Social media is time consuming! And that’s an understatement. When you’re working to promote a brand it can be very difficult trying to maintain some sort of presence across all the major social media sites. While this is not a full guide to all automation in social media, I wanted to at least cover a few major automation opportunities that can help you save some serious time and keep your presence strong in social media at the same time. All the automation tricks mentioned here leverage the free tool IFTT.com (which stands for If This Then That) which is a tool anybody can sign up for and use for free.

1. Twitter to Linkedin

This automation is setup for anytime you post a new tweet, that same content is posted inside LinkedIn. These two social media sites are similar in nature in terms of how you update your profile which makes them perfect for syncing together. To do this right though you want to make sure to maximise your tweets and only post stuff that you think will be interesting to both your Twitter and your Linkedin audience. No spamming!

2. Twitter to Delicious

This automation is setup for anytime you post a new tweet, the link from inside that tweet is bookmarked in your Delicious account. Delicious is still far and away the biggest and most used social bookmarking site on the web. That’s why having a strong presence on there is so important. So again if you are tweeting only good stuff… your Delicious account can benefit from the links you are tweeting.

3. YouTube to Tumblr

This automation is setup for anytime you “like” a new video on YouTube that video is then posted on your Tumblr blog. Why these two together? Photos and Videos are very common post types in the Tumblr community. Big long blog posts with thousands of words does not seem to really appeal to the Tumblr audience. Since you most likely use YouTube daily anyways (who doesn’t) you might as well maximise your efforts. Of course, make sure you like suitable content…

4. Google Reader to Facebook Page

This automation is setup for anytime you “star” a blog post in your Google Reader account that blog post is posted to your Facebook page. If you’re a social media superstar you’re probably already reading through dozens of RSS feeds from other blogs across the various interests you have on the web. Well here’s a great tip for keeping your Facebook Page audience engaged. Every time you come across a very interesting article in your Google Reader account star it… and using IFTT you can have that blog article automatically posted to your Facebook page. Pretty cool huh?

5. RSS Feed to Facebook Page

This automation is setup for anytime you post a new blog post in your WordPress blog, that post is posted into your Facebook page. Another way to keep your Facebook audience engaged. This time with the blog that you are probably already maintaining. Leverage your RSS feed to have content automatically pulled from your blog to your Facebook page. At least the title, description and a link to the full article.

And it doesn’t stop here. There are dozens of more automation workflows you can setup using IFTT with your various social media profiles. Keep this one tip in mind however, make sure you are keeping yourself as human as possible. What I mean by this is that sometimes automation can get too far in social media. You risk looking like a robot rather than an actual human. And nothing, I mean nothing turns off other social media users more than a robot!

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