If This, Then That (IFTTT) is a free-to-access network that puts the internet to work for you, creating simple connections between the products you use every day.

For public relations practitioners the power of IFTTT is in automatically automating web-application tasks, easily transposing data and insight, cutting out many arduous manual tasks. A selection of some of the most productive IFTTT recipes for public relations are shared below - but the best way to discover is to bake your own.

Getting started with IFTTT

Follow the simple one-step process to sign up for an account on the IFTTT website. From here, IFTTT should show your dashboard. On the dashboard, there is a brief explanation of how IFTTT and recipes work.

‘This’ stands for a trigger, while ‘That’ stands for an action. These two linked events create an IFTTT recipe.

Click recipes and you will see links to create custom recipes, browse and use recipes already created by other IFTTT users. If you've added a recipe to your dashboard, you will have options to turn off, delete, and edit that recipe.

#1: Twitter monitoring

The simple ‘Save All #Tweets with Any #Hashtag to #Google Docs #Spreadsheet’ recipe combines RSS and Google Docs, and once set up, automatically compiles all your hashtag mentions in a single spreadsheet document, working round the clock to make sure you never miss a tweet.

What’s more, creating your Google Sheet as a shareable file will also allow your team 24/7 access to this updated list of tweets on any device, at any location, with a web connection.

This is a fantastic solution to save time in compiling top tweets and understand more about the key influencers driving not just your twitter interactions, but also those of your competitors.

Tip

For IFTTT, RSS (or really simple syndication) is like flour is to baking, an essential ingredient that sits at the core of many staple recipes.

You can automate notifications from RSS to almost any device, easing the burden of sharing information across your organisation – be that through monitoring the activity of competitor newsrooms, tracking key stakeholder announcements, or simply keeping tabs on the latest news in your sector.

A great tool for creating custom RSS feeds is Page2RSS - a service that helps you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds, checking any web page for updates and delivering them to your RSS reader.

#2: Integrated communication management

Buffer is a fantastic low cost solution to drive traffic, increase fan engagement and save time on social media, allowing you to take your content planning and social sharing to the next level.

Mixed together with Google’s Calendar functionality (which can be embedded in Outlook and many other services/devices too) this IFTTT recipe allows you to have clear oversight of an integrated editorial calendar of both offline and online activities, meaning that you’re always on top of timings for key strategic announcements.

#3: Twitter alerting

You’ve got wind of a big policy announcement coming from Westminster, and it’s vital that you get on the front foot as early as possible, publishing your response immediately following the aftermath.

Using IFTTT to integrate Twitter with your smartphone’s own native notification functionality is a quick and easy time-saving solution to your problem.

By cooking up a recipe which immediately messages you a notification every time a username you pick tweets, you can get on the front foot immediately - whilst also making sure you’re not pre-occupied with constantly refreshing your Twitter feed.

#4: Posting native images to Twitter from other platforms

Launching a new social platform can be a burden - but having convinced yourself of the benefits of the impact and influence of setting up an Instagram account, you’re stuck by the fact that all of those fantastic photos you’ve lined up to post look clunky when you share the images across your primary network, Twitter.

You also know that tweets with timeline images increase engagement by more than half, yet you don’t have the time, resource or the capacity to duplicate your work.

This solution is simple, but an absolute time saver for one-man-bands or small teams. Setting up this IFTTT recipe means that when you post on Instagram, the photos will show up in your Twitter feed as full images rather than just links. Simple.

#5: Automatically backup content

User-generated activity is also a great content creation resource for your team - perfect for sharing across other channels, both externally and internally.

But you don’t have the time or the energy to commit to the manual laborious process of flicking through every photo posted in a Facebook group and saving to a hard drive or shared area.

Cloud services will let you take a deep breath and relax. By connecting Facebook with a cloud-based storage system such as Dropbox through IFTTT you will now have immediate access to Facebook photos you have been tagged in – accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

Tip

IFTTT is a great way of backing up any incoming or outgoing social content, whether that be text based to Google Docs or image based to Dropbox, Flickr or Google Drive.