7 creative ifttt hacks that help automate your digital life

Conditional logic and duct taping social networks together

Using the “if this, then that” conditional logic we all learned in middle school, ifttt.com refers to itself as the “duct tape” that holds together social networks in a completely custom way. AGBeat introduced you to ifttt last fall, offering insight as to how the simple tool works and how genius it is in connecting all of the separate social networks together automatically. Then, in November, ifttt partnered with Buffer, allowing for updates and tasks to be scheduled into the future, solving yet another problem in the digital marketplace.

Our favorite analogy of how the site works is on the ifttt blog – duct tape and lightsabers… “ifttt isn’t a programming language or app building tool, but rather a much simpler solution. Digital duct tape if you will, allowing you to connect any two services together. You can leave the hard work of creating the individual tools to the engineers and designers. Much like in the physical world when a 12 year old wants a lightsaber, cuts the handle off an old broom and shoves a bike grip on the other end, you can take two things in the digital world and combine them in ways the original creators never imagined.”

7 creative hacks to automate your digital life

It can be truly overwhelming how many millions of options there are as you combine different recipes with each “ingredient” as a digital network or tool. Imagine getting a text every time an important client emails you, rather than getting email alerts for all 8 trillion emails you get every day, or when you’re in a meeting you want to escape from, getting a pre-scheduled text to yourself that looks urgent.

Conditional logic allows for infinite (well, almost) possibilities, and below are seven extremely useful recipes, click the recipe image to get set up.

IF I star a Gmail message, THEN send it to Evernote:

IF I take an Instagram photo, THEN publish it automatically on Tumblr:

IF I text ifttt a text tagged “mileage,” THEN publish it to my Google Calendar to track my mileage:

IF I post a Google+ update, THEN publish it on my Facebook wall automatically:

IF I am tagged in a photo on Facebook, THEN add that file to my Dropbox:

IF I check in on Foursquare, THEN add it to my Google Calendar:

IF I upload a photo to Facebook, THEN send it to Picasa:

Earlier this year, we highlighted 20 other recipes that are very useful for professionals in duct taping together digital networks, click the image below to access the list: