Category Archives: LinkedIn

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Technology and App Review: IFTTT

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Do you remember when you were a kid?  That feeling you got when you walked into the candy store?  Or the toy store?

I remember when I enlisted in the Marine Corps.  I owned a 1994 Honda Accord.  It was a great car.  I knew it would be a couple of years before I would see it again so I sold it.  I also sold my Takamine (it’s an acoustic guitar).  It was beautiful.  When I arrived at the language school in Monterey, CA, I had no car and no guitar.  I did have a wad of cash, though.

My entire life I’d wanted a Taylor guitar (I have a 1959 Gibson J45 with a J200 neck now – awesome!).  Like it was yesterday, I remember what it felt like to walk in that music store on Alvarado St. knowing that I was leaving with a Taylor.

I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but I am just about that excited with my new discovery.  Let me introduce you to IFTTT!

IFTTT:  If This Then That

The idea of this website is to allow users to create if-then automated tasks between multiple social media platforms.  If This happens Then That happens.  Got it?  Let me give you a popular example:

  • If Facebook profile picture changes, then update Twitter profile picture.
  • If you are tagged in a photo on Facebook, then it will be sent to Dropbox

Can you see the possibilities?  The Grovo Blog calls it “programming for dummies.”

Vocabulary

  • Channels – channels are the building blocks of IFTTT and are the social media platforms themselves – like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Evernote, Dropbox, etc.  They currently support 53 “channels.”
  • Triggers – triggers are the ‘This’ in the ‘If This Then That’ formula.  It is what must happen first.
  • Action – action is the ‘That’ in the ‘If This Then That’ formula.  It is the effect in the cause and effect relationship.
  • Recipe – the recipe is the connection that is made when you put the above together.  Here is a screenshot from the IFTTT website.

How to Get Started

The user experience of IFTTT can’t be much better.  It is clean and simple – super easy.  Follow the steps below to get started.  Then get to simplifying your lives!

  1. Create an account – Create a username, enter your email, then your password twice.  About as easy as it gets.
  2. Link Your Channels – Frankly, I was really surprised at how easy this was.  I use 22 of the 53 channels, and I had them all linked in under 5 minutes.  The only one I had problems with was WordPress.  You must enter your URL without “http://” or “www.”  So for me, it was just “bobarron.com.”
  3. Create Recipes Use Other People’s Recipes – OK – you can create your own, but why bother?  According to IFTTT’s blog, over 1,000,000 recipes have been created as of April 30, 2012.  There’s no telling how many there are now.
  4. Search for Your Favorite ‘Channels’ – Since IFTTT is a social site, you can see other people’s recipes.  That is great, but with over a million, a search function is crucial.  The search auto-populates and is super fast – like a Google search.  As I love Evernote, I did a quick search to find that there are 3,999 recipes.  Kid in a candy store!

A Few Notes

I want to highlight a couple other points.  At the end of Sept ’12, Twitter shut down IFTTT’s ability to use Twitter as a trigger. Again, a trigger is the ‘if then’ part of the formula.  Twitter can still be the ‘then that’ part.  Essentially, you can not use IFTTT to auto-respond for you every time someone follows you or retweets you.  As I don’t particularly like the canned thank you ‘DM’ (direct message), not a biggie for me.

Google+ is not a channel.  I’m not sure why that is, but there are workarounds using other channels like Hootsuite.

Verdict

I’m excited.  I think there are some great efficiencies to be had here – especially with Evernote and Dropbox.  I plan on exploring more of this in the coming weeks.  I also think that as IFTTT gains a broader base of users, the recipes will expand as well.  I easily see many posts in the future along the lines of “Best 10 IFTTT recipes for Evernote.”

I’d like to hear from you!  Had you heard of IFTTT before?  If so, what are some of your favorite recipes?
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The Day I Followed and Disagreed with Brian Tracy

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About a year ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the national Sperry Van Ness convention in San Diego.  I’d never been to San Diego – that town rocks!  I was to speak on how to use LinkedIn to connect with prospects and aid in prospecting.  I have spoken at the Sperry Van Ness convention a couple of times before – always on some aspect of Social Media.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I was to speak after lunch.  Right before lunch, the best-selling author and prolific speaker Brian Tracy spoke.  He gave a fantastic keynote on goals.  It was the best I’d ever heard on that subject.  However, at some point in his speech, he basically said that social media had no place in sales.  You might get known, but you’d be known and broke.  I felt 200 pairs of eyes turn and look at me – at least it felt that way.

I disagree with Brian Tracy, but he is also exactly right.  I’ve never made a sale directly from a tweet.  That may never happen.  You make a mistake when you make the means the end.  Social Media is a means to connect, build relationships, and add value.  Social Media is about connecting as humans – having an impact on someone.  Chris Brogan has a new book coming out called The Impact Equation that makes this point.

Over the past month, I’ve connected with @theBrokerList.  TheBrokerList.com is the idea of Linda Day Harrison, and is the first online CRE broker directory – very cool.  (Go ahead and stop reading this post and check it out.)  We actually spoke on the phone yesterday.  It turns out that she married into a family that is from where I went to college.  My mom is from her hometown, and I have a brother living there now.

I now like Linda on a personal level.  See how that works?  On a professional level, I am going to do some guest blogging on www.theBrokerList.com.  This helps her by bringing attention and fresh content to her site.  It helps me by giving me exposure to her viewers.  Now that I know her a bit and like her, I want to help her.

This is the power of connecting with a person versus generating retweets.  I tell stories in my blog posts because I want readers to connect with me on a personal level.  All of life is about relationships – relationships with your spouse, your family, your boss, your employees.  Business is about building relationships with prospects, earning the right to call them clients, serving them until you become a trusted advisor, and on….

Social Media is simply a new and trendy vehicle to accomplish the same end:  connecting with people.  I now find it ironic that I follow Brian Tracy (@briantracy) on Twitter.  He sells too much there – hehe.

How do you use Social Media to connect with people?  To build relationships?  To add value to people’s lives?  When do you make the means the end?  When was the last time you checked your Klout score?
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