The smallest jobs are often the ones that take the most time. When trying to maintain your social media presence for your business, time is a valuable asset!
Picture this: you’ve got some new awesome headshots made up for your social media. Imagine being able to change your profile pictures IN ONE GO.
With apps like IFFTTT and websites like Trello, you can set up your Twitter profile picture to change automatically when you change your Facebook, Instagram or Google + Profile picture. Neat!
It may seem silly, or like it’s not going to save you time. Maybe you’ve saved five minutes? Think of 5 more ways that you could use an IFTTT recipe and you’ve already saved 25 minutes of precious time that could be spent growing your business.
IFTTT stands for If This Then That, and it basically allows different social media apps and platforms to speak to each other. If you take a picture on your iPhone and you have dropbox, you can set up what’s called a “recipe” which connects the processes and saves each new iOS photo to your dropbox account. The possibilities are truly endless!
TRELLO is another gem when it comes to organising your business. If you work with multiple people or on different projects this could be the platform for you. Set up “Boards” to correspond with team members, tag each other in comments for immediate responses, and create checklists and ideas cards. Also, IFTTT can connect with Trello, meaning that organising your automations become even easier.
Whether or not IFTTT or any sort of automation system will work for you depends on how much you’re willing to analyse your current performance. This is often really tricky, especially if you’re working from home!
I’d suggest spend a day making a note of all the niggly jobs that mean you are having to switch back and forth between apps or platforms. At the end of the day, see how much time you’ve spent. This might be incentive enough to bring automation into your life in a small way.
It seems complicated, but the great thing is that once you get started, these platforms are easy to use. IFTTT in particular offers a range of ready- made recipes so you can get started right away. Without you having to lift a finger (well, maybe once or twice to click on the recipe and make sure you’re accounts are synced, but after this, it’s a leave it and forget sort of situation).
So what are you waiting for? Time is money; companies like IFTTT know this and want to save you money by saving you time.
What do you think? Would automating your daily routine help you save time? Or is this one step too far into the digital realm? Let me know what you think!
