How many hours do you spend online checking email, reading posts, searching for information, checking sports scores, reviewing competitors, tweeting, sharing content or setting up reminders? These activities are necessary but also very time consuming and at points, a distraction away from business. What if there was a simple tool to help you automate some of this work, have it delivered to your communication channel of choice and was at no cost to you?

Launched in 2010, “If This, Then That” is FREE service that allows users to connect 62 different channels with “recipes” to help optimize your business, your life and your content. You create triggers “if this” happens “then that” which is the action, pushes the data to your desired channel.

Sample recipes:

• Push RSS feeds to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Buffer
• Receive a text message, email or phone call when a particular hashtag is posted
• Have Facebook or Instagram images sent to Dropbox
• Receive a text message if there is a forecast for rain
• Star a Gmail and have it delivered to Evernote
• Add Foursquare check-in history to Google Calendar
• Receive a text message for new Gmail notifications
• Send email attachments to Dropbox
• Send an email to IFTTT to call your phone if it is missing
• Automatically create a Twitter list of new followers to review at a later date
• Twitter keyword search to your email
• Schedule tweets using Google calendar
• Have ESPN sports scores and breaking news delivered to your inbox

As you can see, the possibilities are almost limitless. By creating your recipes, you will save time and be a little more productive and organized. It is one of my favorite tools, simplifying content curation and automating a few of my daily projects.

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.’” – Thomas Edison

How do you use IFTTT?

Image credit: IFTTT