common interests together in an unobtrusive way. We have actually had people thank us for adding them, and a few have signed up to subscribe to the list. At the very least these lists will help you understand what your audience is talking about and sharing on Twitter.
Collect data:
IFTT is integrated with Google Drive, which means you can populate a drive spreadsheet with Tweets that contain certain key words. We have used it to determine how people were talking about specific products and subjects. You may even choose to collect the same Tweets you are using to find people to add to lists in order to better understand your list members. This is a powerful way of fine-tuning your content strategy. You can also search for Tweets in a specific area and understand what people are saying in certain target markets.
Improve retention:
Finally, you can use the Google Drive + Twitter combo to create a list of your new followers. Twitter terms and conditions don't allow IFTT to automate follow back, thank you Tweets or DMs, so engaging with new followers must be done manually or through some other script. There are tools that send DM's for you, such as Justunfollow, but they also include a "via @justunfollow" language that seems too impersonal to us and may defeat the purpose.
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