IFTTT & Etsy

IFTTT (If this, then that) is a great tool for automating things in your everyday life.  I use it primarily for sharing my Etsy listings across social media platforms.  Sadly, IFTTT removed Etsy as a source, but luckily there is a workaround!

Befire we begin our tutorial, go to www.IFTTT.com and set up an account.  Accounts are free and quick to register.

Click your name in the top right hand corner, then select Create fromt he dropdown menu.

IFTTT works with If, Then statements.  If THIS happens, then THAT happens.  So if I post a new Etsy listing, then it will post on my Pinterest board, for example.  You have many options of what you want to happen, but today we will be using Pinterest as an example. We will begin by setting the trigger event.  Click THIS to continue.

To use Etsy as our trigger channel, we need to do a little workaround.  We will be using the trigger channel for the RSS feed.  Type Feed in the search box and select the icon you see in the photo above.

For the trigger, we want to choose "New feed item."  In the case of Etsy, a new feed item happens whenever you post a new listing or renew an old one.  It also occurs when your listings automatically renew.  Click New feed item to continue.

In this box, we will place the link to your Etsy shop's rss feed.  Don't worry, I have that link information for you.  Copy and paste the following link, and replace shopname with your shop's name.

www.etsy.com/shop/shopname/rss

Once you've done that, click Create Trigger.  Great job! You're halfway there!

Next we will tell IFTTT what we want to happen when a new listing appears on your shop's RSS feed.  As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of social media options you can go with, like posting to a Facebook business page, posting to your personal Facebook page or even on a blog.  But today we will be showing you how to do Pinterest, as it is a little more intensive than other social media sites.

Click the That button to continue.

For our action channel, we want Pinterest.  So as before, type Pinterest in the searchbox and click the icon indicated in the photo above.

This step is easy, as there's only one option.  Click Add Pin to board to continue.

For the next step, you will need the exact name of the Pinterest Board you would like your item to go to.  Open Pinterest in a new tab and log in.  Then go to your boards and find the board you would like your post to pin to.  For this example, I'm using one of the Pinterest viral boards I am a part of.  You can set IFTTT up to post to as many boards as you want, but only one board per recipe.  That means you will need to do all the steps in this tutorial for each board you would like your item to automatically pin to. 

Once you've found the board, click on it.

Once you've opened the board, highlight the full title of the board.  Copy that title as is.  I suggest copying the text because the board name needs to be exact for the IFTTT recipe to work properly.  Once the name is on your clipboard, return to your IFTTT tab.

Paste the Pinterest board title you just copied into the first field, marked Enter a board name.  Leave the Photo URL field as it is.

The Add a description field will be the text that appears with your photo on the pin.  If you click the blue Beaker icon on the upper right hand corner of the field, there are some "ingredients" you can select.  I selected Entry Title.  This will take the title of my Etsy listing and put it in the description of the Pin.  I also added some hashtags.

Here is what the ingredient menu looks like.  you can choose as many as you want for your description.

Donot change the Source URL field.  It is set to put your etsy listing link as the source, which means people who click the pin will be sent to your listing.  Click Create Action to continue.

You have set up your recipe, now to finish you will click Create Recipe.  If you'd like you can change the Recipe Title, but that is just for your own use.  Do whatever you wish to help you be more organized.

If you haven't used Pinterest with IFTTT before, you will be prompted to connect Pinterest to your IFTTT account.  IFTTT will only post based on your recipes.

You're done!  This is what the recipe will look like when you're finished.  You can come back to this page later to turn off the recipe if you wish.  You can also click Check Now to force IFTTT to look for new RSS feed items, but it is usually pretty quick.  The Log will show you all the times the recipe has run in the past.