For some people, automation is only for large processes. Not me. I believe it’s the small, repeated tasks and clunky processes that sucks up your time without you ever noticing. They are sneaky like that.

That’s why every time there’s an opportunity to shave off a minute here, 30 seconds there, I would seize it. Two of my favorite services to help automate tasks or create a more efficient workflow are Zapier and IFTTT.

If you’d like to put a jump on your productivity this year with some automation, here’s a list to start with.

Curation

Create an automated task from email to your WordPress site. When you have a few minutes waiting in line or waiting for an appointment, scroll through your reading list – I use Flipboard and/or Feedly. Send an email to your task when you find something you’d like to curate. If you set the task up right, you will now have a brand new curated post on your blog.

The only problem with this is images. Zapier can take attachments and they store it on their systems. So you can actually set up your task template with HTML to add that image to your post but I don’t know how long they store your images. Besides, I’m one of those people who prefer serving photos from my own sites/accounts so this isn’t something I’m wild about.

However, if you regularly use the same image for your curated posts, then this is perfect because you can upload an image to your site and ‘bake’ your image into your task template. Also, on IFTTT, you can only connect one blog. Zapier is definitely a better alternative when you have multiple blogs.

Learn all about curation with Smart Curation Skills

Eliminate Email List Single Point Failure

Many of us rely on email services like Aweber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact. That’s smart. However, like any other 3rd party service, you’d be smarter to always have a backup of your very valuable list.

Create a Zap on Zapier to save each opt-in into a spreadsheet on GoogleDocs. Alternatively, you can also make it append a new line to a text file in Dropbox. Now you have a backup of every lead going forward.

Appointment Scheduler

Need an appointment scheduler but don’t want to pay monthly fees? Here’s what you can do. Create a Zap that connects your web form to Google Calendar. If you use WordPress, you’d be happy to know you can connect Gravity Forms or our favorite, Formidable directly into Zapier to do this.

Outsource Social Media Posting

A bit paranoid about giving people access to your company (or personal) social media profile? Here’s what you do. Create a form on your website – e.g. With Formidable. Make it simple with one post field. If you don’t want the public to stumble upon this, protect this page. Next, create a Zap to send the form entry directly to your social media account or Buffer.

Followup With Failed Recurring Payments

When a recurring payment fails on PayPal, you will receive an email. Create a Zap to ‘listen’ for these emails, then send an email to the customer to follow up.

And there you have it. There are of course a ton of other things you can do with Zapier or IFTTT. It would be worth spend a minute or two looking through the many recipes and use cases on both sites.

You can start both of them free, although Zapier does limit the number of zaps (recipes) to 5. After that, there is a monthly fee. IFTTT is free. A premium option is supposed to be coming up but at the same time, I’ve found Zapier a little more reliable and more robust.