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Monday, February 22, 2016


So, last time we talked about the IFTTT platform and I gave you a brief description of how it works. To give a brief overview, here’s what it does. 


  1.     You choose channels to share your content into and set them up 
  2.      You choose a trigger (your blog or Facebook page for example)
  3.      You connect the two
  4.      IFTTT automatically shares things you add to your trigger onto each channel. 


By now, you’ve probably already figured out the IFTTT portion of this method. Setting up recipes is pretty easy, but one thing you may be struggling with is which of the many channels are beneficial, so, this entire post is going to be about that. I went back and forth on how to share this, but I came down to sharing all of the channels I typically use, with their icon from IFTTT, their name and a brief description. So, here goes nothing. 



**There is one note I realized I needed to share. To use more than one account on any of these platforms, it will be necessary to have multiple IFTTT accounts, each with a different gmail (or your favorite email provider). So, if you have more than one blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, etc, you can feed them INTO a single a IFTTT account using RSS feeds (explained later), but you cannot put content onto more than one of each through a single account. 



**I share from my main blog, MarkRMorrisJr.com into all of these channels, on multiple IFTTT accounts. So, in other words, I have multiple gmails each with a  blogger, and a wordpress, etc. all sharing from my main blog. So, each of these has to be set up with each Gmail address you intend to use. Setup is time consuming, but after that, it’s all automated. 


A word about backlinks
In the real world, businesses have signs, and billboards. There are also street signs and other indicators of where to go. This is exactly what backlinks do for websites. Each backlink created is a direct avenue to your content. It can provide traffic  directly and it also indicates to the search engines that the content is more important, having been linked to.
**Each channel is marked as “this”, “that” or “both” to indicate where to put it in a recipe**
FACEBOOK  (both)
If you don’t already have some idea of what Facebook is and does, this series of articles is probably not a good place to start. For writers, Facebook is the world’s biggest market place filled with people who are already reading! Over a billion of them. This channel is a great place to share your blog posts, and other content onto your personal profile, so that your “Facebook friends” can like it, share it and comment on it.
FACEBOOK PAGES (both)
There are three basic types of Facebook properties you can set up for yourself, a profile is your identity and is supposed to be labeled with your real name. Profiles can own pages, which are set up for interests, companies, or even personalities, like writers. You can have as many as you want to set up. Share your content onto them, or share content from them to other places.
TWITTER (both)

Twitter is the second largest social media platform on the internet. It features short messages and images. It’s a great, responsive tool for audience building and a great place to get people to share your content via links. Set this channel up to share some of your content automatically and then spend some time responding and sharing live on the platform for best results.
LINKED IN (both)
Linked  In is the third largest social media platform. It’s like Facebook, for business in a lot of ways. If you are selling B2B, this platform is a must have. If not, it’s a good place to share links for SEO, but may not get you much traffic. It requires quite a bit of setup to make it effective for business use. I have personally optimized it to the point that it brought me multiple thousand dollar contracts, with no other work needed.
BLOGGER (both)
Blogger is Google’s blogging platform and one of the oldest running blog platforms online. It’s free, but a lot of high profile blogs are run on it. It’s a great option for your main website (just buy a domain name and a custom template) or for a feeder blog to put links onto. I use it for both, you can have as many sites as you care to set up.
WORDPRESS (both)

WordPress is the world’s largest CMS (content management system) it is a  website builder and one of the most powerful blogging platforms around. You can build as many free Wordpress.com sites as you want. It works similar to Blogger. Wordpress.org is the self-hosted website building version that has to be installed and maintained separately. They are identical in function, with a few variations in features. I use WP as free blogs for each of my IFTTT accounts.
TUMBLR (that) 


Tumblr is what is known as a “microblog” platform. It’s designed for short messages and images, much like Twitter, but will allow you to share as much or as little as you want. I use it to add links to my website, but have not spent much time developing connections, etc, inside of it.
BITLY (that)

Bitly, like so many things online started out to with one simple job to do, but has expanded into a more complex tool. In Bitly’s case, the job was to shorten URL, or web content addresses, primarily to fit into crowded Twitter statuses. But, Bitly also allows you to track how many people use what links, and it bookmarks them. Save your bitly “bitmarks” as public for a backlink. You can also add them into lists to be shared and more. Go to Bitly for more information.
BUFFER (both, but primarily that)

Buffer is the social media scheduling tool for people who don’t like schedules. Fill it full of posts, then tell it how often and where to put them and it will share to Twitter, Facebook, Linked In or Pinterest. It also houses links creating a backlink. I have not done scheduled posts through Buffer in a while but it’s a great way to get some minimum coverage going that you don’t have to think about.
DELICIOUS (that)
Delicious is a bookmark sharing site. It will build a link directed to your post and share it via bulletin board style lists. This has two main values to us as writers. One, if people see, like and share your content, it will drive traffic directly. Two, the search engines will crawl the site and find your link, making your page read as more relevant in the eyes of almighty Google. Set up to share your blog posts here.
RSS FEED (this)

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication feeds are super, super cool! Basically, almost every page online from a blog, to a facebook page, has the potential to be an RSS feed. So, you can take RSS from any of these and feed them into all of these other channels. Remember when I said you could feed multiple blogs into on IFTTT account? This is how. You will need to look up the details on your blog, or website, or the site you want to share from. Use this to share your blog content, everywhere that will let you.
GMAIL (both)

This probably requires no introduction. Gmail is Google’s email system that allows you to set up as many free accounts as you need. You can even use Gmail with branded email solutions that provide domain level email addresses. With Gmail as a trigger, or an action, you can do a lot of things. You can post to blogs via Gmail, or you could receive an email every time someone comments on your blog, it’s up to you.
GOOGLE DRIVE (that)

Google drive is part of the “cloud” you are always hearing about. It is a secure file system on an offsite server that allows you to save documents, images and files that you can access from any internet connected device. Save links from your blogs to here. It creates backlinks. You can use it for other things as well, such as triggering blog posts.

INSTAPAPER (that)

Instapaper is a content curation tool that will take web content from multiple sources and turn it into  newspaper like content digest that you can read at any time. Not only can you read it,  but other users can find it, it is accessible to search engines and can be shared. So, your links, in something like this will be powerful backlinks for your site.
EVERNOTE (that)




Evernote is a memo system and more. It has a workspace where you can remotely share documents and can be linked into multiple other apps, like calendars. For my purposes, it is just another backlink. But, play around and make sure you make the best of it.
DIIGO (that)
Diigo will save links and text from things you read, or want to read online so that you can find them later. I use it to build backlinks. Set up your blogs and even social media to leave posts here when you share. Each backlink can be followed, or read by search engines for great SEO benefits.
POCKET (that)


Similar to other bookmarking sites, Pocket stores content for later. It’s designed to give you a reading list of sites to revisit, articles to read, etc. your lists can also be found by other users. Feed your blogs into Pocket to create automatic backlinks.
That’s all for part 2!
Look for part two where I will share my fave recipes!
Homework, set up your channels. It’s going to take a while.





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