Have you heard about IFTTT? Oh my goodness — in just the week that I have been using it, it has totally revolutionized how I post to all the places that one can post to these days. It’s made it “laying on the beach” easy.

But first, I should say, “howdy!” It’s been a long time since I’ve been seen in these parts. A busy summer gave way to a busy fall and well, to tell the truth, after a long absence from the blog it’s very hard to start posting again. It’s not just trying to get in the habit, it’s almost like trying to find a way to save face. It is embarrassing to admit that it’s been over half a year since I last posted. But once I started using IFTTT and I knew that there were a few newer things on the blog, it was like I’d gotten over a mental hurdle and ideas for posts just began to flow. Redesign in the works too — which explains the ugly template at the moment.

So what is IFTT (rhymes with gift)? IFTTT is a web service that lets you create “recipes” between various internet “channels” to automate processes. IFTTT stands of “if this, then that.” Channels are things like flickr, tumbler, wordpress, dropbox, gmail. Recipes are ready-to-go mash-ups between channels: send new instagram photos to dropbox, add complete iOS reminders to google calendar, and so on. Here is my workflow that has changed my life:

1. Create public post on G+
2. RSS feed of post is sent to flickr and photo automatically appears in my photostream
3. New flickr post is sent to tumblr
4. New flickr post is also sent to self-hosted wordpress blog
5. Blog (through another service) tweets link to new post

And that’s it! So with one post to G+, I’ve covered all my bases. It’s been great for me, so far. I was starting to share less and less because I was paralyzed trying to decide which social media platform to put my time into. Now, with the posting automated, I’m free to engage with the other users.

Knowing that the blog was no longer empty and neglected really made me feel better about coming back around and posting too. Does that make sense? Anyone else have that problem?