9 clever ways to automate your small business with IFTTT

IFTTT (If This, Then That) is a free online tool that automates actions between websites, apps, smartphones, gadgets and more.

Want your tagged Facebook photos backed up on Google Drive? IFTTT can do that. Wish your smartphone could turn off WiFi when its battery gets too low? IFTTT can do that, too.

IFTTT has a lot of novel uses for the average user, but it can be a major marketing ally for small business owners. With the help of clever “recipes” (how IFTTT refers to each automation), you can spy on competitors, streamline your social media, and delight your followers – all without lifting a finger.

Here’s our list of 9 clever and creative ways to use IFTTT to automate tasks for your small business.

Competitive analysis

Gathering competitive intelligence is an often overlooked strategy for new ecommerce merchants. Here’s how you can use IFTTT to build custom alerts and keep a watchful eye on your competition.

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1. Monitor your competitors’ websites

VisualPing.io can send you email updates when competitors make changes to their website, but if you’re watching more than one competitor, you’ll want to take a smarter approach. To keep an eye on your multiple pages without maxing out your inbox, use the following recipe:

Step 1. Visit VisualPing.io and enter one of your competitors websites. Set the check interval to however often you want to scan their page for changes, and set a tiny trigger to catch content changes and A/B tests.

Step 2. When you receive your confirmation from VisualPing, create a rule that auto-archives their email and marks them as read (Here’s how to do it in Gmail).

Step 3. Create an IFTTT recipe and select Gmail or Email as your trigger channel.

Step 4. Set VisualPing’s email address as the sender.

Step 5. Select Evernote (a great, free way to store notes, lists and research) as your action channel and choose a notebook in which to save VisualPing’s emails. Make sure to create a new notebook for every site you want to monitor.

Done! Now you’ll have a self-updating Evernote notebook filled with screenshots of your competitors website tweaks and redesigns.

2. Archive and organize emails from your competition

According to a Gigaom research study, US digital marketers deem email the most effective for awareness, acquisition, conversion and customer retention. Ensuring your emails convert can play a big role in the success of your business.

A good way to stay on top of email marketing trends in your industry is to study and dissect those sent by your competitors. Thankfully, IFTTT lets you do so without clogging up your inbox.

Step 1. Subscribe to your competitors email newsletters.

Step 2. Create a rule in your email provider to auto-archive and mark those emails as read.

Step 3. Create an IFTTT recipe and select Gmail or Email as your trigger channel.

Step 4. Enter the email address from which your competitor sends their newsletters.

Step 5. Select Evernote as your action channel and create a notebook in which to save your emails.

Your competitor emails will now archive in Evernote, allowing you compare and examine them whenever you’re ready.

3. Monitor your competitor’s blog

Every ecommerce business needs a blog; they’re a great way to drive traffic, tell your story, and build an audience. If you want to stay current on what your competitors are writing about, but don’t have the time to make daily visits to their blog, this recipe can help:

Step 1. Easily create an RSS feed for any blog using Page2RSS. Once you’ve entered the URL of the blog you want to monitor, right click the link pictured below and copy its URL:

Step 2. Create an IFTTT recipe and select Feed as your trigger channel.

Step 3. Enter the RSS feed URL you copied in step 1 in Feed.

Step 4. Depending on how often you’d like to review this data, select Email or Evernote as your action channel.

Using this method, you can either receive email notifications whenever your competitor makes a blog post, or compile a list in Evernote to review when you’re ready.

Simplify social media

Social media is an essential tool for any small business, but managing multiple accounts can eat up a lot of your time. Here are a few recipes to help streamline and automate your workload.

4. Sync your Twitter photo to your Facebook photo

Simple but useful, this recipe will automatically update your Twitter avatar whenever you update your Facebook profile photo.

5. Post your Instagram photos as Twitter photos

Yes, you can already (sort of) do this by linking your Twitter account to your Instagram app, but thoseTweets only show up as links, not full images. To make your Instagram photos truly stand out in your followers’ Twitter timelines, use the recipe below.

6. Build an effortless Tumblr page with Instagram

Marketing with Tumblr is a lot like marketing with Instagram; you should wow people with your images and attract a loyal following who’ll not only purchase your products, but become evangelists for your brand.

These two recipes will help cross-post your Instagram posts, plus any Instagram photos you’ve liked, to your Tumblr account. It’s a dead-simple way to build a Tumblr page and keep it constantly updated.

Listen in on your followers

Automation doesn’t always have to happen behind the scenes. These recipes are a great way to build a friendly, attentive presence on Twitter.

7. Auto-generate Follow Friday Tweets for those you’ve favorited in a week

Spread some goodwill by encouraging your followers to follow those whose Tweets you’ve found helpful, entertaining or thought-provoking throughout the week. This recipe requires a free Buffer account, but you should really have one anyway.

8. Thank your new Twitter followers

A quick greeting or “thanks for following” can go a long way in fostering engagement with your followers. Just don’t try to sell them on your products or push them to other social accounts this early.

9. Collect Tweets that praise your business

Social proof is a powerful persuasion tool used to influence potential customers who are trying to make a buying decision. One of the many forms it comes in is user testimonials, which you can often find on Twitter.

This recipe will constantly search Twitter and add any positive Tweets about your business to a Google Drive spreadsheet.

Step 1. Visit Twitter’s Advanced Search page and type in your business name, products, and as many positive words as possible.

Step 2. Copy the URL of that search query’s result page and plug it into Page2RSS. Retrieve the RSS feed URL from the link highlighted below.

Step 3. Create a custom IFTTT recipe with Feed as your trigger channel using the RSS link copied in step 2.

Step 4. Select Evernote as your action channel and create a custom notebook to store your Tweets.

Now you’ll have an automatically updated list of positive Tweets about your business to use on your homepage, product pages, and anywhere else you can leverage testimonials.

Bonus: For more ways to automate your ecommerce business, Shopify merchants should also make sure to check out the Zapier app in the Shopify App Store.

This post originally appeared on the Shopify blog.

Image credit: Yeamake / Shutterstock.com