Web Automation Tools: How to Save Loads of Time
Having a blog or an online business and promoting it can be time consuming. Then there are product orders or management of services, keeping in touch with customers and colleagues and a whole list of other jobs to be done.
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This is where web automation tools can come in and save loads of time. But what are they and how do they work?
Famous web automation tools
There are probably a few of these web automation tools out there but I’m mainly going to talk about a few main ones I’ve encountered starting with IFTTT and Zapier.
Both do tasks automatically, one is free and one is free up to a certain number of Zaps (obviously Zapier in this case) and both can save you a lot of time as well as perform some rather nifty tricks.
IFTTT
Let’s start with IFTTT – which stands for If This Then That. The idea is that you connect two services so that a certain action triggers another action to automatically take place.
The service offers a wide range of recipes, pre-designed actions that follow a set formula. You can also make your own recipes where you choose a trigger channel then an action channel and set up what should happen between the two.
An example may be to automatically backup any photos you post on Instagram to Dropbox in case something was to happen with your mobile phone. Or you might set up to receive a daily weather forecast by text message or even a wakeup call if you tend to forget to set your alarm.
IFTTT is free to use for 3 applets and their pro plan is $3.99 a month.
Zapier
Zapier is the other big name in web automation tools and works in a similar way. Rather than recipes, there are Zaps and you can use two channels or even multiple channels. As well as the Zaps that are set up, you can also create your own using triggers and actions or even searches.
Zapier’s home screen features a whole range of apps for you to choose and then it provides suggested recipes. These range from social media sites to work related and organisation tools such as Trello and Asana as well as email services such as Mail Chimp. Some are premium but most are available to anyone.
Zapier is free for up to 5 Zaps and up to 100 tasks per month. There are various plans to allow more Zaps and actions and to include premium apps, right up to $250 a month for the serious users.
Integrately
Integrately is a newcomer on the web automation tools block and was recommended to me as an alternative while I was setting up FG Funnels. It works in much the same way as Zapier where you can pair two apps and have a specific action take place.
At the time of writing (January 2021) there’s a lot of big name apps on here and more being added all the time. They have very cost effective plans with the free plan giving 5 automations and 200 tasks. Their basic paid plan is $15 a month for 20 automations and 3,500 tasks.
Plus they have special deals where you can earn extra automations by referring people to them! If you want to check it out and get us both extra automations (even on the free plan) you can just click here.
Ideas to use the tools
So, as a blogger or a small business owner, how can you make use of these tools to save loads of time? There are hundreds of articles out there giving examples and here are a few of my favourites.
IFTTT – Pocket to Trello
I use this recipe with two of my favourite tools. When I spot an article that I find as inspiration for a blog post, I can save it to Pocket. When I tag it with a certain tag, for this blog it would be sendtotrellobb, IFTTT will send this article to a list within my Trello board for the blog. I can then add a label, add it to another card for a blog post and add other notes plus a due date.
Zapier – WordPress content to Buffer
This one comes from Melissa J Clark’s post looking to automate a WordPress website with Zapier. She sets up new content to go from WordPress to Buffer via Zapier where she can then add to the queue. There are full instructions on her post including how to set up the system to include default images and where to share it.
Zapier – Pinterest to Trello
This one is similar to the one I use for Pocket to Trello and comes from Zapier’s own blog. Here a blogger named Vicky Cassidy talks about how she runs her blog. She used Zapier to send Pins that she pinned to a certain board on Pinterest to her Trello board for the blog.
IFTTT – Build a Twitter list from a hashtag
Finding people to follow, content to share and other tricks on Twitter all revolve around those hashtags. This IFTTT recipe lets you pick a hashtag then compiles a list from it – so you could see what hashtags bloggers, food bloggers, fashion bloggers or social media experts use and compile a list using it to get more ideas. You can then see these lists on Twitter as well as on sharing software such as Hootsuite to pick content to share and build up your social media presence.
How Can You Automate Social Media and Not Break Rules?
We all love social media and it is a big part of marketing our businesses but sometimes it seems to be very hands-on and time consuming. Or in the other extreme, you automate it in ways that appear spammy and get you banned.
The key is understanding how to automate social media in a good way that doesn’t break the rules and still engages your audience. Here are some of the best tips for the top platforms.
Automating on Twitter
Twitter has had a big problem with false accounts, fake news and spam, so they introduced new rules with the aim of handling these problems. There are three main areas that affect marketers with limitations or restrictions on:
- Duplicate content
- Recycling your tweets
- Bulk actions like retweeting or following
So how do you still automate?
First don’t use tools that bulk retweet, like or follow people – keep this as a manual job and give yourself a little time each day for this.
Second, you can still use tools to schedule tweets, but you can’t repeat the same tweet – you can tweak the tweet, so it is a little different and use it that way. Some tools such as SmarterQueue also have clever solutions to the problem that they do automatically.
Automating on Instagram
Instagram are opening up to the idea of letting user automate social media with the auto-posting feature that selected tools have been granted. On the turn side, they have had a big crackdown on auto-following, commenting and liking tools which makes sense because these benefit no-one.
The main thing to automate on Instagram are your posts. You can batch them and schedule them in an approved third party tool – examples include Later, Planoly, Buffer, Tailwind and SmarterQueue. Otherwise, get in there each day and build those genuine interactions.
Automating on Facebook
Facebook has had some well-publicised problems with misinformation and recently removed some 1.5 billion fake accounts. It has stopped third party tools publishing to profile pages, and you may have to authorise your tool to post to a group.
If you have a large personal page, you will need to publish manually to it for now. Business Pages and groups can still be scheduled through approved tools and you can now also join a group as your page.
Automating on LinkedIn
LinkedIn lets you schedule posts from third party tools but there are no crawlers, bots, browser plugins or other extensions that have led to false engagement as with other platforms. And that means things are pretty simple over there.
You can find ways around this, but it isn’t worth it. Schedule your content as you would other platforms then if it is a major platform to concentrate on, be there in person a little while each day.
Taking automation even further
I also found another level of web automation tools that help with managing my Facebook group. Now this is a paid process so if you have a small group or only a few people requiring entry each day, you probably won’t need it.
The system uses something called Group Convert. This is a system that costs $10 a month (and there are higher plans with more features) to automatically record the information people put in your Facebook group questions.
So what, you might ask?
Well one of my questions offers them one of my Pinterest freebies on using keywords. They leave their email address and I add them to my list and send them the freebie.
At one point, I had to copy and paste the email address and name into a spreadsheet. Then download this as a CSV. And add it to ConvertKit manually.
With the combination of GroupConvert and Zapier, the process is:
- Approve a member
- They are added to the Group Convert sheet automatically
- A Zap picks up if there is an answer in the email field
- It then grabs the relevant information and adds them to ConvertKit to a particular form that triggers the freebie to be sent
Now once a week, I download the data as a CSV to keep for my records in case anyone ever wonders how they ended up on my list.
If you have a small group or a small number of people requesting to join, you probably won’t need this. But as it grows and you are getting 10+ people a day AND collecting email addresses, this is a huge time saver!
Conclusion
I’m a big fan of anything clever like these tools and I’m super forgetful so anything that helps with this is magic. Plus, I love the automation idea, those little bots working away on my behalf while I do other things. There are also lots of recipes for home tasks such as setting up smart heating meters or reminding yourself about birthdays so it isn’t all about business either.
What’s your favourite Zapier or IFTTT recipe? Have you made your own or used pre-made ones? Any clever tips to share?
